Maritime Issues and Regional Order in the Indo-Pacific

By Leszek Buszynski

This edited volume examines the political and security issues influencing and shaping the developing maritime order in the Indo Pacific. If focuses specifically on the impact of China’s maritime expansion upon the policies and strategies of the regional states as well as the major players. The chapters examine the interaction of these players, paying particular attention to Japan, as the originator of the Indo Pacific idea and promoter of security cooperation and regionalism. It also covers the responses of the ASEAN claimants, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines as well as Indonesia, alongside the key players, India, the US and also the EU.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Release date: Jul 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9783030680381

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© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

L. Buszynski, D. T. Hai (eds.)Maritime Issues and Regional Order in the Indo-PacificPalgrave Studies in Maritime Politics and Securityhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68038-1_1

1. A Brittle Status Quo in the South China Sea

Gregory B. Poling¹  

(1)

Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC, USA

Gregory B. Poling

Email: [e-mail]

Keywords

South China SeaUSChinaMaritime militiaVietnamMalaysia

The South China Sea disputes have entered an important new phase defined by several mutually reinforcing trends. First, China’s completion of most major infrastructure at its artificial island bases in the Spratly Islands has since the end of 2017 allowed it to project power short of military force in a continuous manner throughout the entirety of the South China Sea. For its neighbors, this mostly means a persistent and overwhelming presence by the China Coast Guard (CCG) and maritime militia which have engaged in increasingly brazen acts of intimidation. Second, Beijing has managed to defang any threat of multilateral diplomatic pressure. This has as much to do with the inauguration of Rodrigo Duterte as president of the Philippines, and that country’s subsequent meek South China Sea policy, as it does Beijing’s canniness in seizing the opportunities presented to it. In either case, China has successfully blunted international pressure while using the renewed talks on a China–ASEANCode of Conduct (COC) and offers of limited bilateral negotiations to forestall other, potentially more effective, diplomacy by the Southeast Asian claimants. And third, those parties still interested in pushing back on Chinese assertiveness—primarily Vietnam and external actors like Australia, Japan, the United States, and some European countries—have been unable to regain the initiative they held briefly in 2015–2016 when international opinion swung decidedly against Beijing due to its island-building campaign and the Philippines’ arbitration case.

Chinese gray zone coercion led by the CCG and militia have caught these states flat-footed, with no clear ideas how to push back on a power projection strategy that purposely avoids military force and relies on deniability. These interested parties have also failed to coordinate effectively among themselves or rally a broader coalition in support of their efforts. On its current trajectory, the South China Sea seems headed for a future as a Chinese lake. This would have serious implications for the national interests of the like-minded outside parties still concerned about the disputes. It would seriously undermine the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, set a dangerous precedent that international laws and norms do not necessarily apply in Asia amid China’s rise, and seriously undermine the credibility of the United States as a regional security provider—after all, why should Southeast Asian states support a US forward-deployed presence that only seems to protect the US navy’s interests but not their own?

But the current status quo is not stable. This chapter will focus on the coercive aspects of China’s strategy, but it is important to recognize how it interacts with the diplomatic processes. The coercive forces Beijing has unleashed seem very likely to lead to violence at some point. And its diplomatic game will eventually run out of steam, largely because it plays on Southeast Asian expectations while deferring substantive negotiations in order to keep talks going without admitting China’s unwillingness to make compromises. These two factors will likely feed on each other—a clash may lead to a diplomatic breakdown, which in turn could prompt greater adventurism at sea, and so on. This dynamic might already be emerging in Sino-Vietnamese relations. The major question is not whether the currently brittle status quo will shatter; it is whether those parties still interested in the South China Sea will be positioned to seize the initiative when it does.

Moving into a New Phase of Coercion

China finished most of the dredging and island-building to expand its South China Sea bases in 2016, with the last documented new landfill taking place in the Paracel Islands in mid-2017 (AMTI 2017b). By late 2017, it had largely completed the installation of hard infrastructure on the islands. This included airstrips, helipads, hangars, harbor facilities, fuel and ammunition storage, and radar and sensor arrays across both the Paracel and Spratlys Islands (AMTI 2017a, b). For the last two years, there has been little new construction worth noting. The one exception to this was the installation of an Ocean E-Station—an unmanned surveillance and communications platform built by China Electronics Technology Group Corporation—at remote Bombay Reef in the Paracels in mid-2018 (AMTI 2018a). Similar platforms have been installed in waters off Hainan. These E-Stations could point to future Chinese plans to extend its surveillance capabilities to other areas of the South China Sea, like Scarborough Shoal off the coast of the Philippines, without incurring the monetary and diplomatic costs of more large-scale island-building.

