The Contest of the Century (15 page)

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Southeast Asian governments accuse Beijing of adopting a strategy of “talk and take.” Given the chance, Vietnam and the Philippines can reel
off long lists of behaviors by the Chinese they consider to be bullying. The Vietnamese point out that two of the nine lines on the famous Chinese map are in territory which under international law is considered Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone, the two-hundred-mile area beyond a country’s coast that is recognized by international law. In 2007, Beijing pressured Exxon Mobil and several other foreign oil and gas companies into abandoning drilling operations off the Vietnamese coast—an event that some cite as the start in the current period of tensions. In 2011, Chinese government vessels cut the cables of two ships that were conducting oil and gas surveillance for PetroVietnam. Two months earlier, a Philippine vessel doing a seismological study in a disputed area was forced to leave by two Chinese government ships. Every year, the Chinese authorities enforce a fishing moratorium in parts of the South China Sea, which they say is to preserve stocks, but the decision is not taken with other governments. And each year, they arrest dozens of fishermen who break the moratorium.

It is tempting to think of this activity as a calculated, long-term plan to gradually assert control over the region. Yet, like so many incidents in which China’s inner great power has started to be unleashed, there is another side to China’s new assertiveness in the South China Sea, a simmering pressure from below to take more action. China’s approach to the South China Sea has been one of the clearest examples of how competing vested interests are helping to drive parts of foreign policy—the fracturing in power that the Chinese establishment has witnessed. A whole series of different
government bureaucracies have overlapping responsibility for elements of the government’s presence in the South China Sea, and sometimes they tussle with one another to make their presence felt. The Chinese are acutely aware of this, labeling the different groups as “the nine dragons,” a reference to the ancient legend of a dragon king whose nine sons can be seen in countless murals “stirring up the sea.”

Some of that pressure has come from local governments. The government of Hainan Island, where the new naval base is, has administrative responsibility for the Spratlys and Paracels, and for the last two decades has been trying to launch high-end tourism on the islands as part of its own development plan. In recent years, it has gradually worn
down the resistance of the central authorities to these initiatives. Travel agencies on Hainan offer luxury diving trips to customers in the Paracels, and there is now a sailing contest between Hainan and the Paracels. The big oil companies, which are among the most connected and powerful sections of state-owned industry, have also lobbied hard for the government to push its claims in the region more aggressively. In 2012, CNOOC, one of the big three oil companies, invited foreign oil groups to exploit jointly nine blocks in disputed areas—several of which are in Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone.

Even among the Chinese government departments which enforce activities in the region, there are competing interests. The Bureau of Fisheries Administration is responsible for policing fishing in Chinese waters, but China Marine Surveillance also conducts law-enforcement activities in the region. Like any good bureaucracy, they are both keen to show their worth in order to boost their budgets, which have grown rapidly in recent years. They even have a phrase to justify their sometimes vague and overlapping roles:
“Grab what you can on the sea and then afterwards divide responsibility between the agencies.” The Agriculture Ministry, which is responsible for the fisheries bureau, operates a reward system for individuals who have been “tough and brave in defending China’s sovereignty”: officials get a bonus for evicting a large number of foreign boats from waters that China claims as its own. With dozens of armed vessels and aircraft at their disposal, these agencies have also played a role in pushing the boundaries of China’s sovereignty claims. While sending the navy could be seen as a highly provocative move, these law-enforcement vessels can stake China’s claim in a less confrontational fashion.

