Nervous Neighbors: China Finds a Sphere of Influence
I n many respects, it is
the structure, principles, and process of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations—the now
ten-member economic organization formed by Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand in
1967—that make it vulnerable to Chinese influence as
Beijing flexes its regional muscle. With its amorphous
objectives of economic growth, social progress, and
regional stability, ASEAN has proven so weak that it
poses an opportunity rather than a threat to China. The
organization lacks a collective security provision,
joint military forces, and even a foreign policy
solidarity clause—the kind of commitments that prevented
the Soviet Union from achieving hegemony over Europe
during the Cold War. The “ASEAN Way” stresses state
sovereignty and non-interference in the internal affairs
of other members, mitigating discomfort with the PRC’s
authoritarian political system. In this regard, in fact,
there is more potential tension with the Western
democracies, which focus on human rights, fair
elections, and other liberal democratic principles.
Beijing has cleverly used economic enticements to deepen its ties
with its Southeast Asian neighbors, making China ASEAN’s largest trading
partner. Under the terms of ASEAN’s Free Trade Agreement with China, the
six original member states, along with China, would eliminate tariffs on
ninety percent of their products by 2010, with Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar,
and Vietnam having until 2015 to do the same. Beijing has continually
promoted economic, military, and political cooperation relationships
that are “Asia only”—such as the ASEAN Plus Three (ASEAN, China, Japan,
and South Korea). But, unable in recent years to keep the implications
of considerable military weight (a double-digit annual growth in defense
spending for the last fifteen years) from showing in the region, China
has also undermined its “win-win” idea of diplomacy. While upholding
mutually beneficial economic ties with their giant neighbor, ASEAN
leaders have also, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, encouraged the
United States to maintain an active presence in their region as an
external balancer to the PRC.
One major source of tension between Beijing and some of its Pacific
neighbors is their overlapping claims to the South China Sea. This 3.5
million-square-kilometer body of water contains islands, minerals, oil
and natural gas reserves, and maritime passages contested by the various
littoral states. China and Vietnam assert claims to all the small
islands in the South China Sea, whereas Brunei, Malaysia, the
Philippines, and Taiwan claim only some of them. The Spratly and Paracel
chains are the most prominent of the islands, whose small size and
population belie the potential value of the important natural resources,
especially oil and natural gas, thought to lie under their surrounding
waters. The islands are also surrounded by valuable fishing grounds and
straddle shipping lanes through which vital energy resources flow into
East Asia from beyond.
During the 1990s, the PRC declared the entire South China Sea to be
its territorial waters and indicated a willingness, when it gained the
capacity, to enforce these claims. In the early 2000s, however, Beijing
changed course and pursued a “smile diplomacy” to reassure ASEAN nations
worried by its rising military power. In November 2002, China and the
ASEAN countries signed the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the
South China Sea, pledging to resolve sovereignty disputes peacefully
through direct negotiations.
For reasons that remain unclear, the PRC modified its low-key
approach in March 2010, when Chinese officials declared the South China
Sea a “core national interest.” In diplomatic language, this term
normally means an issue a state is willing to use military force to
defend. Until this point, Chinese leaders had applied that term only to
Tibet and Taiwan. In July, Ministry of Defense spokesman Senior Colonel
Geng Yansheng became more specific when he insisted that “China has
indisputable sovereignty of the South Sea, and China has sufficient
historical and legal backing.”
The Chinese Navy has been developing the strength to enforce this
claim. It has built an enormous base on Hainan Island as a home port
that places the fleet closer to the disputed waters of the South China
Sea. The Chinese military has also been developing a new missile, the
Dong Feng 21D, intended to hit an aircraft carrier or other moving
target at a distance of 1,500 kilometers, and will soon deploy its own
first aircraft carrier, recently purchased from Russia. The Chinese
military apparently believes that having such a capacity will lead the
US Navy to steer clear of the South China Sea and other disputed regions
around China’s maritime periphery. In July 2010, partly to affirm the
PRC’s maritime claims, the People’s Liberation Army Navy conducted a
massive show of force in the South China Sea, with at least a dozen
warships from all three of its navy fleets.
