Luconia Breakers: China’s new “southernmost territory” in the South China Sea?
Posted: June 16, 2015 Filed under: China-ASEAN, China-Malaysia, CMS (China Maritime Surveillance), South China Sea, State media | Tags: ASEAN and South China Sea, 《中国国家地理》, China Coast Guard, China Coastguard, China-ASEAN, China-Malaysia relations, Chinese foreign policy, Chinese National Geography magazine, 琼台礁, 马宏杰, Gugusan Beting Patinggi Ali, Hempasan Bantin, James Shoal, Luconia Shoal, Luconia Shoals, Ma Hongjie, Malaysia, Malaysia and South china SEa, normalized patrols, North Luconia Shoal, PRC foreign policy, PRC maritime law enforcement, Shahidan Kassim, Shan Zhiqiang, south china sea, South Luconia Shoal, Spratly, spratly islands, Wu Lixin, 单之蔷, 吴立新, 曾母暗沙 13 Comments
The “island” at Luconia Breakers 琼台礁/Hempasan Bantin (source: Chinese National Geography, October 2010)
In a vivid illustration of how dynamic the status quo in the South China Sea can be, an apparently new Spratly island, formed by the forces of nature, has become a source of tension between China and Malaysia.
Luconia Breakers (Hempasan Bantin / 琼台礁) is just over 100km north of James Shoal, the shallow patch of ocean that Chinese people are routinely taught is the southernmost point of their country’s “territory“, despite it being several metres underwater.
As this post will show, unlike James Shoal, the territory at Luconia Breakers actually exists above the waterline. This is significant because if the PRC ever needs to clarify the nature of its maritime claims under international law, it could end up adopting the “new” feature as its southernmost territory.
Topping off the intrigue, the train of events leading to the current Sino-Malaysian standoff may well have been set in motion by an adventurous Chinese magazine team.
Defining the “status quo” in the South China Sea
Posted: June 14, 2015 Filed under: Academic debates, China-ASEAN, China-Australia, China-Malaysia, China-Philippines, China-US, China-Vietnam, South China Sea | Tags: artificial islands, ASEAN, ASEAN and South China Sea, Ashton Carter, china maritime dispute, China-US relations, coercion, diplomacy, international norms, Malaysia, Malaysia and South china SEa, maritime disputes, reclamation, regional united front, Shangri-la Diaologue, south china sea, Spratly, spratly islands, status quo, The Diplomat, United States in South China Sea, 南海现状 9 Comments
Below is a piece published at The Diplomat, running through what the “status quo” is in the South China Sea, and the difficulties encountered in trying to define it. Aside from identifying some key metrics of the current situation in the disputed area, the aim was generate some debate, or at least second thoughts, about the usefulness of the “status quo” as a normative standard. The concept has proved useful in diplomacy over Taiwan, Korea and elsewhere, and (arguably) in international relations theory. But given the complex, watery nature of the South China Sea dispute, i argue it’s not likely to help in establishing the kind of clear-cut, universally recognized standards the region needs to forestall escalation there.
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The South China Sea: Defining the ‘Status Quo’
The term’s broad-brush vagueness – it simply means “the existing situation” – may make it appealing for practitioners of diplomacy, but the lack of clarity limits its usefulness as an analytic tool. More troublingly, being such an all-encompassing term, its use as a normative standard is inevitably selective, resulting in inconsistencies that risk breeding misunderstanding and mistrust. Unless used with care and nuance, it is a term that is more likely to undermine than underpin a “rules-based order” in maritime Asia.
The U.S. position on the East and South China Sea disputes, as Defense Secretary Ash Carter and other officials have frequently reiterated in recent months, is that it opposes changes to the status quo made through force or coercion. Senior U.S. military and civilian officials have used this standard formulation frequently since mid-2013, most prominently in relation to the PRC’s East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), and its well-publicized island-construction project in the South China Sea.
