In Troubled Waters: The South China Sea Dispute
By Dillon Loh
Introduction & Background
The South China Sea (SCS) has increasingly become one of the world’s most important waterways - it carries one-third of international maritime trade, totalling over US$ 5 trillion annually. Additionally, vast energy and oil reserves lay beneath its surface, while its fishing grounds provide 12% of the world’s annual catch (Ratner 64-65).
Yet, the ongoing dispute between competing claimant states has been increasingly destabilising the region. 6 countries – Brunei, China (PRC), Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Taiwan – have competing and overlapping territorial claims in the region. Among them, Beijing’s claim, the notorious ‘nine-dash line’, is of particular interest. Encompassing over 62% of the South China Sea, the PRC has shown itself increasingly willing to assert itself over its claim of ‘undisputed sovereignty’ (Ratner 64-65).
As recently as 2021, claimant states have engaged one another in coercive actions - many of which have threatened to erupt in armed conflict. In an incident in November 2021, for instance, 3 Chinese Coast Guard vessels blocked and water cannoned 2 Philippine supply boats en route to transport food supplies to Philippine military personnel in the disputed Ayungin Shoal (Second Thomas Shoal). While this incident did not result in casualties or escalate into armed conflict, the increasing frequency and severity of these incidents do not bode well for regional stability. Moreover, these incidents have also increasingly drawn in the United States, which views Chinese assertive action in the South China Sea as directly threatening its Pacific interests and allies.
As such, it is imperative that the causes of these increasing hostilities be investigated so they may be addressed before they boil over. This paper will address 4 key factors that are deteriorating the conflict: changes in superpower strategic thinking, ASEAN disunity and finally, increasing US-Chinese geostrategic competition. Ultimately, this paper concludes that changes in Chinese & US strategic thinking & ASEAN disunity have increased both US & Chinese involvement in the region, thereby leading to increased US-China geostrategic competition, which has rapidly deteriorated the conflict in the South China Sea.
Changes in Superpower Strategic Thinking
China
Domestic and international influences have resulted in a shift in Chinese strategic thinking, leading to a more aggressive Chinese approach in the South China Sea (Zhou 871). The goal of Chinese diplomatic work post-1978 has been to “secure a peaceful and favourable international environment for economic development”. As such, Beijing has adopted a policy of ‘keeping a low profile’ - favouring a restrained, passive approach of shelving disputes and seeking common development to facilitate its development and ascendancy (Zhang 439).
However, since 2010, there has been a shift in perspective in Beijing that the policy of ‘keeping a low profile’ has been mostly ineffectual. Undertaken during the Obama administration, the US ‘pivot to Asia’ has been primarily influenced by increased US vigilance against rising Chinese power. Furthermore, there has also been increased Chinese perception that ASEAN claimant states have acted assertively - exploiting Chinese restraint to expand their claims in the region.
Domestically, there has also been increased nationalistic pressure for China to defend its sovereignty, thus pushing Chinese policymakers to take a harder stance in the South China Sea in order to ensure popular legitimacy (Zhou 871). This has resulted in a ‘Pragmatist’ school of thought - which advocates for protecting Chinese sovereignty with limited disruption of regional stability - rising to prominence within the PRC. Thus, the influence of domestic and international factors has led Chinese policymakers to adopt a more aggressive foreign policy in hopes of discouraging further sovereign rights violations by other nations (Zhang 440-448).
The US
Beyond the aforementioned ‘pivot to Asia’, Trump’s victory in 2016 also marked a watershed moment for US foreign policy towards the PRC - signalling a shift in policy from engagement to strategic competition and containment.
Despite the ‘pivot to Asia’, the US pursued a subdued policy of engagement under Obama. In a bid to strengthen ties and preserve its strategic relationship with China, the US presented itself as a neutral third party and encouraged regional-led solutions in the South China Sea conflict (Singer 29). This non-inflammatory stance was maintained even as the US deepened ties with regional partners – the US made careful moves to strengthen alliances without setting off Beijing. For example, the US preferred multilateral dialogue with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), rather than bilateral engagement with strategic partners (Liow 57).
Under Trump, the US has dramatically increased diplomatic pressure on Beijing while simultaneously increasing its regional military presence by increasing FONOPs and deepening bilateral security ties with Indo-Pacific allies (Zhang 12). The Biden administration has largely maintained this policy of strategic competition, as evidenced by the continued designation of China as a “strategic competitor” in the 2022 Indo-Pacific Strategy Report. China has largely responded to this escalation of strategic competition by increasingly asserting itself in the South China Sea while economically retaliating against the US and its allies (The White House).
ASEAN Disunity
Beyond the overlapping territorial claims between claimant states within ASEAN itself, the disunity and varying loyalties between the claimant and non-claimant states of ASEAN has increasingly strained US-China tensions in the region.
Claimant states, such as Vietnam & the Philippines, are suspicious of Chinese intentions and interests and have thus increasingly strengthened ties with the US. On the contrary, non-claimant states, such as Laos and Cambodia, have no direct interests in the South China Sea and have increasingly encouraged acquiescing to Chinese demands in the conflict so as to maintain peaceful relations with the emergent power (Buszynski, 56-58).