O f all the ASEAN countries, Vietnam has
the touchiest relationship with China, sharing a border that has led to
centuries of invasions and armed conflicts between the two nations.
Still, most recent Sino-Vietnamese tensions have involved water,
specifically the South China Sea. The Vietnamese Navy, under different
regimes, fought battles with the Chinese during the mid-1970s and late
1980s over the Paracel and Spratly island chains. The PRC seized the
Paracels in 1974 while Vietnam was preoccupied with the final stages of
its war, and has since established and reinforced military garrisons
there along with a military airbase. Since these facilities are located
southeast of Hainan, they allow the People’s Liberation Army to project
power from points beyond the China coast. More recently, Chinese
authorities have declared unilateral fishing bans in the South China Sea
and have seized Vietnamese fishing boats in the area, keeping any
catches and equipment and releasing the crews only after they pay fines.
They have also been warning Western energy firms not to negotiate
offshore drilling agreements with the Vietnamese government if they
don’t want their business interests in China to suffer.
In response, Vietnamese leaders have cultivated a strong and militant
form of national independence that aims to make their country a “poison
shrimp” that China cannot digest. They have also returned to an age-old
tradition of relying on larger, external powers to help balance China’s
superior population and other resources. During the Cold War, Vietnam
cultivated ties with Moscow as well as Beijing, eventually siding with
the Soviet Union following the end of the war with the US. Since most of
Vietnam’s existing arsenal is of Soviet design, its military has found
it most practical for reasons of logistical simplicity and cost
effectiveness to continue purchasing Soviet-origin weapons from Russia,
such as the Su-30 Flanker fighters and Kilo diesel submarines. But
despite this tie, Hanoi has been seeking to develop security ties with
the United States as well.
The leaders of Vietnam, however, are not the only ones in Southeast
Asia concerned about China’s increasing diplomatic and military
boldness. In a letter to the United Nations on July 8, the Indonesian
government formally challenged the PRC’s claims to the South China Sea
for the first time after a Chinese warship forced an Indonesian patrol
boat to release Chinese fishermen. The Chinese boat had been captured in
an area that Indonesia claims lies in its Exclusive Economic Zone, but
the PRC denied the claim. Philippine and Malaysian officials have also
communicated to Washington, if less openly, their concerns about the
PRC’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea.
T he concerns of China’s neighbors are
also evident in the sustained military buildups some of them have begun.
According to arms transfer data released by the Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the value of the major conventional
weapons systems delivered to Southeast Asian countries almost doubled
between 2005 and 2009. Malaysia, which contests Beijing’s claims to the
South China Sea, imported an astounding 722 percent more arms during
this period than it did during the previous five years. For Singapore,
the increase was 146 percent, while for Indonesia it was 84 percent. The
large volume of weapons purchased by Singapore has, in fact, resulted in
that country becoming the first state in Southeast Asia to rank among
the world’s top ten arms importers since the Vietnam War ended in 1975.
The ASEAN countries cannot hope to balance China militarily, of
course. Even with the buildup, the PRC significantly outmatches the
combined weight of ASEAN members in manpower, equipment, and spending. A
Center for Strategic and International Studies report on the military
balance in Asia estimated Chinese military personnel in 2010 at
2,170,000. In contrast, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Vietnam,
Thailand, Singapore, and the Philippines combined only have 1,472,000 in
uniform. Moreover, the ASEAN militaries have shown little interest in
pooling their defense resources and developing a collective military
force.
The ASEAN states also have extensive and mutually beneficial economic
ties with Beijing that they do not want to jeopardize by directly
confronting China over its maritime claims. They would prefer that some
other external balancer such as the United States assume that role, with
ASEAN providing indirect support. Unlike South Korea, Japan, or
Australia, the Southeast Asian states lack bilateral defense treaties
with the United States. Nonetheless, some ASEAN officials have been
privately pressing Washington to intervene on the South China Sea issue
to discourage Chinese adventurism. Unsurprisingly, it has been the
Vietnamese who have most eagerly sought to work with their former
adversary to balance the regional colossus.
