How China’s fishermen are fighting a covert war in the South China Sea

China puts new weapons on South China Sea islands, report says

BEIJING — China is adding new antiaircraft weapons to a string of artificial islands in the middle of the disputed South China Sea, according to a report by U.S. policy-watching groups based on satellite analysis. The findings, drawn from a study by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, appear to challenge vows by China’s leader last year not to “militarize” the area. In recent years, Beijing has turned scattered coral reefs into small, strategic outposts by piling sand and then building installations such as barracks, lighthouses and military-grade airstrips. China claims sovereignty over the full South China Sea — in direct conflict with international rulings and other countries bordering the sea, including the Philippines and Vietnam. In a recent television interview, President-elect Donald Trump accused Beijing of building a “massive fortress in the middle of the South China Sea.” Beijing maintains that these seven artificial islands serve civilian, not military, purposes. China’s Defense Ministry said in a statement published Thursday that any “necessary military facilities” were for “defense and self-defense” and were, therefore, “legitimate.” “If someone shows off his muscles in your doorway,” the statement said, “shouldn’t you at least prepare a slingshot?” The “muscle,” in this case, is the United States. Though Washington says it has no position on rival sovereignty claims in the South China Sea, the United States has been critical of China’s island-building and conducts patrols — officially called “freedom of navigation operations” — in the area. China sees the presence of U.S. ships as interference and has repeatedly said that it is the United States, not China, that wants to militarize the South China Sea. The standoff has been a long-standing source of tension between Washington and Beijing, and nobody seems certain how Trump and his team will handle the dispute. On one hand, Trump has talked of putting “America first” and focusing more on domestic matters. On the other, his advisers have criticized the Obama administration’s “limited” response to China’s maritime claims. The Chinese side, for its part, appears to be pushing ahead with its strategy of gradually adding new military features to the artificial islands. The report by the U.S. groups found that weapons systems spotted on the three largest islands China has built in the Spratlys — Fiery Cross, Mischief and Subi reefs — were an “evolution” of smaller systems previously seen on four other sites in the sea. The placement of the weapons showed that Beijing “is serious about defense of its artificial islands in case of an armed contingency in the South China Sea,” the report said. “They would be the last line of defense against cruise missiles launched by the United States or others against these soon-to-be-operational air bases.” There was no immediate U.S. response to the report. In a speech in Sydney on Wednesday, Adm. Harry Harris, head of the U.S. Pacific Command, suggested that the United States is ready to “confront” China at sea. “I’ve also been loud and clear that we will not allow the shared domains to be closed down — no matter how many bases are built on artificial features in the South China Sea,” he said. “I say this often, but it’s worth repeating — we will cooperate where we can and be ready to confront where we must.” Luna Lin in Beijing contributed to this report.

For some Filipino fishermen, the South China Sea dispute is personal

MASINLOC, Philippines — When nations duel over reefs, rocks and islets, people are going to get hurt, and in the South China Sea dispute, that means the fishermen here who once wrested a living from the contested waters. Gunmen in a Chinese speedboat drove Macario Forones, for instance, away from a favorite spot called Scarborough Shoal, and now his boat, the Marvin-1, sits useless in the grass and weeds above the high-tide line, and he sells someone else’s fish from a stall in the local market. Efrim Forones now dives for clams in the bay, making about one-tenth of what he earned when he fished the sea. Viany Mula says he was set upon with a Chinese water cannon when he ventured out to the shoal in his boat, and now he makes deliveries around town on a motorbike, barely earning enough each day, as he puts it, to buy the rice he needs. “I really want to fish the shoal,” Mula said one recent day. “It’s a very rich fishing ground. But that’s not possible now.” For generations, the South China Sea was a regional common. Fishing boats from all of the surrounding countries would roam its waters, pausing now and then to trade cigarettes or potatoes or gossip. But then Vietnam, followed by the Philippines, began staking claims to some of the islands, and now China is moving in, in a big way. Beijing is building up the outposts it has established, enlarging islands that it controls and claiming exclusive rights to fishing grounds. The smaller, poorer nations can’t put up a real fight for the access to the sea that they long enjoyed. “That’s not for us,” Mula said. “We have nothing.” But the Philippines does have the United States behind it, after a fashion. The Americans are making more visits here, and stepping up naval patrols and overflights — and in the process, the South China Sea dispute becomes something bigger than a contest for fish. It looks more and more like a geostrategic confrontation between the two great powers, China and the United States; that’s certainly how the Chinese characterize it. The U.S. military has long been a source of anguish, self-doubt and defiance for the Philippines, a former U.S. colony. Many Filipinos are encouraged by recent U.S. attention to the maritime dispute, but they wonder whether the Americans give much thought to the Philippines and the people who are paying a price as the dispute deepens. A third of the residents of Masinloc have depended over the years on fishing for their livelihoods, said Mayor Desiree Edora. Scarborough Shoal, a half-day’s sail from shore, was a refuge from storms, a gathering place for fishermen from all over and a home to abundant grouper and giant clams. Now, the Chinese have barred foreign boats. It is like being thrown out of your own house, she said. “We can’t replicate what Scarborough Shoal can provide,” she said. The Philippines took China to court — an international tribunal in The Hague — two years ago over competing claims in the sea. China refused to participate; a decision is expected next year, but it probably will be unenforceable. The Philippine move may have provoked the Chinese into trying to cement their claims by occupying and building up as many spots in the sea as they can, but officials in the Philippines say they had no choice after efforts to negotiate came to nothing. The governor of Zambales province, Hermogenes E. Ebdane Jr., said he wonders what China’s ultimate goal is. “No one’s going to war over fish,” he said. His constituents, the fishermen, will have to find something else to do. But if this confrontation is about something bigger, Ebdane said, it’s unclear what role the Philippines might have. There’s a new defense agreement with the United States, but, he said, neither side seems to have thought through the implications for the murky weeks and months ahead. At the Defense College in Quezon City, on the outskirts of Manila, an entire wall in the lobby is given over to a painting that depicts the massacre of four dozen U.S. soldiers by Philippine insurgents at Balangiga in 1901. A diorama up a staircase shows Filipinos battling Spanish conquistadors and fighting against the Japanese in World War II — alongside Americans. The United States seized the Philippines from Spain in 1898 and held it until 1946. The U.S. military continued to keep permanent bases here until 1991. The legacy is a deep ambivalence toward the United States. But the U.S. Navy is the one force that is willing to challenge the Chinese and keep up regular patrols in the region. An agreement signed last year would allow the U.S. military a standing presence here, rotating forces onto Philippine bases. The agreement is held up by a lawsuit in the Philippine Supreme Court. Washington has stepped up visits and patrols, and it has made much of joint training exercises and the donation of used military equipment. “That is not to protect the Philippines but to protect their own turf,” said Roilo Golez, a member of the country’s House of Representatives. U.S. military aid, worth about $40 million a year, is nothing but a token, he said. The Philippine armed forces, in this nation of 100 million, remain in woeful shape. It is an article of faith that the government was caught napping when China began making its moves in the South China Sea. “We remain quite dependent on allied help, and that is not good,” said Rafael Alunan III, former secretary of the interior. “The focus of the Philippine government has been on politics, politics, politics, at the expense of national security. China is taking advantage of our inertia and lack of assertiveness. We are presenting ourselves as unworthy before friend and foe.” Walden Bello, founding director of a group called Focus on the Global South, said his country “is right back to its role in the Cold War, when it played the part of handmaiden to the United States.” But military officials here say they are unsure of the U.S. commitment if hostilities should break out. The United States and the Philippines have a mutual defense treaty pledging assistance if either is attacked, but Washington doesn’t recognize any nation’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, including the Philippines’. Naval analysts in Washington say the U.S. response to conflict there would depend entirely on the circumstances. “We may have overestimated how the United States will come to the rescue,” said Chito Santa Romana, an expert on China. “We may have underestimated Chinese resolve.” The two biggest vessels in the Philippine navy are former U.S. Coast Guard cutters, retrofitted with deck guns, and of little use in standing up to the Chinese. The government, in any case, has no desire to provoke China into a military confrontation. That leaves the fishing fleet as the country’s best means of maintaining a presence in the parts of the South China Sea that Beijing claims. Philippine — and Vietnamese — boats challenge the Chinese when and where they can, until the Chinese coast guard drives them off. It is waterborne civil disobedience. “These are small, subsistence fishermen,” said Evan P. Garcia, undersecretary for policy in the Philippines’ Department of Foreign Affairs. “They’re not a threat to anybody. And it’s not as if they just went there yesterday.” The fish they’re after may be the other big casualty of the dispute. The tensions over the years have kept anyone from getting good data on fish stocks or devising a conservation plan. Hundreds of millions of people live around the South China Sea and eat its fish. The Marine Stewardship Council, with an office in Singapore, says that the humpback wrasse and bluefin tuna populations are close to collapse. Edgardo Gomez, a marine biologist in Manila, said that the Chinese have wiped out the giant clams on Scarborough and that their construction work is destroying reefs that support the bottom levels of the sea’s food chain. “You have tons and tons of marine life in and around those reefs that are now gone,” he said. The hatch is being shut on a way of life. The United States and China are either pursuing strategic advantage or practicing destructive gamesmanship, depending on the perspective. Filipinos have to live with that — with the “odd detour,” as Garcia put it, that brought them here. Viany Mula would trade his motorbike in the blink of an eye for a chance to return to sea. But that is not going to happen. Read more Beijing’s power play in the South China Sea may be killing coral reefs Here’s why some in the Philippines want the U.S. Navy back Chinese warnings to U.S. plane hint of rising stakes over disputed islands