With island-building and infrastructure construction largely finished, China moved quickly to deploy both military and law enforcement platforms to its new bases in the Spratly Islands. The period from 2017 to 2018 saw the first landings of military patrol and transport aircraft on Subi and Mischief Reefs in the Spratlys, jamming platforms deployed to Mischief and Fiery Cross Reefs, and surface-to-air and anti-ship cruise missiles emplaced at all three of those facilities. It also saw more frequent rotations by J-11 fighter jets, the first landing of an H-6 K bomber, and an increase in the number of anti-ship and anti-air missile systems deployed to Woody Island in the Paracels. And throughout the South China Sea the port facilities at China’s outposts allowed an ever-greater presence by the People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLA-N) and the CCG, with virtually every modern class of ship in both services calling regularly at the major outposts in the Spratlys (Mangosing 2018; Gordon and Page 2018; Macias 2018; AMTI 2018b, 2018c, 2018d).

Beijing’s island-building spree has increased its ability to project naval force, as well as air power once it chooses to deploy fighter jets to the Spratlys. But the most important change in the dynamics of the South China Sea has been the significant increase in Chinese law enforcement and paramilitary presence throughout the nine-dash line. Thanks to their ability to rest and replenish at Fiery Cross, Mischief, and Subi rather than needing to return to Hainan and Guangzhou, CCG vessels have recently been able to conduct long-term operations in ways they never could before. This presence has been most visible during tense standoffs with competing claimants as well as through regular operations at a handful of submerged features over which China claims sovereignty but does not have any permanent presence.

The Growing Reach of the Chinese Coast Guard

It is well-known that CCG ships have remained permanently on-station at Scarborough Shoal since China seized the feature from Filipino control in 2012. Less often remarked upon is the persistent CCG presence at Luconia Shoals off the coast of Malaysia and around Second Thomas Shoal where the Philippines maintains a small garrison aboard the grounded BRP Sierra Madre. The CCG began regularly patrolling Luconia Shoals in late 2013. It left briefly in late 2015 as a political olive branch during Malaysia’s ASEAN chairmanship, but returned a few months later. In recent years, both the length and frequency of those deployments has increased, as shown by the Automatic Identification System (AIS) transmissions which the CCG vessels seem to purposely broadcast in order to signal their sovereignty over the submerged feature. Data collected by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) shows that at least one CCG ship was on-station at Luconia Shoals on 258 out of 365 days between September 2018 and September 2019. At Second Thomas Shoal, a similar story has played out though with higher stakes given the permanent Philippine garrison at the feature. CCG ships have been patrolling near Second Thomas since mid-2013, facilitated by the Chinese facilities at Mischief Reef just 20 nautical miles away. But they have become noticeably more persistent of late, with CCG ships broadcasting AIS from Second Thomas on at least 215 of the 365 days between September 2018 and September 2019 (AMTI 2019a, 2019e). These same vessels also occasionally extend their patrols closer to Philippine shores, covering other submerged features like Half Moon Shoal.

The increased CCG presence does not just passively signal Chinese sovereignty over disputed features. These vessels are increasingly being used to interfere with the lawful activities of other claimants and put pressure on their forces occupying disputed real estate in the Spratlys. In May 2018, a CCG vessel harassed a civilian boat ferrying supplies to the Sierra Madre, by launching a helicopter which flew dangerously close over the Filipino boat (Esmaquel 2018). The CCG ship was accompanied by a PLA-N vessel which reportedly hung back during the operation, highlighting how Beijing uses the CCG as the vanguard of such actions while maintaining the implicit threat of military intervention should other claimants respond too forcefully. In May 2019, another CCG ship blocked the route of three resupply vessels headed to the Sierra Madre (Viray 2019). These operations surely raise memories in Manila of March 2014 when the CCG blockaded the garrison at Second Thomas for weeks, forcing the Armed Forces of the Philippines to airlift in supplies and eventually run the blockade with civilian vessels while a US surveillance plane hovered overhead (Douglas 2017). The CCG also appears to have increased its interference with Malaysian oil and gas operations near Luconia Shoals. In May 2019, CCG ship Haijing 35111 spent two weeks harassing the Sapura Esperanza, a drilling rig commissioned by a Royal Dutch Shell subsidiary to drill new natural gas wells in block SK 308. AIS signals and photos posted to social media showed that the vessel repeatedly maneuvered in an unsafe manner near offshore supply vessels operating between the rig and the coast of Sarawak State, and came threateningly close to the Sapura Esperanza itself (AMTI 2019b; East Pendulum 2019).