It was therefore probably not an accident that, at the July 2010
ASEAN Regional Forum meeting in Hanoi, Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton broke with precedent and offered to help launch multilateral
talks on disputed South China Sea territories within the ASEAN
framework. She also reaffirmed standard US opposition to the use of
coercion or threats of force to settle conflicting claims. Clinton
justified her statement of concern on this occasion by explaining that
“The United States, like every nation, has a national interest in
freedom of navigation, open access to Asia’s maritime commons, and
respect for international law in the South China Sea.”
At the May 2010 Shangri-La Dialogue, US Defense Secretary Robert
Gates called the South China Sea “not only vital to those directly
bordering it, but to all nations with economic and security interests in
Asia.” Alluding to alleged PRC threats against American and other
international oil companies considering cooperation with Vietnam, Gates
said, “We object to any effort to intimidate US corporations or those of
any nation engaged in legitimate economic activity.” When he visited the
Philippines in August 2010, the commander of US forces in the Pacific,
Admiral Robert Willard, affirmed the American commitment to guarantee
free navigation in the South China Sea.
Taken together, these statements by US officials constituted a bold
move designed to redirect the PRC from its increasingly aggressive
stance by underscoring American unwillingness to allow the region to
become an uncontested sphere of influence. The United States has
traditionally sought to avoid taking a public position on East Asian
sovereignty disputes, but the recent aggressive moves by China, combined
with the quiet pleadings of some prominent ASEAN leaders, has galvanized
the Obama administration into action.
N ot surprisingly, the PRC foreign and
defense ministries each criticized Secretary Clinton for intervening in
the South China Sea dispute. In late August 2010, a small manned
submarine had planted a PRC flag on the sea bed of the South China Sea.
On September 21, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson warned
against “any kind of statement that might be issued by the US and ASEAN
over the South China Sea” during the September 24 summit, when President
Obama would meet with ASEAN leaders on the sidelines of the annual
opening of the UN General Assembly in New York. The unofficial PRC media
described the new US assertiveness over the South China Sea, as well as
the US decision to join the East Asia Summit, as an effort, in collusion
with the Vietnamese, to contain China.
The Chinese see Washington’s more assertive declaratory policy
regarding the South China Sea through the lens of the increasingly close
economic and strategic ties between the US and Hanoi, despite persistent
tensions between the two over human rights. Along with China and Japan,
the United States is one of Vietnam’s largest trading partners, export
markets, and sources of foreign direct investment. During the past
decade, top US and Vietnamese officials have regularly visited each
other’s capitals, senior US and Vietnamese officers have exchanged
numerous visits, and American Navy warships have made port calls at Ho
Chi Minh City, Hai Phong, and Da Nang. In 2009, the US Defense Security
Cooperation Agency announced its willingness to permit the export of
“non-lethal” military equipment, such as naval surveillance radars, to
Vietnam. In early August 2010, the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry announced
the beginning of US-Vietnamese negotiations on a civil nuclear
cooperation agreement, which could result in US assistance to a
Vietnamese nuclear energy program. That same month, the United States
and Vietnam held their first formal defense talks, and their navies
conducted their first joint exercises since the Vietnam War ended
thirty-five years ago.
The destroyer USS John McCain joined with ships of the
Vietnamese People’s Navy to conduct training drills for search and
rescue, damage control, maintenance, emergency repair, and fire control.
At the same time, the nuclear-powered USS George Washington
aircraft carrier, nominally there to help mark the fifteenth anniversary
of the normalization of US-Vietnamese ties, also hosted a combined
Vietnamese civilian-military delegation while sailing in the disputed
South China Sea off the Vietnamese port of Da Nang. The United States
has also invited Vietnam to send observers to US-led military exercises
in the region, including the large Cobra Gold exercise in Thailand. The
United States has offered to train Vietnamese soldiers to participate in
UN peacekeeping operations. In October 2010, Vietnam invited foreign
navies, constructed by the United States and then also used by the
Soviet Union, to consider using the naval base at Cam Ranh Bay for
“peaceful purposes.” The locale’s deepwater harbor and port
infrastructure would be important for replenishing American warships
operating in the disputed South China Sea and the Indian Ocean.