Chinese military denies damaging Vietnamese boat in clash

BEIJING — After a week of acrimonious accusations between China and Vietnam, the Chinese military has admitted that one of its ships fired at a Vietnamese fishing boat, although it insisted that only flares were shot and that Vietnam’s claims of fire damage to the fishing boat were a “sheer fabrication.” The altercation and angry rhetoric are just the latest in a string of maritime clashes over territory between China and many of its neighbors. But at their worst, such run-ins have consisted of boats ramming each other, the use of water cannons and the arrests of fishermen, and they have rarely escalated to the firing of shots. The clash and the prolonged trading of barbs for days afterward point to a worsening rift between the two communist countries. Vietnamese leaders say the fishing boat was near the disputed Paracel Islands on March 20 when the Chinese vessel began to chase it. The crew of the Vietnamese boat told local news media that the Chinese ship fired at their boat four to five times and set its cabin ablaze. Vietnamese officials called the incident serious and life-threatening. Vietnam lodged a complaint with the Chinese Embassy in Hanoi and insisted that China pay reparations to the fishermen. After a week of silence, China’s Defense Ministry posted a statement late Tuesday on its Web site justifying the Chinese actions. The ministry said that the Vietnamese boats “illegally” entered Chinese waters and that a Chinese patrol vessel tried to warn the fishing boat with whistles, shouts and hand-flag signals. When those failed, the Chinese naval crew fired two red flares, both of which burned out in the air, the ministry said. In its statement, the Chinese military also portrayed itself as a model of restraint. It said that since last year, at least 303 Vietnamese fishing boats have entered the disputed waters but that China has refrained from capturing such boats “out of concerns of maintaining military relations.” Vietnam is just one of many countries now feuding with China. The tensions have escalated as China’s military has grown stronger and Chinese leaders have asserted their claims more boldly. In the South China Sea, where the clash with Vietnam took place, China is vying with six other sovereign states. Of them all, China has laid claim to the largest portion — virtually the entire sea. The region is believed to hold much untapped oil and natural gas — energy resources that China is desperate to acquire to continue fueling its economic growth. The clashes resulting from its stance have been especially fierce with the Philippines, which claims islands off its coasts, notably the Spratlys and Scarborough Shoal. At the same time, Beijing’s dispute with Tokyo over maritime territories to China’s east has also heated up. In the latest skirmish, Japanese officials said a Chinese naval vessel locked a weapons-guiding radar onto a Japanese ship in the disputed area. Beijing denied the accusation. The United States has moved carefully to support longtime allies such as Japan and the Philippines, as well as regional partners such as Vietnam, without offending China. Even as the clashes have increased neighbors’ perceptions of China as a threat, Beijing has signaled recently that it will maintain its more aggressive stance. “For a long time, China was restrained and conciliatory in the territory disputes with neighbor countries. Some countries took this to mean China was weak and could be bullied anytime,” Maj. Gen. Luo Yuan, executive director of the China Military Science Society, said in a telephone interview. “China tries to use peaceful measures to resolve the disputes. But if all the diplomatic measures and the administrative measures don’t work, China will take military measures.”

A ‘Great Wall of Sand’ in the South China Sea

A YEAR ago, China appeared to be pursuing a more aggressive policy toward its Pacific maritime disputes with a half-dozen nations. It engaged in some high- stakes jockeying with Vietnam over disputed maritime claims in the South China Sea, moving an oil drilling rig to the Paracel Islands and declaring an exclusion zone around it. That followed its declaration in 2013 of an air defense exclusion zone over islands in the East China Sea that are also claimed by Japan; the United States and Japan promptly flew planes through the zone to demonstrate they did not recognize it. But in recent months, Beijing quietly — and significantly — shifted tactics. It toned down its confrontation with Japan, agreeing to a handshake between President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last November, and pulled back the drilling rig that infuriated Hanoi. Instead, China is digging in — literally. Admiral Harry B. Harris Jr., the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, delivered a speech in Canberra, Australia, on March 31 that offered a revealing and unusual description of how China is dredging its atolls, turning coral reefs into more permanent and larger islands. He said China is engaged in “unprecedented land reclamation,” an effort to build artificial lands by “pumping sand on to live coral reefs — some of them submerged — and paving them over with concrete.” “China has now created over four square kilometers of artificial landmass,” he said. “China is creating a Great Wall of sand, with dredges and bulldozers, over the course of months.” In effect, China seems to be fortifying these specks of land for something in the future. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said March 8 that China was just “carrying out necessary construction on its own islands and reefs,” and insisted that it “does not target or affect anyone.” China, he added, seeks “to bring harmony, stability and prosperity to the neighborhood.” Nice words, but pay attention to deeds. What is the purpose of the digging? Are these reinforced outposts going to be used someday for military forces that would attempt to enforce China’s vaguely drawn “nine-dash line” territorial claim that encompasses most of the South China Sea? As Admiral Harris put it, “the scope and pace of building man-made islands raise serious questions about China’s intentions.” Although the dredging has not raised the same alarms among China’s neighbors as the earlier moves, the pace of work has caught their attention. The Vietnamese foreign minister, Pham Binh Minh, told the Financial Times that the digging has “really risked escalating tension in the area.” The United States does not have a direct dispute with China over any of the maritime territories, but it does have an enormous stake in the stability of the region and in the defense of Japan. China has wisely turned away from aggressive confrontation in recent months, but that may not be the whole story. Admiral Harris has sounded a valuable warning. Vigilance is required to make sure that China has not simply found another way to exert its will, with a Great Wall of sand. **Read more about this topic:** Victor D. Cha: The opportunity for the U.S. in China’s overreach The Post’s View: China must rescind its air zone over disputed islands Charles Krauthammer: Woe to U.S. allies John Pomfret: The U.S. interest in an Asian island dispute

China and Vietnam clash over oil rig in South China Sea as tensions escalate

HANOI — Chinese ships have been ramming into and firing water cannons at Vietnamese vessels that are trying to stop Beijing from putting an oil rig in the South China Sea, according to officials and video footage released Wednesday, in a dangerous escalation of tensions over waters considered a global flash point. Officials said several boats have been damaged and at least six Vietnamese aboard have been injured. Elsewhere in the sea, Philippines authorities arrested 11 Chinese fishermen for allegedly catching endangered turtles, angering Beijing. China recently has been harassing Vietnam and Philippine vessels and fishermen in the potentially oil- and gas-rich waters it claims almost in entirety — a claim that many international law experts consider shaky. But China’s deployment of the oil rig May 1 with escort ships is seen as one of its most provocative steps in a gradual campaign of asserting its sovereignty in the South China Sea. With neither side showing any sign of backing down, the standoff raises the possibility of more-serious clashes. Hanoi, which has no hope of competing with China militarily, says it wants a peaceful solution.

Chinese warnings to U.S. plane hint of rising stakes over disputed islands

BEIJING — The Chinese navy repeatedly warned a U.S. surveillance plane to leave airspace around disputed islands in the South China Sea, a sign that Beijing may seek to create a military exclusion zone in a move that could heighten regional tensions. The warnings, delivered eight times to a P-8A Poseidon over the Spratly Islands on Wednesday, were reported by a CNN team aboard the plane. “Foreign military aircraft. This is Chinese navy. You are approaching our military alert zone. Leave immediately,” a radio operator told the aircraft, later bluntly warning: “Go, go.” After each warning, the U.S. pilots responded calmly that the P-8A was flying through international airspace, according to the CNN team. China claims sovereignty over more than 80 percent of the South China Sea. Rival claimants to islands and reefs — set amid fertile fishing grounds and potentially oil- and gas-rich waters — include the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei. In the Spratly Islands, China has been engaged in a massive program of land reclamation and construction, including building artificial islands. On Thursday, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, Hong Lei, said Beijing “has the right to monitor certain airspace and maritime areas and safeguard national security, to prevent unexpected incidents at sea.” He added that other countries should respect China’s sovereignty. The Philippines says similar warnings have been delivered to its military aircraft in the past three months, suggesting that China is trying to exclude foreign military planes from the area. An attempt to impose restrictions in what is widely seen as international airspace would significantly raise tensions in the area and could provoke confrontations between the U.S. and Chinese militaries, experts said. Images captured by the U.S. plane’s high-performance cameras showed dozens of dredging vessels at different islands, some pumping sand onto reefs to build new land out of the ocean. They also showed an early-warning-radar building and a new airstrip on Fiery Cross Reef that CNN reported was long enough to land any military aircraft operated by China. Capt. Mike Parker, on board the aircraft, said he thinks that at least one of the verbal challenges came from the radar station. “Although China glosses over the military purpose of those artificial islands, they are likely primarily intended to change the power balance in the South China Sea vis-a-vis the U.S. Navy, which for now is the dominant force in the area,” said Yanmei Xie, senior China analyst at the International Crisis Group. China could use the completed installations to “scramble fighter jets to intercept, tail and attempt to evict incoming military aircraft,” Xie noted. “That scenario would turn the South China Sea into a theater of frequent near-misses and even clashes,” she said. Under international law, the construction of artificial islands confers no right of sovereignty over neighboring waters, and the United States has made it clear that it will not respect China’s claim to what it sees as international waters and airspace. In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman, Col. Steve Warren, said “freedom of navigations operations” would continue in the South China Sea, but he insisted that U.S. military aircraft do not fly directly over areas claimed by China in the Spratly Islands. “We will continue to fly in international airspace,” he said. Secretary of State John F. Kerry expressed concern about China’s land reclamation project to the nation’s leaders last weekend, but his complaints appeared to fall on deaf ears. Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China’s determination “to safeguard our own sovereignty and territorial is as firm as rock and is unshakable.” But on social media, some Chinese mocked the failure to scare off the U.S. plane. “Isn’t intercepting the robbers in the air the responsibility of the Chinese air force?” one asked. Another branded the incident a “national disgrace and a disgrace for the Chinese people.” Although China has acknowledged that the islands will have military uses, Hong insisted that the main purpose of the construction work was “to provide service for search and rescue at sea, fishing security, disaster prevention and relief, and meteorological monitoring, among other things.” Last week, senators on both sides of the aisle in Washington called for a more robust U.S. response to China’s maritime activity, arguing that China was not paying any price for its actions while regional allies were questioning U.S. commitment to Asian security. Paul Haenle, director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center in Beijing, said Chinese President Xi Jinping has taken a much more assertive approach to strengthening his country’s maritime claims. “After several decades of being weak, the Chinese feel they have lost ground on their historical claims and are now in a better position to strengthen them. And the lack of strong U.S. leadership internationally has contributed to a sense in China that they can push these claims now and will not face negative consequences,” he said. Deputy Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said at a conference in Jakarta on Wednesday that China’s actions were eroding regional trust and could provoke conflict. “Its behavior threatens to set a new precedent whereby larger countries are free to intimidate smaller ones, and that provokes tensions, instability and can even lead to conflict,” he said, according to the Reuters news agency. But in a sign that the U.S. and Chinese militaries have taken measures to improve communication and avoid clashes, a U.S. combat ship used agreed codes for unplanned encounters when it met a Chinese vessel during a recent patrol of the South China Sea. “We exchanged messages, and it was very professional,” Cmdr. Matthew Kawas, the commanding officer of the USS Fort Worth, told visiting journalists in Singapore on Wednesday. He declined to comment further on the communications with the Chinese vessel, other than to point out that it is useful for both navies to become accustomed to each other’s practices. Earlier, Adm. Michelle Howard told reporters in Singapore that the two navies had agreed to use codes specifically designed to manage unplanned encounters at sea. “Fort Worth came across one of our counterparts and they did do that, so things went as professionally as they have since that agreement was made,” she said, according to Bloomberg News. If the Navy acts on the proposal to step up patrols in the South China Sea, the Fort Worth, a littoral combat vessel, and its sister ships are likely to play a key role. The expensive new additions to the Navy’s fleet are speedy and maneuverable and have a draft of just 15 feet. “It enables us to go places where other ships cannot,” said Capt. Fred Kacher, commodore of the U.S. Navy’s Destroyer Squadron 7, adding that an unmanned helicopter on board the ship is equipped with a a video camera that allows the Fort Worth “to see what’s going on.” Will Englund in Singapore, Liu Liu and Gu Jinglu in Beijing and Missy Ryan in Washington contributed to this report. **Read more:** Washington and Beijing face off over man-made islands Images from the disputed waters China’s nine-dash line