There are two other factors behind the deep sense of unease in Southeast Asia. It is not only the extent of China’s claim that has rattled the region, but also the ambiguity of it. No one quite knows what they are dealing with. Even though the “nine-dash line” map has been in circulation for several decades, China has never actually defined the territory that is included in its map. At times, Foreign Ministry officials have attempted to calm nerves by indicating that China claims only the islands and land features within the line. Such a claim would still involve a series of difficult disputes but is much less expansive than claiming the
entire area on the map. Yet, at other times, Chinese officials and analysts have indicated that their historic “title” to the South China Sea gives them exclusive rights to everything inside the line. Others have suggested that the area is part of China’s “sovereign waters.” Peng Guangqian, a hawkish major general in the PLA, has described the waters inside the “nine-dash line” as
“China’s… ‘blue-colored land’ ” and as a region “owned” by China. CNOOC’s attempt to sell oil leases within disputed waters and the fishing bans imposed by China indicate an official position that is very different from the one outlined by the Foreign Ministry. Such ambiguity could mean several things. It could suggest that there is flexibility in China’s position, which could be exploited in negotiations. But it could also mean that China is trying to have it both ways, its diplomats sticking to a narrower claim while its actual behavior pushes for a much more expansive version.

There is also a question of size. In dealing with China, the other countries feel less like sovereign equals and more as if they are trapped next to a large elephant that could swat them aside. That very size difference makes Chinese moves seem much more threatening to its neighbors than Beijing realizes. The Southeast Asian claimants want a multilateral discussion of the different claims, believing that only this will allow them to talk as equals. Fearing the others will gang up on it, China insists that each country should deal with it on a one-on-one basis. For the smaller countries, Beijing’s insistence on bilateral negotiations feels like a form of bullying. “China’s attitude,” says a senior politician from one Southeast Asian nation, “is, ‘It does not matter what the precise nature of our ultimate claim is; if we say it is ours, then that means it is ours.’ ”

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To be fair to the Chinese, the regional backlash against its behavior in the South China Sea appears to have been given a gentle push by some clever American spin. If there is one area where Washington still holds a decisive advantage over Beijing, it is in the dark arts of the background media briefing. In March 2009, Jeff Bader, the Asia director at the National Security Council, and James Steinberg, the deputy secretary of state, traveled to Beijing for a series of meetings with their Chinese
counterparts. The South China Sea was one of the topics that featured heavily in the meetings. A few weeks later, the
New York Times
ran a story saying that China now referred to the South China Sea as a
“core interest.”

In diplomacy, small phrases can carry immense power. In the code language of Chinese diplomacy, these two words are enormously important. The other “core interests” are Taiwan and Tibet, issues on which the party will move mountains to prevail. To describe the South China Sea in such terms would indeed represent a substantial escalation, a sign that China saw absolutely no room for compromise or negotiation. The Chinese officials had in fact been in an uncompromising mood during the meetings, delivering several lectures on their rights in the South China Sea. Yet Bader and Steinberg insist that the explosive “core interests” formula was never actually used in their meetings. Hillary Clinton later said that Dai Bingguo, the leading Chinese foreign-policy official, used the phrase with her at a U.S.-China summit two months after Bader and Steinberg’s meetings, although this, too, is disputed, both by Dai’s underlings and by some of the American delegation. (“Hillary appears to have refreshed her memory,” as one American official acidly puts it.) Whatever the origin of the phrase, however, China had been snookered. The government could not confirm the statement without provoking outrage in Southeast Asia. But neither could it officially deny the story, for fear that it would be accused by nationalists at home of being weak. Instead, Beijing suffered in silence.

If the “core interest” story was spin, it was the sort of exaggeration that was instantly believed around the region, because it seemed to tally with the reality of Chinese behavior. Washington’s rhetoric since 2010 has sometimes leaned on clumsy slogans along the lines of “America is back” in Asia, but the real story was the open door that was waiting for Washington in a region where anxiety about China was soaring. In the Philippines, for instance, there had been popular rejoicing when the U.S. Navy was forced out of its base in Subic Bay in 1992, and leaders like Gloria Arroyo welcomed China as a “big brother.” But U.S. warships are now returning with ever-greater frequency, and the country’s new president, Benito Aquino, declared in 2012: “We need to take a united stand against the recent aggressive actions from China.”

