Troubled waters as China pushes the boat out on intimidation

Beijing is playing nice with Australia lately. So we might dare to hope that it has given up its ambition of dominating the region through coercion and intimidation.

But you don’t have to look far offshore to see a very different picture, even in just the past week. On Friday, two regional governments spoke of new intimidation by Beijing in their territorial waters.

The Philippines’ government accused China’s forces of dangerous and aggressive manoeuvres in two separate incidents near the Second Thomas Shoal amid the Spratly Islands.

Illustration by Dionne GainCredit:

The area is claimed by Beijing as part of its effort to take control of some 90 per cent of the South China Sea. The South China Sea is the world’s most valuable commercial artery.

A tribunal in The Hague ruled in 2016 that China has no legal basis for its claim on the Philippines’ territory. But in one case last week, a Chinese Coast Guard ship blocked a pair of smaller Philippines Coast Guard ships from sailing within the Philippines’ own exclusive economic zone, according to the Manila authorities. The incident was witnessed by multiple journalists from Filipino and foreign news outlets travelling aboard the Philippines vessels.

“Hostilities peaked,” reports, Jim Gomez of the Associated Press, “as the two patrol vessels approached the shoal’s shallow waters for an underwater survey.”

The Chinese vessel told the Philippines craft by radio to leave the area immediately. When the first Phillipine ship “manoeuvred towards the mouth of the shoal, the Chinese ship suddenly shifted to block it, coming as close as 36 to 45 metres from its bow”, in the skipper’s estimation.

“To avoid a collision, he reversed his vessel’s direction then brought the boat to a stop.” Beijing complained that it was the Philippines intruding on Chinese territory in a “premeditated and provocative action”. Manila retorted that “routine patrols in our own waters can neither be premeditated or [sic] provocative”.

Some of the many suspected Chinese militia ships lay side by side on April 22 at the Philippine-claimed Whitsun Reef.Credit: AP Photo

The US sided firmly with the Philippines. It called on Beijing to “desist from its provocative and unsafe conduct”. Australia, too, expressed concern at “further reports of unprofessional and dangerous conduct against the Philippines”.

It’s the latest in a long series of confrontations in the area. The Philippines has filed at least 87 complaints with the Chinese embassy in Manila over Beijing’s conduct in its waters.

Meanwhile, about 120 kilometres away, China has massed up to 100 of its maritime milita vessels around another contested feature within the Philippines exclusive economic zone, the Whitsun Reef. The Philippines says China has started land reclamation on the reef.

The second government to speak out was Taiwan’s. It reported that China’s military had flown a new combat drone to circumnavigate its main island. The uncrewed TB-001 drone, 10 metres long and missile-capable, flew within Taiwan’s air defence identification zone, it said.

“It will allow the communist military’s naval and air forces in the Western Pacific, including air force strike groups or carrier battle groups, to launch attacks” on the east coast of Taiwan, the coast furthest from China’s mainland, military researcher Chieh Chung at Taiwan’s National Policy Foundation think tank told Reuters.

“Grave consequences”: Singapore Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr Vivian Balakrishnan in Canberra on Monday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The drone was one of the 19 mainland military aircraft to fly into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone last Thursday and Friday, according to Taipei. It was the biggest intrusion since the high drama of President Tsai Ing-wen’s meeting with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in early April.

Singapore’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Vivian Balakrishnan, in Australia on Monday called on all sides to exercise restraint over Taiwan: “It is clearly evident that tensions are high and rising, and the risk of mishap or miscalculation, even higher, and with that the risk of an escalatory spiral. And so, if that happens, it will trigger grave consequences for all of us.”

Also on Friday, Japan’s government endorsed a new oceans policy to better protect itself against maritime intrusions. Again, the main source is China. Japan’s Prime Minister Kishida Fumio said in adopting the policy: “The situation in the ocean around Japan is increasingly tense.”

The policy includes a plan to strengthen Japan’s Coast Guard, to integrate its work more closely with Japan’s Navy, and to hasten development of underwater drones and remotely operated robots to improve surveillance.

Tokyo reports that as well as Chinese Coast Guard intrusions, China’s navy increasingly is active in Japanese waters. There were no unauthorised Chinese naval intrusions until 2004. Since then, there have been eight, according to Tokyo. Five of the eight happened in the past year and a half.

But Beijing’s air force is much pushier. Japan scrambled its fighter jets to intercept Chinese military aircraft 575 times in the year to the end of March, an average of 11 times a week. This was significantly fewer than in the previous year, although the number of scrambles to chase off Chinese drones was up.

Japan last year announced that it would double its military spending over the next 10 years.

Taken together, the Chinese Communist Party’s territorial policy against its neighbours has two striking features. First, it is relentless and, over time, intensifying. Western analysts commonly call it “salami slicing” for its incrementalism.

A retired Chinese general famously called it a “cabbage leaf” strategy, laying down one type of entitlement to a neighbour’s territory after another, ultimately rolling it all up like a cabbage leaf.

Second, it is coercive but not kinetic. It’s a policy of forcing its neighbours back using sheer presence and muscle, but never opening fire, even as it continues its military build-up.

It recalls a precept of the ancient Chinese clan whose collective strategic wisdom is written under the name of Sun Tzu: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

Beijing’s treatment of Australia is a particular change of tactics and timing. Its overarching strategy to win regional dominance is intact and under way.

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