China’s gradual expansion in East China Sea poses challenge for Japan

TOKYO — When a half-dozen Chinese patrol vessels entered Japanese waters 14 months ago, Japan’s then-prime minister called an emergency meeting. The Chinese ambassador in Tokyo was summoned for a tongue-lashing. A Japanese government spokesman described the move as an “invasion” of “unprecedented scale.” The vessels eventually backtracked, but the episode signaled the first stage of China’s fundamental maritime strategy — one in which it forges into new areas, withstands the initial fury, and turns groundbreaking gambits into commonplace activity. In most cases, the strategy has worked. Chinese boats now cut through waters around Japan-administered islands almost weekly, drawing complaints from Tokyo but not alarm. For Japan, China’s piecemeal advance through contested territory represents perhaps its greatest defense challenge since the end of World War II. Although several Asian nations have tried to curb China’s expansionist ambitions, some experts feel Japan is best-equipped for the task: led by a hawkish prime minister, powered by a reviving economy and backed militarily by the United States. But despite ongoing upgrades to its aircraft and patrol boats and increased coordination with Washington, Japan has yet to find an answer for its increasingly powerful neighbor. Officials here say China continues to push boundaries, sending fighter jets closer to Japanese shores and last week declaring a new air defense identification zone over the East China Sea. None of China’s moves, by design, has been provocative enough to spark an armed skirmish. That partly explains why deterring China has been so vexing for others in the region. In the South China Sea, China has backed the Philippines away from several contested reefs and shoals by sending waves of increasingly powerful vessels to the area. Several Japanese officials and security experts say China is now duplicating that strategy in the East China Sea, but with more intensity because of the frequent use of aircraft. China is trying to “unilaterally alter the status quo by coercive measures,” Fumio Kishida, Japan’s foreign minister, said in a news conference Friday. Japan has asked the United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization to examine whether China’s new zone threatens aviation in the area, its Foreign Ministry said Saturday. Japan’s move is part of its broader strategy of appealing for international support in dealing with China. Chinese officials portray their moves as responses to Japanese provocations, particularly Tokyo’s purchase in September 2012 of three contested islets from a private landowner. But Japanese officials say China’s ambitions at sea go back well before that date, and they point to a several-year trend of Chinese activity in the East China Sea. In 2004, Japanese scrambles against Chinese aircraft occurred roughly monthly, according to Ministry of Defense statistics. By 2007, they happened almost weekly. This year, they’re happening more than once a day on average. Two months ago, an unmanned aerial vehicle was spotted for the first time above the islets. A Japanese Ministry of Defense press official said that its origin hasn’t been identified, but “if you take its flight path into consideration, it is possible to suspect it is a drone of China.” The trend “testifies to a long-term increase in Chinese military activity in the maritime domain,” a Foreign Ministry official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the situation. As China has increased its maritime presence over the past half-decade, Japan has had to catch up. Until several years ago, Japanese leaders almost never described China as a threat. Through 2010, Japan’s Self-Defense Forces were positioned primarily to defend against a Russian invasion from the north. Japan’s reversal has been swift. A new defense strategy three years ago reorganized troops, placing more emphasis on perimeter islands. Japan is now updating that strategy, and initial recommendations call for the introduction of a Marines-like unit and the eventual use of drones for surveillance. The Defense Ministry’s budget request for 2014 calls for upgrades to surveillance equipment and the purchase of new patrol aircraft. Although China’s announcement last week of its air defense identification zone threw a spotlight on the airspace above the East China Sea, much of Japan’s spending was already geared to aircraft upgrades. The Air Self-Defense Force budget is set to rise 7 percent in 2014. Japan has some of the world’s most modern technology for surveillance and deterrence, military experts say. But its problem would come if there were an armed conflict, because Japan is barred by its pacifist constitution from having key offensive weapons such as long-range missiles and traditional aircraft carriers. Japan’s largest ship, the Izumo-class destroyer, can carry only helicopters. “That’s definitely a weakness,” said Masashi Nishihara, president of the Research Institute for Peace and Security in Tokyo. Before taking office one year ago, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe talked about removing some restrictions on the military. But that would require contentious constitutional revisions, and Abe, in office, has instead channeled his energy into patching up relations with other countries in the region who were ignored by his predecessors. Abe has visited every member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in what some experts say is an attempt to isolate China. China and Japan have been hawking dueling narratives about their conflict. Military expert Li Jie told China’s Global Times that the United States and Japan had been “defiant” in refusing to cooperate with the Chinese edict that all aircraft in the new aerial zone relay flight information to Beijing. A separate editorial in the China Daily said Beijing has every right to adopt an “internationally common practice.” Japan, meantime, has said it’s taking a stand against a “unilateral” move and that other countries should share Japan’s concerns about freedom of navigation in international airspace. In the short term, some experts in Tokyo say, China’s announced aerial zone might have backfired, drawing strong rebukes from Australia, South Korea and the European Union and prompting a flyover of unarmed U.S. B-52 bombers. But the real test for China’s strategy will come after the initial shock has waned. “For the time being, things seem to be quite favorable to us,” said Narushige Michishita, an associate professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. “But the question is how long this will last. China has been creating a gradual fait accompli, step by step, which is a pretty smart tactic. We make a big deal of this now, but we’ll forget about it after a while.” Yuki Oda contributed to this report.

Rein in China in its dispute with Vietnam over energy resources

_Elizabeth Economy and Michael Levi are senior fellows at the Council on Foreign Relations and the authors of “By All Means Necessary: How China’s Resource Quest is Changing the World.” _ The China National Overseas Oil Corporation (CNOOC) began drilling in Vietnamese-claimed waters last week, accompanied by more than 70 vessels, including armed Chinese warships. At first glance, this might look like merely another front in China’s quest for natural resources, which has taken Chinese companies to seemingly every corner of the earth. Yet what is happening in the South China Sea is actually far more dangerous than what has come before — and the forces driving it go well beyond pursuit of energy riches. The United States needs to face up to the full magnitude of the Chinese challenge to have any hope of successfully confronting it. This means not only tough talk but also a willingness to take difficult action. There has long been speculation that massive oil and gas deposits are locked beneath the South China Sea — 1.4 million square miles bordered by Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam and claimed in part by all of them. According to the Chinese Ministry of Land and Resources, the area might contain as much as 400 billion barrels of oil, surpassing the bounties of the Middle East. Most informed estimates, though, are much smaller. The U.S. Geological Survey estimated in 2010 that the region’s undiscovered oil (much of which will never be financially attractive to produce) totals a far smaller 11 billion barrels. It is difficult to believe that China would risk armed conflict for such modest stakes. Two other forces are essential to understanding what is going on. One is nationalism: The drilling is taking place near the Paracel Islands, which sit within a disputed area of the South China Sea, roughly 120 miles from Vietnam’s coast and well within Vietnam’s 200-mile exclusive economic zone. But China claims the islands based on historical usage and effective exercise of sovereignty, having occupied them since 1974. Backing off from the Paracels would deal a blow to China’s prestige, while underlining Chinese control over the islands would strengthen the leadership’s legitimacy at home. Chinese leaders are also motivated by a desire to control the sea lanes of the South China Sea. More than $5 trillion of trade passes through the increasingly crowded waters each year. That includes almost one-third of world seaborne oil trade and more than three-quarters of Chinese oil imports (as well as most of the oil destined for Japan, South Korea and Taiwan). The Chinese navy may be too weak to challenge U.S. dominance in key Middle East sea lanes, or even to exercise control over the critical Straits of Malacca, but by operating naval forces across the South China Sea it can gain greater confidence that the United States will not be able to disrupt its supplies. Beyond these two motivations, it does not hurt that Chinese oil companies are eager to operate in the region. By cloaking its military excursion in commercial garb, Beijing might have hoped to defuse some of the inevitable opposition. If so, that gambit has not paid off. China’s latest move, which came as a surprise to Vietnam and other nations, undermines Beijing’s insistence that strong relations within the region are its top foreign policy priority. It also calls into question China’s commitment to its current working-group talks with Vietnam on joint resource development in the South China Sea. The United States has said it won’t take a stand on the sovereignty dispute and has called on the two parties to resolve their differences peacefully. This is not enough: The United States ought to call China’s bluff and make clear the real stakes. The United States and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) should present a unified front in refusing to recognize unilateral assertions of claims in disputed territories. Even more important, the United States must be prepared to give life to its rhetorical position. Although it does not have a treaty obligation to defend Vietnam, its rebalancing to Asia is premised on its role as the primary guarantor of stability in the Pacific. Chinese actions challenge that. Vietnam has reiterated its commitment to peacefully resolve the dispute. If China does not reciprocate, the United States should be prepared to offer support to Vietnam through an increased naval presence. This would give Washington the ability to assess Chinese capabilities and to help de-escalate the situation. Other options, such as restrictions on CNOOC’s activities in the United States, could also be considered. If the United States can’t back up its words with actions, its credibility in promising to uphold peace and stability in the region will be gutted. **Read more on this topic:** The Post’s View: A Beijing power play in the South China Sea is met with U.S. inaction Fred Hiatt: Rocky waters between China and Japan could buffet America David Ignatius: China’s assertiveness leaves its neighbors anxious Fareed Zakaria: Southeast Asia ponders what is going on in China The Post’s View: China must rescind its air zone over disputed islands

Why does China care so much about the South China Sea? Here are 5 reasons.

