Germany plans to step up Asian deployments after warship's South China Sea foray

Germany expects further military deployments in Asia following its dispatch of a warship to the South China Sea for the first time in two decades, though its activity in the region will be intensified in "small steps", Berlin's navy chief said on Tuesday.

The Brandenburg-class frigate Bayern's manoeuvre through the resource-rich waters follows a similar expansion of naval activity in the area this year by Western nations amid concerns about China's territorial claims in the disputed waters.

A German warship last passed through the South China Sea in 2002.

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Speaking to reporters on board the Bayern in Singapore's Changi Naval Base, German navy chief Vice Admiral Kay-Achim Schonbach described the vessel's South China Sea foray as "just a teaser".

With 200 soldiers on board, the Bayern set sail for Asia in August, making pit stops in Pakistan, Australia, the US territory of Guam, Japan and South Korea before passing through the South China Sea and arriving in Singapore. It will next make port calls in Vietnam, Sri Lanka and India before returning to its home base.

German officials earlier said the trip was aimed at showing that Berlin was "standing up for our values and interests together with our partners and allies".

Schonbach said Germany was "perpetuating" its Asia presence, and hoped to dispatch ships and possible aircraft to the region from 2023.

The plan, he added, was to involve two German ships next time - a frigate and an auxiliary ship.

With its heightened presence in the region, Germany sought to offer a "new perspective" to regional players on top of those offered by major powers such as China and the United States, Schonbach said.

Still, Berlin would take an incremental approach to its Asian deployment plans, he said.

Asked by Taiwanese media why the frigate did not sail through the Taiwan Strait, Schonbach maintained that the first navy tour to the region after 19 years focused on Berlin's "value partners", and that it was "not starting with a hammer".

Military activity by the US and its allies near Taiwan - which China views as a renegade province - has often been condemned by Beijing.

"This time, we start with small steps ... probably we'll pass [the Taiwan Strait] the next time on a bilateral basis," said Schonbach.

Like other senior Western military officials, Schonbach reiterated that Berlin's key interest in the region was upholding the international rules-based order.

Beijing views the emphasis on a rules-based order by the US and its allies as a veiled attempt to perpetuate a global governance model that favours the West.

Britain and France both underscored the importance of the rules-based order following naval deployments in Asia earlier this year.

German ambassador to Singapore Norbert Riedel reserved special praise for the city state for sharing Germany's views on preserving the region as an area of security, stability and freedom.

"Our common belief in a rules-based multilateral order extends to shared responsibility in upholding international law in the realm of security and the freedom of navigation of international waters," he said.

In an opinion piece published in The Straits Times on Monday, Riedel said that Germany was "particularly concerned by the assertion of unlawful and sweeping maritime claims in the South China Sea".

Without naming countries, he wrote that Berlin was also concerned with the "ongoing intimidation and coercion against other states in the region in asserting their lawful rights".

China claims almost the entirety of the South China Sea - through which 60 per cent of global maritime trade flows - based on "historic rights".

Southeast Asian littoral states such as Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines say China's maritime and territorial assertions contravene their sovereign rights under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

For the most part of former German chancellor Angela Merkel's 16-year tenure, Berlin walked a tightrope of maintaining strong strategic ties with its stalwart ally the US while refraining from adopting Washington's increasingly confrontational stance towards Beijing, its top trading partner.

But that position has changed recently alongside a hardening of the European Union's stance on issues such as alleged human rights violations in Xinjiang.

In a separate lecture organised by the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank on Tuesday evening, Schonbach said China's political and economic ascend posed a challenge to established powers. While China is an important trading partner, it is also a "growing hegemonic power which is using its power and money to push into Europe and put pressure on the international order", he added.

Germany in September said Beijing denied the Bayern entry into one of its harbours, which the German navy chief suggested on Tuesday was a "political decision", adding that he did not have direct contact with his Chinese counterpart.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian had said Beijing hoped external players would have a "constructive role" in the region and that "China attaches great importance to the development of an all-round strategic partnership between China and Germany, including cooperation between the two militaries".

Asked at the lecture if the Bayern voyage could be viewed by Beijing as provocative, Schonbach suggested that the deployment of a single warship - instead of multiple frigates or even a submarine - was not meant to provoke.

Germany, he said, has always focused on dialogue but has reached a point that it needed to send a signal. "When a nation like Germany sends a ship, then there must be something [that] happened in recent years that is important enough that Germany is changing the way of communication," he said.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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