Claimants in the disputed seas have also embraced the idea of defending the status quo from Chinese advances. The leaders of Japan and the Philippines on June 4 affirmed their opposition to “unilateral attempts to changes the status quo.” Vietnam maintains a slightly subtler position that stops short of outright opposition, as typified by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung’s call for countries to refrain from “actions that would complicate the situation and change the status quo of rocks and shoals.”
What’s not in the latest photos of China’s Spratly island construction?
Posted: February 25, 2015 Filed under: China-ASEAN, China-Malaysia, China-Philippines, China-US, China-Vietnam, South China Sea, Western media | Tags: artificial islands, CBMs, Chinese foreign policy, deterrence, photography, reclamation, regional united front, spratly islands, western media 6 Comments
The spectacular photographs of China’s progress in creating artificial islands in the South China Sea have deservedly generated a flurry of attention in the media and punditry in the past week or so.
The pictures show the amazing transformation, over the past year or so, of submerged atolls into sizeable islands with harbours, roads, container depots, workers’ dormitories and even cement plants. The reclamation activities have been documented periodically since early 2014 by Vietnamese bloggers, the Philippines foreign ministry, defense publisher IHS Janes, and, most recently, the Washington-based CSIS’s Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative.
These images seem to have a special ability to catch people’s eyes and draw attention to the issue. On my own humble Twitter feed, where most posts are lucky to be noticed by anyone, when i’ve attached images of China’s artificial Spratlys, the stats suddenly light up with dozens of retweets, many from strangers.
With this viral quality, and visual impact, they could well become iconic images that define the South China Sea issue as a whole. So amidst the surge of interest, it’s worthwhile reflecting on what’s not in the pictures. Here’s my stocktake, together with a collection of less widely-circulated photos:
- The scoreboard: China is still well behind
- The company: reclamation is part of most claimants’ Spratly strategies
- The history: it’s not new, and that does matter for policy responses
- The regional context: easing tensions
- The environment: an unfolding tragedy
Additions, omissions and arguments most welcome!
Consensus at the top? China’s opportunism on Diaoyu and Scarborough Shoal
Posted: November 28, 2012 Filed under: Academic debates, China-ASEAN, China-Malaysia, CMS (China Maritime Surveillance), Diaoyu, FLEC & Ministry of Agriculture | Tags: 1988 Spratly Battle, anti-Japanese protest, ASEAN and South China Sea, China-ASEAN, Chinese foreign policy, Chinese public opinion, COC, Code of Conduct, Diaoyu Islands, escalation, 钓鱼岛, Johnson South Reef Skirmish, nationalism card, PRC foreign policy, PRC maritime law enforcement, PRC-Japan, reactive assertiveness, Scarborough Shoal 黄岩岛, south china sea, uses of public opinion 2 Comments
“New facts on the water”
In last week’s Sinica Podcast, M. Taylor Fravel discussed the March 1988 Sino-Vietnamese battle in the Spratly Islands, recounting how the PLAN Commander was moved from his post afterwards as a result of his unauthorized decision to open fire on the Vietnamese Navy.
This could make the 1988 battle appear as a historical example of uncoordination in the PRC’s behaviour towards the outside world — a rogue commander taking foreign policy into his own hands. However, the decision to send the Navy in to establish a presence on unoccupied reefs in the Spratlys was a centralized, high-level one.
Today, the Chinese Navy is better equipped and better trained, so the chances of something similar happening are small. The unwavering non-involvement of the PLAN in China’s maritime territorial disputes, even as tensions have risen to boiling point, is a testament to the navy’s professionalization, and a site of consensus among China’s policymakers. The US Department of Defense in 2011 presciently pinpointed (see p.60) the increasing use of non-military law enforcement agencies to press China’s claims in disputed waters as an important component of PRC policy. Since then, this approach has become ever-more salient.
China’s maritime law enforcement fleets have long been seen as a source of policy disorganization, both within China and abroad; back in 2002, for example, the Hainan Provincial NPC delegation tabled a motion to establish a unified maritime law-enforcement fleet.
But in the podcast Fravel drew attention to how this year the China Maritime Surveillance and Fisheries Law Enforcement fleets have actually coordinated rather well, both with each other and with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in advancing China’s maritime claims.