China’s effort to delegitimize the tribunal before the ruling reflects the importance that Beijing attaches to its claims in the South China Sea — especially its claims to sovereignty over the Paracel and Spratly Islands (even though they lie beyond the scope of the tribunal). China has settled land disputes, but not those at sea.  Not so on disputes over offshore islands, however. China has taken an uncompromising approach to its territorial disputes at sea, such as the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea and the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. Why is China so inflexible in territorial disputes at sea but willing to compromise so readily on land? Here are five reasons:   by preventing other states from tracking Chinese submarines that seek to enter the Western Pacific from the South China Sea.     One reason for such language might be the absence of past maritime agreements in East Asia. In contrast, parts of China’s land borders were formed by Qing Dynasty treaties signed in the 1800s — what China often describes as “the century of national humiliation.” But the rough delimitations in these treaties formed the outline of China’s land borders after 1949, and China did not challenge these agreements themselves. Whatever constraints the Qing-era treaties placed on China’s territorial ambitions on land are absent at sea.  In the past two decades, however, China has witnessed dramatic changes in its media environment and a spike in knowledge and understanding about China’s disputes over islands such as the Spratlys. Although still under government control, China’s traditional and especially online media is much more open than at any time in the country’s history. Unsurprisingly, the Chinese public knows much more about its country’s foreign relations and disputes, which probably limits the leadership’s freedom to maneuver in the South China Sea. Many in China think that smaller claimants exploited China’s past weakness to occupy the majority of the features in the Spratly Islands, for instance. So China’s claims in the South China Sea have become intertwined with the politics of the country’s global rise and broader maritime ambitions. Although China gained full control of the Paracels after a clash with South Vietnam in 1974, it did not establish a physical presence in the Spratlys until 1988. Even then, it could only occupy the smallest insular features that others had not even bothered to occupy, including rocks and some reefs that are submerged at high tide. But these few holdings, which have been transformed into large artificial islands, are important. Now that China is stronger, many citizens believe it needs an unchallenged presence in the South China Sea that reflects its perceived status and capabilities.

In Asia’s waters, an assertive China means long-lasting disputes

TOKYO — These are tense times in Asia’s waters. In just the past month, Vietnam accused a Chinese vessel of ramming one of its fishing boats, damaging the hull. The Philippines protested that a Chinese warship and two surveillance vessels had intruded into its territory. Farther north, Chinese boats darted around Japanese-controlled islands for five straight days, staking claim to an area Japan considers its own. Over the last few years, China’s maritime conflict with its neighbors has taken the shape of such minor but contained skirmishes: standoffs between ships, boat collisions, arrests of fishermen, cat-and-mouse games between aircraft over disputed territory. But the quickening pace of these encounters points to what experts see as China’s fundamental strategy — using the seas as the stage on which to prove itself as Asia’s dominant power. China has set off on a bold mission to control the waters around it, sparking regional tensions that could last decades, policymakers and security experts say. Amid recent signals that Beijing’s new leadership views maritime power as a fundamental national goal and is willing to spar over a massive area of water that swings from Southeast Asia to Japan and reaches into the Pacific Ocean, those experts increasingly warn that China’s rise will be contentious, not peaceful. China’s maritime disputes with its neighbors had been expected to be discussed during meetings Friday and Saturday between President Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in California, part of a broader security conversation that will also include the expanded U.S. military deployment to the region. While the latest incidents on the seas haven’t provoked violence, they have added to an already risky environment in which countries are modernizing their militaries, have little appetite for backing down and are raising the odds of a bloody miscalculation that could draw in the United States, which has defense treaties with Japan and the Philippines. The disputes involve more than half a dozen countries, with those on China’s periphery seeing Beijing as the provocateur, recently pressing disputes that had long been dormant. A recent Pentagon report to Congress said that Chinese leaders view the first two decades of this century as a “strategic window of opportunity” in which to expand their nation’s power, measured not only by economic benchmarks but also by their ability to defend territorial claims and “win potential regional conflicts.” Even if China avoids conflicts, analysts say, its very preparation for them has pushed other militaries to respond, most recently with the Philippines purchasing new warships. Japan’s ruling party is even considering changes to its pacifist constitution. During her visit to the United States in May, South Korean President Park Geun-hye described the situation as a regional paradox — one in which Asian nations are closely linked economically but increasingly at odds. ****“How we manage this paradox — this will determine the shape of a new order in Asia,” she said. China’s expansive strategy comes as the United States pivots its military toward Asia in an effort to maintain a balance of power in a region long known for relative peace. A “big part” of that shift “has been to work to shape the region and to influence China’s behavior and China’s emergence as a major actor in a positive way,” a senior Obama administration official said this week, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the leaders’ summit in advance. Beijing is driven not only by the possibility of offshore energy development and fishing resources but also by the basic prestige of expansion — of wresting control of areas with deep histories of dispute. Part of China’s motivation is also nationalistic, particularly when it comes to a dispute over a group of rocks and islets controlled by rival Japan, a former invader and occupier. Just five years ago, it was almost unheard of for China to send patrol vessels to the islets. But in the five months after Japan last year purchased several of the islets from a private owner — previously, it had rented them — Chinese vessels entered Japanese territorial water 25 times, according to Japan’s Foreign Ministry. Japanese leaders say China’s ruling Communist Party uses disputes to bolster its legitimacy at a time of slowing economic growth and domestic frustration. But nationalist sentiment could also complicate a crisis, limiting the options for Chinese leaders if they want to de-escalate. Chinese aggression could also backfire if other countries in the region cooperate with one another or modernize their own militaries in response. “To some degree, being aggressive on these issues might hurt the reputation of China,” said Zhou Weihong, a Japan specialist at the Beijing Foreign Studies University. “It’s normal that you will be misunderstood when you are growing stronger and when you [make] demands for your own interests which you never did in the past. . . . Smaller countries that lose out in disputes will regard the stronger and bigger country as a bully.” China stakes out maritime territory with a mix of strategies, using legal claims, historical arguments and a built-up military force. China’s most notable territorial conflicts involve Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam, but its claims also overlap with the territory of Brunei, Taiwan and several other nations. The countries most at odds with China are left with an unappetizing choice: They can either cede ground or lock horns with a country whose defense budget has grown 30-fold over the past 25 years. China considers nearly the entire South China Sea its own, illustrating its claim with a legally dubious “nine-dash line” — quite literally, nine intermittent dashes that encircle the sea. Late last year, China also unveiled new baseline claims around the islets disputed with Japan in the East China Sea. Xi, China’s new leader, has vowed to never bargain over key national interests, including territorial claims. Chinese leaders sometimes say that other nations are instigating the fight by increasing their own military spending, by beefing up their coast guards or by reasserting claims on disputed territory — as Japan did last September, when its central government purchased disputed islets. But others say that China uses those perceived affronts as an excuse to pounce. After such provocations, China tends to take “strong countermeasures to change the status quo in its favour,” the International Crisis Group wrote in a recent report. Those tactics can be seen most clearly in the waters surrounding the five islets and three rocks known to Japanese as the Senkaku Islands and to Chinese as the Diaoyu Islands. Just one day after Japan purchased several of the islets, China released a set of latitude and longitude coordinates marking what it says is its territory in the area. Those markings, under Chinese law, stated the islets belong to Beijing. “China’s intention to topple the status quo concerning Japan’s valid control by coercion is clear,” the Japanese Foreign Ministry said months later, as Chinese boats were sighted almost daily around the islets. Japanese officials say the purchase was in part driven by years of Chinese military build-up, with Chinese vessels advancing into Japanese territory every year since 2008, sometimes to conduct war drills in the Pacific. In one 2008 case, four Chinese vessels circled around Japan, sliding through a northern island chain near Russia and returning through a southern island chain near Okinawa. In the East China Sea, a Chinese military vessel in January briefly locked its weapons-targeting radar on a Japanese warship, top Japanese officials said. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called on China to “strictly” refrain from further “dangerous acts that would escalate the situation.” The opposite has happened. In April, China’s Foreign Ministry defined the islands as a “core interest,” a loosely defined term that Beijing uses for its top national priorities, ones worth going to war over. “I think it’s inevitable that skirmishes and minor conflicts happen,” said Narushige Michishita, a security specialist at the Tokyo-based National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies. “The question then is how to not let it escalate, and that’s where dialogue, planning and top-level communication become very important.”

