Why China is Aggressively Making Territorial Claims In the South China Sea
This analysis is probably not to much of a surprise to those who have been following China’s aggressive policies towards its neighbors:
It’s not just corruption. More than three decades of peace, a booming economy, and an opaque administrative system have taken their toll as well, not to mention that the PLA is one of the world’s largest bureaucracies — and behaves accordingly. “Each unit has a committee with a commander, political commissar, and deputies, to the point they have a meeting now for everything,” says Nan Li, associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute. Li told me that PLA military universities have even been reduced to printing textbooks that instruct commanders how to transcend the tyranny of committee-style decision-making. “That shows how much the PLA has been defeated by — corroded by — peace,” he says.Nor is the military necessarily 100 percent loyal to its political masters in the Communist Party — a terrifying prospect for a new leader trying to consolidate his power. In theory, the PLA has always been subordinate to the civilian side of the party, but the actual command linkages are largely limited to its top leader and sometimes his deputy. In 2012 — in the wake of the political destruction of Xi’s potential rival, Bo Xilai, who boasted extensive informal ties within the military — the drumbeat of official demands that the PLA demonstrate the proper obeisance to the party and the party’s outgoing general secretary, Hu, suggested the chain of military command might be more fragile than commonly understood. [Foreign Policy]
So what does an authoritarian do when they need to shore up their power? Play the nationalism card and manufacture a crisis to rally people around:
That’s where China’s rapidly escalating territorial showdown with Japan, its largest trading partner and still the world’s third-largest economy, comes in. In September, the Japanese government bought the disputed Senkaku Islands, or Diaoyu Islands as they are known in China, from private owners to prevent them from falling into the hands of Tokyo’s governor at the time, a hawkish nationalist provocateur. But China responded with fury. It launched a propaganda blitz against Japan, facilitated protests and riots across China, and escalated its maritime and air patrols of the disputed area. For Xi, according to his close family friend, the otherwise baffling diplomatic crisis that resulted has offered a priceless opportunity to “sort the horses from the mules” and mobilize willing generals around him. Claims that Xi has exploited or even orchestrated the brinkmanship with Japan might seem preposterous to outside observers, given that a miscalculation could lead to war. But the logic is compelling for those who have grown up near the center of China’s endless and unforgiving internal struggles.
I highly recommend reading the entire article. These territorial disputes are all being manufactured by the Chinese government for domestic political reasons. The PLA has now even launched a provocation front against the Indians as well. The Chinese government is clearly trying to provoke an over reaction from one of its neighbors to justify a military action to rally people around the flag with. We saw this same thing happen in response to the Tibet protests before the Beijing Olympics. The protests were used to rally Chinese around the flag where the Chinese government’s thuggish behavior was on display in the streets of Seoul.
This is all the Chinese government had left to justify their monopoly on power in the country. The challenge for China’s neighbors is to not take Beijing’s bait.
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About GI Korea:
GI Korea has been blogging about Korea, Northeast Asia, and the US military for over 8 years.
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