This divide has incapacitated ASEAN’s ability to act as arbiter in the conflict - disunity between ASEAN members has placed ASEAN in a dire predicament where it has to appease a rising China while simultaneously satisfying claimant states’ conflicting interests. This, in turn, has prevented ASEAN from identifying a common policy in the region and allowed China to exploit this disunity and continue to encroach on the territorial rights of claimant states (Ibid.).
This is perhaps best exemplified in the dispute over the ASEAN Code of Conduct (CoC). The CoC, a document that would serve as the “basis for establishing a code of international conduct over the South China Sea”, was intended to reduce the risk of conflict in the South China Sea by being legally binding. However, there are internal ASEAN disputes regarding the document - Vietnam, for instance hoped that the Paracel Islands would be covered in the dispute but met resistance from other ASEAN members, thus leaving the CoC to be undefined by geography, and instead defined by activity (Ibid.)
Moreover, the divided loyalties of ASEAN have prevented the CoC, or any matter related to the South China Sea, from being discussed internally within ASEAN. For example, in 2012, when China occupied the Scarborough Shoal at the expense of the Philippines, 2012 ASEAN chair Cambodia left the issue of the communiqué of the twentieth ASEAN summit and prevented the Philippines from raising the matter of the Chinese occupation at the summit. This corresponded to a Chinese pledge to double bilateral trade with Cambodia to $5 billion by 2017 - which led claimant states Vietnam and the Philippines to view Cambodia as a Chinese proxy (Ibid.).
ASEAN’s ineffectiveness and inability to put up a common, united front have increased US incentives to intervene in the region - beyond the need to deter Chinese aggression in the region, the US also has needed to increasingly respond to an increase from ally claimant states in the region seeking US support and protection. Consequently, this has compelled the US to increase its Geo-strategic competition with China in the region, thereby deteriorating the conflict.
Increased US-China Geostrategic Competition
To better understand the inevitability of US-China geostrategic competition, we must first understand each state’s regional geostrategic goals. China seeks to establish itself as the Asian regional leader by seeking deference from its neighbours, and removing the US-based alliance system to replace it with a Chinese-centred regional order.
Conversely, the US aims to prevent the dominance of any one country in a way that would exclude it and threaten its economic interests, and maintain their position by deepening its networks of alliances. These goals are fundamentally incompatible - to achieve their goals, China must reduce US influence & assert its dominance in the region while the US must actively resist Chinese attempts to undermine the US presence in the region (O’Rourke 2-3).
As such, it is unavoidable that superpower involvement in the region will lead to geostrategic competition, which has increasingly resulted in assertive actions from both sides. This had been fuelled further by the abovementioned factors - both states have increasingly shifted their foreign policies to be more direct and assertive, leading to an increased risk of confrontation, while ASEAN weakness has emboldened Beijing and led Washington to deepen its involvement in the region.
Conclusion & Possible Solutions
In conclusion, the conflict in the South China Sea is increasingly worsening because of increased involvement from both the US & China and is leading to regional geostrategic competition. This increased involvement, however, has itself been fuelled by a series of different geopolitical factors and implications. Changing international priorities and shifting superpower foreign policy towards more assertive stances has deepened both powers' regional involvement. ASEAN’s divided loyalties and inability to act as arbiter in the conflict, too, has emboldened Beijing to take assertive actions to consolidate its claims. Concurrently, it has also caused Washington to deepen its ties, as well as its involvement, with its existing regional partners. This has led to a game of increasing one-upmanship between superpowers as they compete over which nation can exert more influence in the region - thus worsening the conflict.
Having identified the root causes of the increasing hostilities, this now begs the question of how the situation in the South China Sea can be improved. Given the newly refocused priorities of China & the US, it is unlikely that either superpower will alter their foreign policy doctrines to be more cooperative with one another anytime soon. As such, it falls to South East Asian states, ASEAN in particular, to resolve their internal disputes between claimant states and provide a stronger united front in the South China Sea dispute. In doing so, ASEAN will at once be able to ward off increasing Chinese aggression while also limiting American involvement in said dispute - as a stronger ASEAN that tends to the needs of claimant states will mean that claimant states will not have to turn to allied American intervention for help.
One potential solution to the dispute would be to begin a process of formal recognition for one another’s claims - the current status quo between ASEAN countries to not escalate disputes or occupy any further uninhabited territories are, in essence, already a de facto recognition of one another’s sovereign territory that each Southeast Asian has acknowledged as acceptable. Based on the historical record, such a compromise solution would result in a uti possidetis, ita possideatis solution - each state would legally be allowed to keep what it has already acquired. Formal, legal acknowledgement of one another’s sovereign claims also has a precedence of support from the international community - as previous rulings by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) have shown in other maritime Southeast Asian disputes. In such a solution, no state would suffer the indignity of being forced to withdraw from any feature that they currently occupy - yet such mutual recognition would solidify their unified position while facilitating the creation of a clearer unified ASEAN negotiating position with China in the dispute (Hayton).
Ultimately, it is dependent on the Southeast Asian states themselves to strengthen their own regional security infrastructure so as to ensure their own regional autonomy and prevent the vital South China Sea region from being caught in the crossfire of superpower competition.
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