China wages a quiet war of maps with its neighbors

BEIJING — Bitter maritime disputes between China and its neighbors have recently sent fighter jets scrambling, ignited violent protests, and seen angry fishermen thrown in jail. But beneath all the bellicose rhetoric and threatening posture, China also has been waging a quiet campaign, using ancient documents, academic research, maps and technical data to bolster its territorial claims. The frenetic pace of such research — and the official appetite for it — comes after decades of relative quiet in the field and has focused heavily on the two hottest debates: China’s quarrel with six other nations over a potentially oil-rich patch of the South China Sea and its tense feud with Japan over a small sprinkling of land called the Diaoyu Islands by the Chinese and the Senkaku Islands by the Japanese. For some Chinese academics, the now-heavy demand for such work marks a near reversal of what they experienced early in their careers. In past decades, some say, territorial disputes were often considered too sensitive a topic because China was leery of disrupting its relations with its neighbors. “The government always emphasized the stability of bilateral relationships in the past, so doing public research on the Diaoyu Islands, for example, was not practical,” said one Chinese professor. “You couldn’t write a thesis on it . . . there would be nowhere to publish such articles publicly.” Even now, the topic remains sensitive. The professor spoke on the condition of anonymity because, he said, others have been punished in the past for speaking too openly on such matters. But after an especially bitter dust-up in 2010 between China and Japan, some Chinese scholars say, officials worried that the limited research had hurt China’s ability to make strong territorial claims, leaving it at a disadvantage with others, such as Japan, whose research community faced fewer constraints. China’s attention to maps and other documents has intensified since — bringing with it spats of a new kind. The most recent began shortly after Christmas when a Japanese publication posted what it claimed was a 1950 Chinese government document unearthed in China’s own archives calling the disputed islands by their Japanese name, implying that Beijing then regarded the islands as Japanese. China’s embassy in Japan sidestepped the question of the document’s authenticity, saying that “even if the document exists, it won’t change the consistent position of the Chinese government.” The embassy later dismissed the whole thing as a “Japanese attempt to support their wrong stance with an anonymous reference document.” But just weeks afterward, with little explanation, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs shut down access to a large portion of its archival documents. A staffer at the archive said last week that the closure was “due to an upgrading of the system” but was unable to say when the work would be complete. The bitter feud between China and Japan over a handful of rocky outcroppings may seem frivolous. But the fight carries great weight domestically for both countries — and huge implications for the United States. If the military bluster and threats continue, U.S. diplomats and experts fear, it could lead to a military miscalculation and, in the worst case, an actual war that could draw in the United States, as a treaty-bound ally of Japan. China’s increasingly aggressive posture on such claims is driven by a heady mixture of nationalism and strategic and economic interests. In a sign of just how important such claims have become, it has been widely reported in foreign media — though not confirmed by the government — that China’s new top leader, Xi Jinping, was personally put in charge of a task force responsible for the Diaoyu Islands claim in September, shortly before he was formally named to lead the ruling Communist Party. That same month, tensions shot up after Japan announced it was buying the disputed islands from private Japanese owners for nearly $30 million. The move prompted riots in China, and trade between the two Asian powers suffered. Diplomatic relations sputtered. And Chinese and Japanese ships clashed on the seas, ramming and spraying each other with water cannons. In the five months since, there has been a flurry of official interest in China’s documentary backing for its territorial claims. Several seminars and conferences were convened by government-affiliated think tanks. At one high-profile gathering in Shanghai, scholars concluded with a five-point consensus “to pool together our wisdom” and “to safeguard the sovereignty of the Diaoyu Islands and to oppose Japan’s violation.” China’s State Council issued a 5,200-word white paper that laid out, point by exhaustive point, China’s case. This fall, key historical documents, atlases and journals were assembled into an exhibit at China’s National Library. The library’s official statement included a sneering reference to the “sheer historical lie” of Japan’s claims, and the displays included records from imperial envoys stretching back to the Ming dynasty in the 1300s. Maps — ancient and modern — have been a particular area of focus, with the government’s scientific and academic subsidiaries pumping out atlases, three- dimensional graphs and sketches of both disputed areas. New passports were outfitted with maps that include a dotted area that pointedly marks China’s claimed portions of the South China Sea. Even weather reports on state-run television have been amended to add forecasts for disputed areas. Some international scholars, however, question how much credibility the recent burst of historical studies and technical data adds to China’s claims — especially given the fact that most think tanks and universities in China remain firmly in the grip of the Communist Party and its government. “If you look at the academic documents and arguments, especially on the Chinese side, the conclusions across the board look like one unified piece of concrete,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, head of government and international studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. “It’s concerning on an academic level to talk to people without a shred of doubt affecting their mind. It suggests a lack of ability to seriously evaluate the other side’s arguments. The whole truth is often more complicated.” Chinese scholars defend their work as sound, even as some are trying to build credibility by relying less on Chinese documents and instead finding foreign materials to support China’s claims. “We are not lacking in domestic evidence,” said Li Guoqiang, an expert on disputed territories at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “But it would be even more convincing to the international community if we can use the evidence of our opponents.” Most acknowledge that their research alone isn’t likely to solve such intractable territorial disputes. But they argue that it does provide a safe arena for conflict in an era of mounting tensions. In this month’s latest, Japanese officials said a Chinese naval vessel had threatened a Japanese warship by locking a weapons-guiding radar on it. With the way the region is heating up, even academics working to support China’s claims wonder where the conflict might ultimately lead. “I worry about the Sino-Japanese relationship, especially this year,” said Zhou Yongsheng, an expert at China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing. “If [Japan] keeps following their current policies, the situation will deteriorate even worse. And China is very assertive to take countermeasures if necessary. It could get unpredictable and out of control.”

In Philippines, banana growers feel effect of South China Sea dispute

PANABO, Philippines — Dazzled by the opportunities offered by China’s vast and increasingly prosperous populace, Renante Flores Bangoy, the owner of a small banana plantation here in the southern Philippines, decided three years ago to stop selling to multinational fruit corporations and stake his future on Chinese appetites. Through a local exporter, he started shipping all his fruit to China. Today, his estate on the tropical island of Mindanao is scattered with heaps of rotting bananas. For seven weeks now — ever since an aging U.S.-supplied Philippine warship squared off with Chinese vessels near a disputed shoal in the South China Sea — Bangoy has not been able to sell a single banana to China. He is a victim of sudden Chinese restrictions on banana imports from the Philippines that China says have been imposed for health reasons but that Bangoy and other growers view as retaliation for a recent flare-up in contested waters around Scarborough Shoal. “They just stopped buying,” Bangoy said. “It is a big disaster.” His plight points to the volatile nationalist passions that lie just beneath the placid surface of Asia’s economic boom. It also underscores how quickly quarrels rooted in the distant past can disrupt the promise of a new era of shared prosperity and peace between rising China and its neighbors. Scarborough Shoal, a cluster of coral reefs and islets, lies more than 500 miles from the Chinese mainland and 140 miles off the northern coast of the Philippines, well within a 200-nautical-mile “exclusive economic zone” provided for by the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. But China — which claims most of the South China Sea, including portions also claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan — insists that the shoal has been part of its territory since at least the 13th century and points to old maps that mark it as Chinese. For a while, it looked as if the quarrel — which began in April when a Philippine warship confronted Chinese fishermen near the shoal and stirred a surge of nationalist fury in both countries — could tip into armed conflict between Asia’s most potent military power and one of its puniest. China last year spent $129 billion on its armed forces, 58 times as much as the Philippines, according to data compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The flagship of Manila’s navy, the boat that intercepted the Chinese fishermen, is a 45-year-old hand-me-down from the U.S. Coast Guard. Manila does have one potent asset: a 1951 mutual defense treaty with Washington that the Philippines believes puts the world’s most powerful navy on its side. The United States has a policy of not taking a position on territorial disputes in the South China Sea and has been ambiguous about what it would do in the event of a conflict. President Benigno Aquino III visited the State Department and the White House on Friday to press for clarity on U.S. intentions. Although rich in fish and long used as a shelter by Chinese and Philippine fishermen, Scarborough Shoal has no major economic or strategic value. But it has acquired great significance for both countries as a test case for issues of sovereignty that will help determine who gets to exploit potentially large reserves of natural gas and oil in other contested areas of the South China Sea. China and the Philippines have stepped back from the brink, curbing their angry rhetoric and halting a buildup of ships near the shoal, which the Chinese call Huangyan Island and the Filipinos know as Panatag Shoal. But bananas are the Philippines’s second-biggest agricultural export, and for growers more than 700 miles from the disputed area, the damage is done. “We are collateral damage,” said Stephen Antig, executive director of the Pilipino Banana Growers and Exporters Association, a group based in Mindanao’s Davao City, the center of the Philippine banana business. He estimates that as many as 200,000 people in the region will lose their livelihood if China continues to curb imports. Antig had been due to visit China soon to talk to buyers but is going instead to Iran and several Arab countries in search of substitute markets. The tourism industry, meanwhile, has been hammered by a rash of abrupt cancellations of vacation bookings from China after a travel advisory issued by Beijing. Aquino, speaking Friday to Washington Post editors and reporters, said: “That advisory, we think, was very unfounded. They were portraying us as being anti-Chinese.’’ China denies mixing politics and business, and it regularly condemns boycotts announced by others. But Beijing has a clear record of quietly using trade to punish countries it quarrels with. When the Oslo-based Nobel Peace Prize committee announced in late 2010 that it would honor jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, Beijing reacted with fury. Norwegian exports of fresh and frozen salmon to China collapsed, falling by 59 percent last year. Imports of the fish from elsewhere soared. There has been no formal Chinese order restricting imports from Norway, only stringent new food-safety regulations that have mysteriously targeted Norwegian fish. A 2010 study by two scholars at Germany’s Gottingen University found a direct correlation between China’s foreign policy agenda and trade flows. It noted that China’s authoritarian political system and the large role played by the state in its economy “gives leeway for the utilization of trade flows as a foreign policy tool.” Analyzing data between 1991 and 2008 from 159 trading partners of China, the study found that countries whose leaders met with the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader, suffered a swift decline of 8.1 percent to 16.9 percent in exports to China. It said that the phenomenon began after China’s current leader, Hu Jintao, took charge of the ruling Communist Party in 2002, a period that has coincided with a surge in Chinese economic and military power. Beijing reviles the Buddhist monk, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, as a subversive “splittist” and “terrorist” and demands that foreign governments not receive him. Bangoy, the banana grower in Panabo, has no doubt that his China woes are connected to the Scarborough Shoal fracas. The Philippines, he noted, “has been selling bananas to China for more than 10 years without problems, so why did this suddenly happen now?” Unable to sell his fruit because neither local exporters nor Chinese buyers want to risk having their shipments held up for weeks and then rejected by customs inspectors, he has shut down his packing facilities and is praying that the storm will soon pass. His workers still chop bunches of bananas but only because leaving them unharvested would cause disease. “All this is worthless,” he said, pointing to piles of decaying fruit scattered throughout his plantation. “We have to look for alternatives,” he said. Otherwise, “this whole industry will die.” Before the crisis, China took about a quarter of all bananas exported by the Philippines. This is less than the amount taken by Japan, but China stirred far more excitement among Philippine growers because its appetite just kept growing. Chinese imports of Philippine bananas rose by 27 percent last year and had been expected to increase by up to 40 percent this year, said Antig of the growers association. Today, with China-bound refrigerated containers piling up at the Davao City port, the town has “been flooded with free bananas,” said the mayor, Sara Duterte. Traders have donated “boxes and boxes of bananas,” she said, prompting city hall to set up a distribution network to deliver free fruit to schools, orphanages and government offices. The government in Manila, eager to end a tug of war with China that it has little chance of winning, has not publicly disputed Beijing’s assertion that the collapse of banana exports to China is due to health concerns, not politics. Speaking to The Post on Friday, Aquino said there was “some basis’’ to believe that China is acting at least partly out of legitimate contamination concerns. Asked about China’s approach to his country, Aquino expressed puzzlement: “We’re still analyzing, frankly, what their intentions are. There are some who are very nationalistic, there are some who are very outward looking.’’ China sent an initial warning to the Philippines about the health of its bananas in March, several weeks before the start of the South China Sea standoff. But the warning targeted fruit from a single Japanese conglomerate operating in Mindanao and led to no general curbs on imports. In early May, however, after the Philippine navy confronted Chinese fishing boats near Scarborough Shoal, China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine sharply escalated the health issue, saying in a letter to the Philippine Department of Agriculture that it had found 104 types of “harmful organisms” in bananas and other fruit sent from the Philippines. Antig said he thinks “they just went on the Internet and found a list of all the diseases that attack bananas.” The real reason for China’s sudden vigilance is not disease but Scarborough Shoal, he said, adding, “They know where to hit us.” Bananas are the mainstay of the economy in the region around Davao City, an area that in the 1980s slipped into chaos as Marxist rebels of the New People’s Army put down deep roots in impoverished villages and spread terror in the city with a campaign of assassinations. Bangoy, the banana grower in Panabo, a district just north of Davao City, said that hamlets around his plantation once swarmed with NPA guerrillas but that, thanks to banana-led economic growth, the insurgents have now lost much of their appeal. “They will be back,” he said, if Chinese import restrictions remain in force and push banana growers into bankruptcy. In other parts of Mindanao, the Philippine military, with help from U.S. troops, is fighting to contain an insurgency by Muslim militants. Local officials in Panabo are being deluged with requests for assistance from plantation workers laid off because of the squeeze on exports to China. “Laborers are crying for an income and are all asking us for help,” said Henry Esparagola, the town’s administrator. Left-wing activists accuse banana growers of exaggerating their China woes to deflect pressure for higher wages and an end to restrictions on trade union organization. But, in a sign of how the Scarborough Shoal dispute has united the country’s feuding political groups, they, too, insist that the territory belongs to the Philippines and that Communist Party-ruled China must back off. “How can it claim to be socialist when it oppresses a poor, marginalized sovereign country like the Philippines?” asked Joel Virador, vice chairman of the May 1st Labor Movement, a leftist union. Duterte, the mayor, said that in the past Scarborough Shoal “just wasn’t an issue at all” for most locals. She had never even heard of it until the recent flare-up made headlines, she said. The mayor still thinks the Philippines can gain in the long run from China’s rise and has enrolled her 4-year-old daughter in a local Chinese-language school. “You cannot ignore China,” she said. “It is a very big market.” But the mayor does have one big worry: “They know their power and how to use it.” **More world news coverage:** \- Socialists, allies take lead in French parliamentary elections \- In Spain’s bailout request, Greece’s crisis played key role \- Official: Egypt’s Mubarak slipping in and out of consciousness \- Read more headlines from around the world