Malaysia returns to the PRC’s South China Sea media cauldron
Posted: August 27, 2012 Filed under: Article summaries, China-Malaysia, Global Times, State media, TV | Tags: Anifah Aman, ASEAN, ASEAN and South China Sea, CASS, China-ASEAN, Chinese media, Chinese state media, Chinese television, 王晓鹏, 社科院, Global Times, Huanqiu Shibao, Malaysia, Malaysia and South china SEa, Malaysian Foreign Minister, PRC media, south china sea, spratly islands, Swallow Reef, Wang Xiaopeng, Yang Jiechi, Yunnan TV, 南海问题, 弹丸礁 1 Comment
The Foreign Ministers of China and Malaysia, Yang Jiechi and Anifah Aman, shake hands in Kota Kinabalu, August 12, 2012
There was a post here last year about the KD Pari, a Malaysian Navy fast attack craft that sort-of-sank while allegedly chasing a Chinese ship near Swallow Reef. It still continues to attract traffic from the search engines, which hints at a general dearth of information on the Malaysian dimension to the South China Sea disputes.
Malaysia usually gets little noticed in the Chinese media too, when it comes to the South China Sea issue, but that changed with Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Amin’s comment on August 12 that Southeast Asian states should sort out their South China Sea claims before negotiating with China. At a press conference right after his meeting with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi (who wasn’t in attendance), Anifah said:
There are overlapping claims by member countries. Let us discuss these among ASEAN countries first before we talk to China . . . We can only achieve this objective in the South China Sea if all parties agree. Then China can appreciate this and realise it is ASEAN’s wish.
Although Malaysia’s official Bernama news agency did not report these comments, they were still picked up, translated and introduced into the Chinese media by the Huanqiu Shibao. This led in turn to the following report from Yunnan TV. As the summary translation indicates, it struck an indignant tone that painted Malaysia as yet another addition to the list of hostile anti-China forces.
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Summary translation follows after the jump…
“Relax wife, the fisheries administration is here!”: triumph, grief and human interest with the fisherfolk of Tanmen
Posted: June 13, 2012 Filed under: China-Malaysia, China-Philippines, China-Vietnam, CMS (China Maritime Surveillance), FLEC & Ministry of Agriculture, PRC News Portals, State media, TV, Xinhua | Tags: Cheng Gang, chinese fishermen, Chinese media, Chinese nationalism, Chongqing Morning News, 程刚, 羊城晚报, 重庆晨报, 黄岩岛, fenqing, huangyan island, New Express, patriotism, scarborough shoal, south china sea, south china sea fishermen, Tanmen, Xin Kuai Bao, Yangcheng Evening News, 愤青, 新快报 7 Comments
Special total-coverage page in the Zhengzhou Evening News 郑州晚报, May 4, 2012. The headlines read: “We need to watch over this place”/Less than a day after returning, Hainan fishermen return to the “standoff”/”Wife, the fisheries administration is here, so relax!”
This year the PRC media have published a succession of detailed stories on the plight of Chinese fisherfolk through the South China Sea disputes.
On February 22, for example, the Guangzhou-based Yangcheng Evening News 羊城晚报 published ‘More than 95% of licenced Chinese fishermen have withdrawn from the Spratlys, afraid of detention by foreign gunboats‘.
There was no joy in 2011 for Spratly fishing boat captain Chen Songhan 陈松汉 of Taishan in Guangdong Province. He said that harassment from foreign gunboats had led to greatly increasing costs, declining fisheries resources, and decreasing benefits. And on May 9 last year, Beihai (Guangxi) fisherman Li Rixi’s 李日喜 fishing boat was siezed by foreign gunboats, causing economic losses of 1.23 million RMB, and he told the Yangcheng Evening News he was still a long way from recovering his strength.