Malaysian authorities are aware of these activities, as evidenced by irregular deployments of Royal Malaysian Navy ships to monitor the CCG at Luconia Shoals. For instance, two Malaysian warships, the 3502 and 176, patrolled near the Haijing 3306 in September and October 2018, while the naval auxiliary vessel Ka Bunga Mas 5 operated just 2 nautical miles from the Haijing 5401 in September 2019. But these naval vessels have limited options. The CCG vessels regularly maneuver in an unsafe manner in violation of the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, or COLREGS, in order to intimidate civilian vessels, but they refrain from direct military force. And even if the Malaysian authorities did want to escalate matters, their naval vessels are smaller and in most cases outgunned by their CCG counterparts (the Haijing 3306, for example, displaces 4000 tons while the 35111 sports a 76 mm cannon). And when it comes to Vietnam, CCG harassment has been taken to a whole new level. After leaving Malaysian waters in late May 2019, the Haijing 35111 made a brief return to Hainan before heading to Vietnamese waters to start what became a months-long standoff involving dozens of ships on both sides. In mid-June, the 35111 started by harassing the Hakuryu-5, a rig contracted by Russia’s Rosneft to drill a new natural gas well in Block 06-01 northwest of Vanguard Bank. AIS signals showed the exact same methods it had employed off the Malaysian coast—approaching threateningly close to the rig and, more worryingly, maneuvering unsafely around offshore supply vessels traveling between Vung Tau and the Hakuryu-5 (AMTI 2019b).

Unlike with the harassment off Malaysia, the 35111 did not give up after two weeks. Instead it operated around the Hakuryu-5 for nearly a month, briefly traveled to Fiery Cross Reef in mid-July to rest and replenish, and then took up its station again. While it was at Fiery Cross, other CCG ships took up its patrol around the rig and multiple CCG ships continued to patrol close to the Hakuryu-5 through mid-October. At the same time, China escalated horizontally by deploying the Haiyang Dizhi 8, a state-owned survey vessel, along with a large escort force of CCG ships to conduct surveys of Vietnam’s continental shelf to the northeast of Block 06-01. The vessel spent more than two months surveying this area before moving farther north, where it continued its activities until October 23. It left only when the Hakuryu-5 finally completed its drilling operations. At least four CCG ships escorted the survey ship at all times according to AIS, though reports suggest the number is much higher. At one point, this included the 12,000-ton Haijing 3901, the largest coast guard vessel in the world (AMTI 2019b). Nor does this horizontal harassment apply only to Vietnam. AIS transmissions show that another Chinese survey ship, the Shi Yan 2, spent at least a week in early August surveying Malaysian waters near the earlier standoff over the Sapura Esperanza. And from at least mid to late August survey vessel Haiyang 4 undertook a survey of a portion of the extended continental shelf jointly claimed by Malaysia and Vietnam (Poling and Hiebert 2019). But unlike Hanoi, Kuala Lumpur chose not to speak out about either of these incidents nor did it seem to have responded by deploying naval or law enforcement vessels. Vietnam sent its own law enforcement vessels to attempt to block the path of the Haiyang Dizhi 8 and to protect the Hakuryu-5. But like Malaysia’s navy near Luconia Shoals, they were outmatched in both size and armaments. Hanoi nonetheless put up a spirited resistance, refusing to cancel the drilling operations or to concede to the Chinese survey. In mid-October, Nguyen Minh Hoang, a major general in the People’s Army of Vietnam and member of the National Assembly, claimed that there were more than 40 Chinese and 50 Vietnamese vessels in the area, though it is unclear how many of these were CCG and how many were militia (Zhou