Chinese army-designed video game lets players fight Japan for the Diaoyu Islands

In the latest passive-aggressive escalation of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Island dispute, a Chinese computer game originally designed to train soldiers has added a level that lets players “reclaim and defend” the vacant but heavily disputed islands between China and Japan. “Glorious Mission Online,” China’s Call of Duty equivalent, already involved the standard faux-military missions common in such games. But the updated online version, as first reported by the South China Morning Post, will also have players simulating a battle against Japanese soldiers on the islands and using the Liaoning, China’s first aircraft carrier. It’s particularly provocative given that the People’s Liberation Army helped develop the game.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The Diaoyu Islands -- called the Senkaku Islands in Japan -- are a constant and increasingly heated source of conflict for the two countries. While Japan has controlled the islands for nearly 40 years, China insists it's owned them since antiquity. Japan further exacerbated debate when it bought the islands from a private landowner and nationalized them last September.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Since then, both countries have fired a series of symbolic volleys. China has pulled Japanese books from store shelves and boycotted Japanese goods. A Japanese toymaker recently infuriated Chinese social media users by releasing a model boat bearing the words “Operation Senkaku;” the model’s box also appears to show the Liaoning sinking as victorious Japanese fighter jets fly overhead.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University While model boats and Glorious Mission may be fun and games, the Diaoyu/Senkaku conflict is not. Four Chinese coast guard ships appeared near the islands on Wednesday and Japan deployed fighter jets after a Chinese plane veered too close to Japanese airspace. Japan has even floated the idea of using drones to keep an eye on Chinese activity in the region.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University You can watch a trailer for the game below.

Beijing’s power play in the South China Sea may be killing coral reefs

BEIJING — When Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr. accused China of building a "Great Wall of sand" by creating artificial islands in the South China Sea to bolster its territorial claims there, one of the things he mentioned was that the Chinese were dredging sand and dumping it on reefs of living coral. Skeptics may wonder about the U.S. Navy's dedication to the environment — top officers maintain they are serious about it — but the potential damage to coral is a serious business.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Alan Friedlander, chief scientist of the National Geographic Pristine Seas Program, told a recent forum at the East-West Center in Honolulu that dredging totally kills off a reef. The South China Sea, wedged in between China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei, is home to an astonishingly diverse array of marine species, largely thanks to the shallow reefs of coral that are particularly abundant in the region of the contested Spratly Islands. Without the reefs, those fish would disappear. Writing recently in Eurasia Review, University of Singapore researchers Youna Lyons and Wong Hiu Fung allege that Chinese dredgers have been pulling up the coral itself, crushing it and using it as fill.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Harris, speaking in Australia in late March, said China has created 1.5 square miles of artificial land in its recent move to secure possession of most of the sea. All the countries that border it have claims; China says its sovereignty extends over almost the entire sea, on the basis of a map that was drawn up right after World War II. Tensions there have been on the increase, and all sides say they fear an incident that could spark an armed confrontation. On Monday, a touring group of journalists from the United States and 11 countries that lie on or near the South China Sea visited the Foreign Ministry here in Beijing. Ouyang Yujing, director general of the Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs, said China was entirely within its rights, and within the law, in building the new islands. He said the work was "justified, reasonable and lawful." The construction is designed to make habitable platforms for the people China wants to deploy in the maritime zone. They will be posted there, he said, to be able to carry out safety and rescue operations, scientific investigation, navigation aid, fisheries services, weather forecasting, suppression of piracy and — not least — the "exercise of sovereignty." "It does not merit any reproach," he said. Before any construction was begun, he said, a "rigorous scientific test" was conducted to ensure there would be no environmental damage. The agency responsible for the marine environment is the State Oceanic Administration. The traveling journalists, who are being supported on their tour by the East-West Center, dropped in to meet with Zhang Haiwen, director general of the Department of International Cooperation. "China's coral reef ecosystem has been under very severe impact," she said. Acidification from increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a big problem. China also blames fishing boats from neighboring countries for causing damage to the reefs. She said her agency is working on transplanting some reefs, and a government lab is developing techniques to regrow coral. She went on to point out that her agency has 10 functions and that environmental protection is only one of them. Another is the promotion of economic development in the maritime zone. So the question is how to develop resources while also protecting the environment. Building artificial islands, she said, "is an international norm." It creates a benefit for the region and the country. China has been in strict compliance with both the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and its own tough regulations, she said. Furthermore, the Defense Ministry had examined the issue, she said, and found the work to be permissible. "What we are doing is in line with international and domestic laws," she said, "and besides, some of our neighboring countries are doing the same thing." (On Friday, the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington released satellite photos that it says show two land reclamation projects in the South China Sea carried out by Vietnam.) When asked to describe the damage to the coral that her agency monitors had presumably witnessed while the Chinese military was building the artificial islands, Zhang stood up in exasperation. "I have a plane to catch," she said, and walked out.

Is China ready to budge on the South China Sea? Here’s why compromise is possible.

Under President Benigno Aquino Jr., in January 2013, the Philippines challenged China’s vast South China Sea claim by filing an arbitration case before a U.N. Law of the Sea tribunal. A big concern was that Scarborough Shoal would be the next island-building project. Located within the Philippines exclusive economic zone and only about 123 miles west of Subic naval base, a military base on Scarborough Shoal would extend China’s reach dangerously close to Manila.                In the past, China has successfully used compromise territorial settlements to enhance friendly relations with its neighbors, if not formal alliances. In the late 1950s, Beijing surrendered control over a small offshore island to Vietnam in an effort to remove friction in Sino-Vietnamese relations in the face of a growing American threat along China’s southern border. Again, in the 1970s, when China was worried about the growing Soviet threat, Beijing willingly set aside the Sino-Japanese Senkaku Islands dispute to facilitate the Japan-China Peace and Friendship Treaty that included a specific “anti-hegemony” clause, a clear jab at the Soviet Union.