In November 2010, US Army chief of staff General George William Casey
visited the Vietnamese Ministry of Defense in Hanoi, where he and
Lieutenant General Nguyen Quoc Khanh of the Vietnam People’s Army agreed
to continue cooperating on personnel exchanges, military medicine, and
minesweeping.
V ietnamese officials have publicly
denied that they are seeking an alliance with the United States against
the PRC. They correctly point out that Vietnam engages in defense
cooperation with many countries, including China itself. And they note
that the US has interests of its own in the region. Indeed, according to
one calculation, one-third of all the world’s commercial shipping
traverses waters that Chinese policymakers now claim as their own. Soon
after taking office, the Obama administration made clear its
determination to contest Chinese sovereignty claims in international
waters when Chinese ships and aircraft launched a concerted campaign of
harassment against US maritime surveillance ships in the South China
Sea. The most infamous episode occurred in March 2009, when Chinese
sailors tried to seize the sonar buoy of the USNS Impeccable ,
a non-commissioned auxiliary ship that the US Navy was using to surveil
China’s new naval base on Hainan and Chinese submarines in the area.
In addition to these military measures, the Obama administration has
been increasing the US diplomatic and economic military presence in
Southeast Asia, ending earlier complaints that Washington was neglecting
the region due to American preoccupation with the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. The United States has joined every ASEAN-related
institution it is eligible to join. A flood of US Cabinet members now
visit Southeast Asia on a regular basis. In 2008, the US designated Scot
Marciel—deputy assistant secretary for Southeast Asia in the Bureau of
East Asian and Pacific Affairs—as, concurrently, ambassador for ASEAN
affairs and permanent representative to the ASEAN Secretariat in
Jakarta. The United States signed the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and
Cooperation the following year. The first ASEAN-US summit occurred in
November 2009, followed by a second in September 2010. ASEAN invited the
United States and Russia, both potential great power balancers against
the PRC, to join the East Asia Summit in 2011.
Independently of ASEAN, the United States launched the Lower Mekong
Initiative, designed to help Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam address
multiple ecological, social, and infrastructure issues. Governments from
these countries had complained that Chinese damming of the upper Mekong
River was inflicting drought and causing other devastating damage on
their environment.
In terms of bilateral relations, the US has sustained long-standing
military alliances with the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand and
improved security ties with Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as Vietnam.
In April 2010, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak met with
President Obama in Washington. They discussed Malaysia’s contribution to
the US-led military efforts in Afghanistan, which includes about forty
medical specialists and military personnel engaged in humanitarian
assistance. At the same time, the US government formally upgraded the
status of its relationship with Malaysia to that of a “strategic
partnership.” In June, Malaysia elevated its status in the annual
multilateral Cobra Gold military exercise from that of observer to full
participant.
After a lengthy hiatus, the US has also restored comprehensive
military ties with Indonesia, including reestablishing relations with
Kopassus, Indonesia’s special forces group, which plays a leading role
in Indonesia’s counterterrorism efforts. The new Indonesian-US bilateral
defense framework agreement provides for security dialogue, education,
training, equipment sales, and maritime security cooperation. The two
governments also launched a “comprehensive partnership” that includes a
joint commission headed by Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa
and Secretary of State Clinton. American diplomats have also been
encouraging Australia, Japan, and especially India to deepen relations
with Southeastern Asian countries to further offset the PRC’s hegemonic
potential.
Despite their growing economic cooperation with the PRC, ASEAN
nations now acknowledge that improved security ties with the United
States offer the safest and most effective way—and a far better one than
they could achieve alone—for them to hedge against China’s growing power
and to exercise influence on Chinese policy. Yet the ASEAN countries
also want to keep China and the United States in balance, and do
whatever they can to avert a major Sino-American confrontation. While
they play both powers against each other to gain advantage and
maneuverability, they insist that Sino-American competition remain a
civilian contest for regional position, profit, and prestige. Whether
the region can maintain that delicate balance in the face of growing
American concern over China’s new hegemonic potential and ambition is
the question that will determine ASEAN’s future.
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