Philippines China Rivalry: Geopolitics of the South China Sea
On Sunday, the Republic of the Philippines filed with the UN for arbitration on its ongoing territorial dispute with the People’s Republic of China. At issue is the control of the tiny Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. The Filipino filing comes right after an incident that occurred Saturday, wherein a pair of Chinese coastguard ships attempted to stop a Filipino vessel from provisioning a tiny outpost on Second Thomas Shoal. Understanding why China and the Philippines would clash over a collection of seemingly insignificant rocks is a lesson in the geopolitical rivalries of the South China Sea, rivalries in which the long hand of history can be discerned.
The Filipino outpost on Second Thomas Shoal consists of the rusted hulk of a World War II transport vessel, the Sierra Madre, which was grounded on the reef by the Philippine navy in 1999 as a way of establishing Filipino sovereignty. Second Thomas Shoal is a tiny reef islet, one of about 150 or so such features that comprise the Spratly Islands. Despite their diminutive size, the Spratlys are contested territory, with China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan all claiming them in whole or in part. Other tiny islands in the South China Sea are also claimed by more than one country. The Paracels, for example, are occupied by the People’s Republic of China, but are also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan.
Fundamentally, this provides a material basis for the rivalries, but consideration should also be given to the importance of the ideology of nationalism and national sovereignty. Both the Philippines and China, to say nothing of the other state actors involved in various disputes, portray the dispute in terms of perceived national “rights’” to occupy a particular space. One of the more seminal works on the study of nationalism is Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, which argues for a construction of the whole concept of the nation through the printed word, systems of administration, and mapping of territory. This conception of national sovereignty is clearly at work in the South China Sea geopolitical rivalry between the Philippines and China, with both parties claiming particular islets under the doctrine.
China currently claims the majority of the South China Sea, everything delimited by its “nine-dash line.” This boundary is based on the “eleven-dash line” drawn up by the Kuomintang in 1947, so called because it utilized eleven literal dashes on the map. Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) eliminated two of the dashes on the map in 1953, yielding some of the claimed area to Vietnam. China’s strategy in the region de-emphasized territorial claims for decades thereafter, but recently China’s growing power has given it the capacity to press claims in the South China Sea, igniting the geopolitical rivalry with the Philippines and other state actors. In a testament to the power of the map, the nine-dash line has now become so ingrained in Chinese nationalist thinking that the Chinese leadership is under publicpressure to assert China’s rights of national sovereignty.
The rivalry between China and the Philippines is a very unequal one, given that China’s military budget is 47 times that of the Philippines. Still, the Philippines is backed by Washington, and there is little in the way of international support for China’s nine-dash line. For the Philippines, the defense of Second Thomas Shoal and other outposts in the Spratlys is every bit as much a matter of national sovereignty as it is for China. Compounding the problem of settling the disputes is a lack of agreement over how, precisely, this should be achieved. The Philippines and the other Southeast Asian nations want multilateral negotiations between all parties, conducted by rules of international statecraft. China wants bilateral negotiations between itself and each separate state actor.
China’s strategy is also comprehensible in the light of its own long-standing traditions of diplomacy and statecraft. As the controversial U.S. diplomat and political scientist Henry Kissinger noted in his book on China, historically China’s immense size, centralized state structure, and cultural preeminence meant that it was very much the default superpower in a Sinocentric world order. A variety of Chinese dynasties often treated the neighboring kingdoms of Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, and Myanmar (Burma) as vassals. In addition to sending tribute at different points in history, the smaller kingdoms also absorbed a great deal of Chinese culture. Not for nothing did China conceive of itself as the Middle Kingdom, the logical hegemon in East and Southeast Asia.
This style of Chinese statecraft assumed a particularly dramatic form with the fabled voyages of the Ming Treasure Fleets in the early 15th century. The Chinese Muslim Admiral Zheng He led a total of seven voyages through the South China Sea and even the Indian Ocean, reaching the Middle East and even the eastern shores of the African continent. It was a short-lived experiment, but China’s cultural and political dominance over its tributaries in East and Southeast Asia remained.
Far more than an argument over some inconsequential rocks in the South China Sea, the rivalry between China and the Philippines is an object lesson in the imagining of national communities and the making of geopolitical disputes. Both China and the Philippines claim to have rights of national sovereignty that trump those of the other party, and both invoke history. However, China’s unwillingness to engage in multilateral, rules-based negotiations points to a deeper conflict between differing models of international relations. The long hand of history can be seen in China’s assertiveness on this issue, and its insistence on bilateral negotiations. Fundamentally, China’s actions and pronouncements are well in accord with the long-standing historic model of Chinese statecraft and diplomacy, a model in which China as the Middle Kingdom was the center of the world.
By Michael Schultheiss
Sources:
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (print source)
Henry Kissinger, On China (print source)
The Wall Street Journal
Bloomberg
Al Jazeera
Reuters
ABC
Trilateral Commission
Forbes
Stratfor
Man, believe me, china says to others not to strain their relationship, but they’re the one’s doing so.