China should tread carefully in the South China Sea

THE PENTAGON has laid down a fresh marker against China’s worrisome land reclamation effort in the South China Sea. In a congressionally mandated report published last week, the Defense Department outlined a strategy for maritime security in the Asia-Pacific that attempts to counter China’s provocative behavior. The real tests will come later, but they are clearly coming. In the spring, Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, expressed alarm that China was building artificial land by pumping sand onto live coral reefs and paving over it with concrete. Adm. Harris said China had created about 900 acres of artificial landmass, a “great wall of sand.” Now the Pentagon has provided stark new details. Since land reclamation got underway in December 2013, China has expanded seven of its eight outposts in the Spratly Islands, and as of this June, had reclaimed “more than 2,900 acres of land.” Other states including Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan have done this, too, but at a fraction of the scale. “China has now reclaimed 17 times more land in 20 months than the other claimants combined over the past 40 years,” the report declared. If these islands are subsequently turned into military outposts with port facilities and airstrips, China will have solidified its sea claims, a serious challenge to the United States, which has pledged to protect freedom of the seas. China’s historic claim to most of the South China Sea is based on a “nine-dashed line” that was drawn on a map decades ago. The island reclamation is putting muscle into that map, allowing China “to establish a more robust power projection presence into the South China Sea,” the report warned. China insists that it is building on its “own islands and reefs” and that it should not concern anyone else. The Pentagon points out that China has been using its Coast Guard in “a steady progression of small, incremental steps to increase its effective control over disputed areas and avoid escalation to military conflict.” Meanwhile, China’s naval vessels wait over the horizon. Land reclamation cannot be concealed, however; commercial satellite images posted by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies have documented it. The United States is prudently shifting military assets toward the Asia-Pacific. Over the next five years, a 30 percent increase is planned in ships assigned to the Pacific Fleet outside the United States, and by 2020, some 60 percent of U.S. naval and overseas air assets will be home-ported in the region. But 30 percent of the world’s maritime trade goes through the South China Sea each year; other disputed waters in the region are rich in fisheries, oil and gas resources. A conflict could have devastating impact on global trade and commerce. China’s massive exports could suffer terribly. The Pentagon report is a warning to China to tread carefully. The big question is whether such warnings are sufficient to give China’s leaders second thoughts about the great wall of sand. **Read more about this topic:** Fareed Zakaria: With an absent United States, China marches on The Post’s View: China’s dangerous provocation demands a response from the U.S. The Post’s View: A ‘Great Wall of Sand’ in the South China Sea

For U.S. leaders, confronting China is a dangerous game

_Tonio Andrade, a professor of history at Emory University, is author of “The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History.”_ China is increasingly asserting itself as a great power, and nowhere is its rise more likely to lead to war than in the South China Sea. This vital seaway not only is filled with shipping lanes, but also contains rich fishing grounds and oil and gas deposits, and China claims vast swaths of it. Neighboring countries have reacted angrily to its assertions, and China has responded by ratcheting up air and naval patrols and building artificial islands with airstrips and barracks. These tensions are likely only to increase in the wake of the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s ruling Tuesday undermining China’s claims and bolstering those of the Philippines, one of the closest U.S. allies in the region. China has rejected the ruling; its state-controlled media outlets call the court a “law-abusing tribunal.” The United States, for its part, is determined to enforce the ruling and has stepped up naval patrols in the region in anticipation of China’s negative reaction. This is a dangerous game. China is more prepared for a confrontation than Western experts may expect. We are, quite literally, in perilous waters. U.S. leaders would do well to understand China’s military past, a history far more warlike and bellicose than has long been assumed. Chinese leaders have often proclaimed that their history is unusually pacific. As former Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying stated, “China has never waged a war of aggression to occupy an inch of land of other countries.” China’s president, Xi Jinping, himself has said that “We Chinese love peace. No matter how much stronger it may become, China will never seek hegemony or expansion.” Yet China’s history is in fact filled with warfare — some of it aggressive. As Xi himself well knows, China’s last two imperial dynasties undertook massive wars of expansion. In the early 1400s, the Ming dynasty launched huge expeditions, marching hundreds of thousands of troops into Mongolia and Vietnam, even as it sent gargantuan fleets throughout the maritime world. Starting in the early 1700s, its successor, the Qing dynasty, also sent huge pacification forces into lands claimed by other states. In both cases, military expansion made China the unquestioned hegemon of the Eastern Hemisphere. What’s intriguing is that the timing of these bouts of expansive warfare was similar: They each occurred about 40 or 50 years after the dynasty was founded, after domestic control had been consolidated. And why did the Ming and Qing dynasties engage in such expansion after achieving domestic consolidation? In a word, security. In each case, leaders justified their military action with reference to China’s historic vulnerability. Only by achieving unquestioned preeminence in its hemisphere — or, as Chinese leaders put it, in the earthly realm — could China guarantee safety and security for its people. Expansion was meant to foster peace. Today, China finds itself in a similar historical position. After a difficult 20th century, filled with foreign invasion, civil war and destabilizing leadership struggles, it is strong and stable, having enjoyed more than four decades of rapid economic growth. But much like their imperial forebears, Chinese leaders today are worried about China’s security. The greatest perceived threat is posed by the United States, whose bases in the western Pacific are seen as a direct challenge. Equally worrisome is the fact that the United States has close alliances with countries bordering the China Sea — Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines. Will China attempt to use its new military power to assert its claims in the China Sea? There is reason for hope that it won’t come to that. The United States does not represent the same sort of imminent threat that China faced in its imperial period. And so far, Xi has been careful to avoid direct confrontation. But Beijing’s policies and rhetoric also suggest that we cannot be complacent about Chinese power or China’s willingness to use it. China’s leaders certainly feel that they cannot allow the United States to thwart their ambitions in the region; indeed, they see their actions not as assertive but as defensive. Equally troubling, they have spoken so clearly and unequivocally about their claims to these waters that they may feel bound by their own words to prepare for a military response. Conflict, although unlikely, is increasingly possible. All it would take is one missed communication, one slightly misjudged fly-by. Chinese history sometimes seems to move in cycles, as successive dynasties rise, expand, flourish and die. With luck and caution, we may avoid an aggressive and expansionist cycle this time around, but Western leaders must combine respect for international legal structures with an awareness of China’s need for security within its sphere of influence. China’s leaders, for their part, must understand that their desire to expand China’s sphere of influence is best achieved peacefully. International law can work in their favor as well. War between the world’s two great powers is a terrifying prospect. Let’s hope leaders on both sides communicate clearly and act wisely. **Read more:** The Post’s View: Dangerous rocks in the South China Sea David Ignatius: The U.S. is heading toward a dangerous showdown with China Josh Rogin: The Obama administration is failing to stop China’s Pacific aggression Dennis C. Blair and Jeffrey W. Hornung: China’s self-defeating provocations in the South China Sea Joshua Kurlantzick: Let China win. It’s good for America.

U.S. is right to assail China on its sea claims

THE SOUTH CHINA sea stretches over 1.4 million square miles, rich in natural resources and bejeweled with islands. China has long regarded much of the sea as its own, claiming waters more than 1,000 miles from its shores and very close to the shores of other nations. Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei make competing and overlapping claims in a tangled yet high-stakes rivalry. The territorial disputes stretch back decades, but took a new twist recently. In an Aug. 3 statement, the State Departmentcriticized China for aggressive actions to reinforce its claims. The next day, China’s Foreign Ministry summoned an American diplomat for a formal protest and announced that the United States “showed total disregard of facts, confounded right and wrong, and sent a seriously wrong message.” Why this matters is that the United States has announced a pivot toward Asia, a seminal move to counter China’s rising influence, including a rebalancing of forces over the next eight years toward a goal of 60 percent of the Navy in the Pacific, up from half at present. According to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, that will include six aircraft carriers and a majority of cruisers, destroyers, littoral combat ships and submarines. The United States is neutral on the territorial claims in the South China Sea. But the State Department’s statement was intended to push back against China’s recent harrying of the Philippines and Vietnam over disputed fishing and oil drilling rights. China has announced that it is upgrading the administrative level of Sansha city, on one of the Paracel islands, to a prefecture and establishing a military garrison there, a further signal of its intent. Worried neighbors are welcoming more port calls from U.S. naval forces. The U.S. statement called for resolving disputes peacefully. China saw it, quite accurately, as a challenge on behalf of the weaker states in the region and insisted the United States “respect China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” What exactly does that entail? China has a very expansive claim to the sea, based on nine dashed lines sketched in a very imprecise fashion on a map six decades ago. The claim encroaches on some of the 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zones granted to other countries by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. China has insisted that it will work out the disputes one by one, and the United States should stay away. But the State Department’s statement accurately asserted that the United States has a “national interest” in the region: not territorial, but to protect regional stability and the huge volume of international shipping that passes through the sea. The sea is clearly a flashpoint. Everyone needs to make sure it does not become a sea of hostility. ****