Following the Chinese fishing boats’ escape from Philippines authorities at the start of the Scarborough Shoal standoff in mid-April, Xinhua put out some rather more rousing stories of triumph. There were numerous interviews with the returnees, apparently all from Tanmen town in Qionghai City, Hainan Province, such as this one, for which a version is available in English here under the headline, ‘Chinese fishermen recall clash with Philippine navy‘.
In early May there emerged the tale of more Qionghainese fishermen who had come home to avoid a typhoon, then turned around the very next day and gone straight back to Scarborough Shoal to “participate in the standoff”. That story contained the rather unforgettable line, as one fisherman’s wife recalled hearing her husband saying:
Relax wife, the fisheries administration is here!
This was splashed across the special total-coverage page in the May 4 edition of the Zhengzhou Evening News seen at the top. According to that story, it was originally taken from the Legal System Evening News 法制晚报.
Mid-May saw the return of Xu Detan 许德潭, the skipper of one of the Scarborough protagonist vessels, Qiong-Qionghai 09099, and who had featured prominently in Xinhua’s stories the previous month. This time he was telling CCTV that he’d just brought back a bumper haul of fish, and that it was all thanks to FLEC and the State Oceanic Administration’s China Maritime Surveillance force. According to the English version (here), Xu said:
Our boats are everywhere around the island, and we are afraid of nothing. The Chinese Marine Surveillance ships kept in contact with us around-the-clock.
Actually, Xu sort-of uttered words to that effect, but he didn’t name either of the agencies. Instead, their names were inserted by a CCTV editor as the subtitles in this frame show:
Malaysian ship breaks down chasing Chinese frigate?
Posted: September 28, 2011 Filed under: China-Malaysia, Comment threads, Global Times, PRC News Portals, State media | Tags: chengguan, Global Times, KD Pari, Malaysia, south china sea, Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Jaafar 1 Comment
The Global Times last week picked up an interesting story from the Malaysian New Straits Times newspaper:
Malaysian patrol boat almost sinks while chasing Chinese-flagged vessel
According to a September 19 report in the New Straits Times, the Malaysian Navy patrol boat KD Pari sustained a dislodged shaft and nearly sank while pursuing a Chinese-flagged vessel near Danwan Reef 弹丸礁 in the Spratly Islands.
The report claimed that when water started filling the KD Pari’s engine room it was forced to abandon its pursuit of “a foreign vessel violating Malaysia’s territorial waters”.
The story itself is a very significant one, and it has still not appeared anywhere in the international media. (Another Malaysian newspaper has a brief report here.)
But the Global Times‘ treatment of the translation is even more interesting: for a start, the reference to a Chinese vessel that the Global Times emphasizes was actually just a single sentence in the original story.
RMN chief Admiral Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Jaafar said the crew of the Fast Attack Craft-Gun (FAC-G) vessel KD Pari heard a ‘loud bang’ soon after it had departed the island westward to pursue a China-flagged vessel, believed to be a frigate, spotted at Gugusan Semarang Peninjau in the South China Sea at 2.53pm.
This can probably be attributed to the GT’s translators/editors needing to find a local angle to attract Chinese readers’ interest.
But the Global Times‘ direct quote referring to “a foreign vessel violating Malaysia’s territorial waters” is simply nowhere to be found. Malaysia has not accused China of violating its territorial waters.
This too may be explained by the commercial imperative to play up the conflict and create a dramatic crisis narrative of China being encroached upon from all sides. But putting such menacing words into other countries’ mouths like this seems very irresponsible for a People’s Daily-owned, Beijing-based newspaper.
Perhaps the Global Times editors thought the fact that the Malaysian patrol boat had broken down would be entertaining or encouraging for readers. It did indeed capture attention from the Chinese public, in fact it was the fourth-most discussed news story on Phoenix last week, but the focus was certainly not on the Malaysian Navy’s shortcomings. Here are the top-rated comments from the Phoenix discussion, involving 81,854 participants and 1,819 comments:
[China gets] chased in its own territory, yet still comes away self-satisfied. [16593 recommends]
The good thing is that the Chinese ship was fast, otherwise it might have been the one to sink. [9599]
[. . .]