In essence, China has started to suffer from the fundamental contradiction of its strategy. For the best part of two decades, Beijing had been pursuing two separate goals. It has a military strategy of trying to gradually push the U.S. back into the Pacific Ocean and exerting greater control over the Near Seas. At the same time, it has a diplomatic imperative of preventing its neighbors from forming a coalition to block it. Yet it turns out the two goals are not compatible. The harder it pushes back against the U.S. and in favor of its territorial claims, the more it rallies the region to embrace Washington. China has suffered one strategic setback after another. It has ended up strengthening the cornerstone U.S. alliances in Northeast Asia. At the same time, China’s behavior in the South China Sea has allowed the U.S. to become much more engaged with the nations of Southeast Asia. As Shi Yinhong, the Chinese academic and Bismarck fan, put it rather mournfully: “We have achieved the very opposite of what we had hoped for.”

America’s own experience in the nineteenth century demonstrates the extent to which China’s strategy has misfired. For almost two centuries, the U.S. has claimed a form of regional ownership and has worked to exclude other great powers from exercising decisive influence in the Western Hemisphere. “Why should we not have our own Monroe Doctrine?” a Chinese diplomat once quietly suggested. He quickly checked himself, because China denies it has any such pretensions, but it is not hard to understand the sense of frustration behind the question. To some Chinese ears, the U.S. operates a double standard by working so hard to prevent China from exerting the same sort of influence that it enjoys in its own backyard. It used to be considered somewhat glib to compare China’s attitude toward the Near Seas to the Monroe Doctrine. But as China’s claims have hardened, the comparison has started to seem more valid. What are the “nine-dash line” and claims to “historical rights” if not an assertion of a certain sense of ownership and entitlement to regional dominance? Yet the very different history behind the Monroe Doctrine underlines the substantial disconnect between how China sees itself and the way much of Asia experiences China. American naval power from the 1890s was certainly one factor in allowing Washington to expand its writ, but it was not the only one. Just as important was the generous reception that the U.S. received in large parts of Latin America
at the time. The Monroe Doctrine was not imposed on an unwilling hemisphere: in much of the region, it was welcomed.

When Brazil hosted the Third Pan-American Conference in 1906, the star turn was Elihu Root, Teddy Roosevelt’s secretary of state, who was touring the region to explain the implications of the Monroe Doctrine. Root was given a rapturous reception, because many South American governments saw the Monroe Doctrine not as the imposition of American power but as a guarantee of their independence from European colonial rule. Confidence in Washington was so high that the Brazilians renamed the building that hosted the conference the Palacio Monroe—a name it retained when it became the permanent home for the Senate. Joaquim Nabuco, one of the most influential Brazilians of the era for his role in the abolition of slavery, was happy to
publicly declare himself a “Monroista.” “For me the Monroe Doctrine means that we have separated ourselves from Europe as completely and definitively as the earth from the moon,” he said. Of course, in the decades after the Second World War, during which the U.S. helped overturn elected governments in Guatemala in the 1950s, Brazil in the 1960s, and Chile in the 1970s, the region’s view of U.S. primacy shifted dramatically. Anti-Americanism quickly became part of the Latin American political DNA. Since then, many governments have tried to push back against Washington in just the same way that Asians are doing today against China. But the fact that the Brazilian Senate building was named after Monroe underlines the way his doctrine was understood in the region at the time.

The Asian backlash that started to take shape in 2010 will not be easily reversed by China, even if it tries to return to another bout of “smile diplomacy.” The year was not a flash in the pan, but instead represented a long-term realignment in Asian politics, one in which many governments concluded that their interests overlapped with those of Washington. One way to demonstrate that this is no temporary setback for China is to look more closely at two pivotal countries in the Asia-Pacific Region, which could not be more different in terms of politics, culture, and history, but which are exhibiting similar instincts about a rising China: Australia and Vietnam.

THE WEATHER VANE

“You could not get much closer to China than we are,” Geoff Raby, the former Australian ambassador in Beijing, likes to joke. “But we will.” Australia figures in very few accounts of international politics, an isolated if enormous island perched on the bottom edge of the Asia-Pacific with a modest population of twenty-two million. But such neglect is misplaced. For the last three decades, Australia has been an important weather vane for China’s rise, a sort of early-warning center for the opportunities and risks. If you want to find out how the world will react to a more powerful China, Australia is a good place to start.