A great country gets chased down in its own traditional waters by a little country’s little ship…ironic! [6351]
First time I’ve heard of being chased away by another country’s navy in our own territorial waters! How can we face all those ancestors! [4788]
Use our country’s aircraft carrier to lure the Malaysians to Sanya [in Hainan Province], then let the Sanya chengguan destroy them! [3373]
So who would stand to benefit from blowing up a story like this? It probably doesn’t do much for hardliners advocating a stronger stance in the South China Sea, since the idea of yet another Southeast Asian country opposing China’s presence might make military measures seem even more futile. But stories about Chinese ships being chased out of the South China Sea by “little” neighbouring countries obviously does nothing for the cause of foreign policy moderates either.
What is clear is that by confirming the strong domestic narrative of China being encroached upon from all sides, stories like these feed a public perception that the government in Beijing is weak, and is even allowing China to be violated, bullied and humiliated. At a time when China is supposed to be ascending to a position of greatness in the world, it is perfectly understandable if many Chinese people find this hard to accept.
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Update 29/11: An “alternative explanation” for this incident that appeared on a Chinese forum and has attracted a moderate amount of interest, and much agreement. The “netizens” claim, or rather, wish, that the KD Pari was actually sunk by the Chinese warship, but that Malaysia was too embarrassed to admit this, so it claimed instead that the boat had….simply failed.
southseaconversations 讨论南海 
“China wants face, not territory”: the East Asia Summit and the South China Sea
Posted: November 16, 2011 | Author: Andrew Chubb | Filed under: China-ASEAN, China-Australia, China-Malaysia, China-Philippines, China-US, CNS, Comment threads, Global Times | Tags: 2011, ASEAN, Bali, Barack Obama, EAS, East Asia Summit, Wall Street Journal, ZoPFFC | 1 CommentThe upcoming East Asia Summit, the first to include America and Russia, is sure to involve some interesting South Sea diplomacy.
Ahead of the meeting, the Philippines has in the past few weeks been trying to organize a united ASEAN front based on demarcation of disputed and non-disputed sections of the South China Sea – known as the “Zone of Peace, Freedom, Friendship and Cooperation (ZoPFFC)” proposal. China of course opposes this, and a Xinhua article yesterday claimed that it was little more than an attempt to help the US with its “return to Asia” strategy.
The Philippines’ efforts seemed at one point to have at least some momentum when, late last month, Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang endorsed the ZoPFFC proposal. However, the idea seems to have decisively hit the wall in recent days, with the Malaysian Foreign Minister declaring that his country didn’t support the idea of raising the South China Sea issue at the EAS:
Cambodia’s FM actually laughed when asked about the idea: “The problem is how to avoid . . . duplication,” he said, perhaps referring to each claimant state’s bilateral negotiations with China.
But a US presidential aide indicated today that Barack Obama will raise the issue at the EAS anyway. The Global Times has been swift in reporting the spokesman’s comments, under one of its inimitable headlines: ‘America plans to force itself into the South China Sea dispute, claims the issue is appropriate for the EAS’.
However, the only major news website that has the story anywhere on its front page is Sina, which is running a toned-down CNS report, buried among other small headlines, rather than the GT’s fury-laced version, and this hasn’t attracted a great deal of attention so far (only 1,200 or so participants in the discussion, most comments voicing standard denunciations of American temerity). One particularly interesting reader comment, however, is to be found on the Chinese-language Wall Street Journal’s report, titled ‘China opposes discussion of the South China Sea at the EAS’:
Although China definitely is after the territory, this comment is actually very incisive. The reality is that China currently occupies very little in the South China Sea – it has the Paracel Islands, but none of the genuine islands among the Spratlys – and as a result the CCP government loses face with the Chinese public every time the issue arises.
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Update 1: Phoenix has just now posted the CNS report [zh] on the Obama staffer’s comments, if it provokes comment i will add some.
Update 2: QQ is running a report that ‘Japanese media claim US and ASEAN will issue joint statement on South China Sea’ [zh]. The report is from the Yoimuri Shimbun.