China rails at ‘hegemony’ as U.S. vows to continue sea patrols

BEIJING – China criticized U.S. “hegemony and hypocrisy” on Tuesday after a top U.S. admiral vowed to continue naval patrols in the South China Sea. On a visit to China, the commander of U.S. Pacific Command, Adm. Harry Harris Jr., defended last week’s decision to sail a U.S. naval destroyer close to a Chinese-occupied island in the disputed waters of the South China Sea, and reiterated that such patrols would continue — despite Beijing’s intense displeasure. Harris, speaking at the Stanford Center at Peking University, tried to play down the dispute by stressing deepening cooperation between the two nation’s militaries, including joint participation in regional military exercises and a coordinated naval search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 last year. “Some pundits predict a coming clash between our nations. I do not ascribe to this pessimistic view,” he said. “While we certainly disagree on some topics — the most public being China’s claims in the South China Sea and our activities there — there are many areas where we have common ground.” The United States and its regional allies have become increasingly concerned about China’s efforts to build artificial islands on rocks and reefs in the South China Sea, and to construct airstrips and surveillance equipment on those islands. In April, Harris said China was building a “Great Wall of Sand” there. Last week’s action by the USS Lassen was designed to show that the United States would not tolerate any interference with freedom of navigation in nearby waters. Harris said Monday he continues to have “personal and candid conversations” with Chinese military leaders about tension in the South China Sea. He also described China’s claims to almost all of the South China, encompassed by its “nine-dash line,” as both “ambiguous” and a challenge to the “rules-based international order.” But he tried to characterize last week’s mission by the U.S. destroyer as routine. “Our military will continue to fly, sail and operate whenever and wherever international law allows. The South China Sea is not — and will not — be an exception,” he said. “I truly believe that these routine operations should never be construed as a threat to any nation.” A Pentagon official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational details, said the Lassen had also sailed past four islets or reefs held by Vietnam or the Philippines last week before it went past the Chinese-held Subi reef. However, the attempt by Harris to defend U.S. actions met a fierce rebuttal from China, with foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying accusing the United States of “plain provocation." With 100,000 ships passing through the South China Sea safely every year, it was a “false proposition” to argue freedom of navigation was threatened, she said. The United States has been strengthening its military presence in the Asia-Pacific region and holding frequent military exercises with China’s rivals, while hyping the threat from China, Hua told a daily news conference. Craig Whitlock in Washington contributed to this report. **Read more:** U.S. Navy alarmed at Beijing’s ‘Great Wall of sand’ in South China Sea China says U.S. destroyer sailing close to Chinese-built island a threat to peace For some Filipino fishermen, the South China Sea dispute is personal

China’s fishermen explain why they think the sea is theirs

TANMEN, China — Little boats with noisy engines puttered purposefully down the river and out toward the South China Sea. Big vessels — ships, really, with three or four decks, and heavy equipment — lay tied up close to the crowded town, looming over the low buildings along the bank. Then a workhorse of the sea — high-bowed, about 40 feet long, wheelhouse astern — slipped by. It was heading out for a week, or more likely a couple of weeks, on the open water. Crewmen, stripped to the waist, lathered up and washed from a barrel of water on deck as their trip began. The boat cleared the last bulkhead and then let loose with dozens of firecrackers that hung in strings over the sides. We had arrived by bus: 15 reporters from a dozen countries, on a tour arranged by the East-West Center of Hawaii. We were in Tanmen, on the island of Hainan, at the northern approaches to the South China Sea, to talk with fishermen. We were not going from boat to boat looking for someone with tales to tell. Our local escorts had arranged a meeting on the paved walkway along the south bank of the river. A delegation of retired fishermen was there to receive us and tell us about their livelihoods. China and its neighbors are quarreling over the South China Sea, and fishermen play a role in that. Chinese coast guard boats have been driving Philippine and Vietnamese fishing boats away from reefs and fishing grounds that China now claims control of. We were here to get the Chinese water-level perspective.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Su Cheng Feng is 80, retired now for 11 years. At first, after the firecracker display died down, he was the most talkative. He said he didn't meet fishermen from other countries very often in the old days when he was out at sea, before the surrounding countries' territorial claims began to be taken seriously, because their boats were smaller than the Chinese boats, and, frankly, their skills weren't as high. The sea, he said, was China's traditional fishing ground. Chinese "fishermen have been fishing in the South China Sea for many, many generations," he said. "These are our own waters, just as natural as a farmer going to his field." We asked him about the past. What was it like before the Communists came to power in 1949, or even during the war, when he was a boy and his father was a fisherman? He didn't have much to say; nothing special, nobody talked about it. _[For some Filipinos, the South China Sea dispute is personal]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Wu Shujin, 79, Mai Yunxiu, 79, and Huang Qinghe, 82, listened in, added a word here and there. They had all been captains. They had fished for wrasse, grouper and mackerel. They dried their catch on board or sold it to a buyer's boat that would take it back to shore. They didn't get much help from the government. (Younger men standing nearby disputed that.) Then Lu Yuyong suddenly appeared. He's 51, still active on a boat. He took over the conversation. "The life on a boat is very tough," he said. He brought out a pink plastic bag and unwrapped from it a traditional Chinese compass. It's one of the four great Chinese inventions, he said (along with gunpowder, paper-making and printing). Suddenly he was on his knees on the blacktop, unrolling a nautical chart of the sea. He was showing us how to use the compass on the chart, and having a little trouble, most likely because it had traditional markings on it and not the 360 degrees of a modern one. Su got down with him, and all the reporters and local hangers-on crowded around. Lu said he was glad the Chinese government is building up some of the islands in the sea; he has lost three family members in storms who had nowhere to go to and no one to help them. Permanent occupation on some of the islands could save lives, he said. But when fishermen from other countries dare to fish the South China Sea, he said, "they're invading our waters." "We could go all the way to Australia if we wanted to," he said. "But we don't. That's not our ground. It's not about loving or not loving your country. It's about fishing your own waters." Chinese fisherman, he said, were the first to discover the islands of the South China Sea. "And as opposed to other countries, we are civilized," he said, again mentioning the compass as one of the four great inventions. He rolled up the chart, then got out a piece of paper and drew his own map of the sea, which he labeled the "Ancestor Sea." He talked about the annual celebrations in Tanmen for the Brotherhood of the 108 (also known as the 108 Stars of Destiny, or the Outlaws of the Marsh), demonic overlords from a 700-year-old novel who were banished, repented and were reborn as heroes. What upstart nation, he seemed to be asking, could lay claim to history here the way China can?

Here’s what China’s people really think about the South China Sea

In anticipation of the July 12 ruling, the Chinese government and media repeatedly rejected the tribunal’s jurisdiction, perhaps to ease the blow of an adverse ruling. Many of our survey respondents expected a hypothetical arbitration of China’s territorial disputes to favor Beijing, with roughly 60 percent expecting a total or partial victory, 20 percent expecting an even compromise, and 20 percent expecting a partial or total loss. (Perhaps due to this optimism, a majority of respondents supported international arbitration.)      Whatever actions the United States and its allies take in the wake of the ruling, a minimum of publicity and a clear legal rationale is likely the most effective course of action. The more we trumpet China’s defeat or loss of face, the more domestic pressure or temptation the Chinese government will feel to respond with more than bluster.

Philippines says China has stopped chasing fishermen from contested shoal

BEIJING — Filipino fisherman were able to fish this week in waters near the disputed Scarborough Shoal without being chased away by Chinese vessels, the Philippines said Friday, suggesting a potential deal with China over the disputed South China Sea. The news comes about a week after Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte made a high-profile visit to Beijing, praising his Chinese hosts while calling for a “separation” from his longtime ally, the United States. In the run-up to Duterte’s visit, there were rumors that Beijing and Manila were close to a deal on fishing rights at Scarborough, which China has controlled since 2012. However, the trip ended without any agreement announced. Earlier this week, though, Duterte hinted that Philippine fisherman “may” be able to return. “We’ll just wait for a few more days,” he said. Philippine fishermen told reporters from ABS-CBN News, a local TV network, that they were allowed near the shoal on Tuesday and fished there for three days without interference. A report by the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper said eight groups of fisherman were able to fish at the shoal on Wednesday. Duterte spokesman Ernesto Abella appeared to confirm those reports Friday, telling journalists in Manila that the fishermen were operating at Scarborough Shoal without harassment. “All I can say is that at this stage, it has been observed that there are no longer any Chinese coast guards in the area,” he said, according to Philippine news reports. At a briefing later, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said that “both sides are conducting official conversations on the issue.” It is not clear whether the apparent return is part of a deal between Manila and Beijing — none has been reported. Even a provisional or informal arrangement, if confirmed, would signal a major shift in an issue of consequence for the Philippines, China and the United States. Scarborough is a flash point in the South China Sea conflict. The shoal, which the Chinese call Huangyan and the Filipinos call Panatag, is a triangular chain of reefs and rocks that lies about 120 miles off the coast of Luzon, not far from Subic Bay, the former U.S. naval base that still hosts regular visits from U.S. ships. China seized control of the shoal in 2012. Since then, Philippine boats approaching the shoal have been routinely chased away by the Chinese coast guard, rammed or hit with a water cannon — a source of anger for many Filipinos. The standoff between Manila and Beijing came to a head this summer when a European court issued a sweeping rebuke of China’s claims to most of the South China Sea, including Scarborough. But rather than press China on the ruling, the Philippines’ new president surprised many by playing down — though not outright dismissing — the ruling. Duterte has said he will not relinquish territory but is willing to talk to China about ways to defuse tension and get economic ties back on track. A deal on fishing, if confirmed, would be a domestic political victory. Ian Storey, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said he would not be surprised to see a return of Philippine boats. “Duterte requested this concession during his trip to Beijing last week, and if China had refused his request, he would have had egg all over his face and nothing to show for his pro-China stance,” he said. An agreement on fishing would allow China and the Philippines to press ahead with rapprochement, potentially driving a wedge deeper into U.S.-Philippine relations. It would also send a message to other countries in Southeast Asia that have clashed with China on maritime issues, Storey said: “Don’t challenge our claims, and in return, we will be magnanimous and allow you to share the resources that rightfully belong to us.” Richard Javad Heydarian, an assistant professor of political science at Manila’s De La Salle University, said a change in the status quo at Scarborough Shoal would ease tension between China and the Philippines in the short term, though the long-term picture looks less clear. China remains unlikely to compromise on the key question — sovereignty — meaning that the dispute persists. “It’s too early to say whether this will stand over time,” he said.

Don’t start a fire in Asia, China warns Obama after Vietnam arms embargo lifted

BEIJING — China warned President Obama on Tuesday not to spark a fire in Asia after he announced the lifting of a long-standing embargo on lethal arms sales to Vietnam. Obama unveiled the historic step on Monday during his first visit to Vietnam, insisting the move was “not based on China” while simultaneously acknowledging that Washington and Hanoi share a common concern about China’s actions in the South China Sea. Beijing, not surprisingly, was unimpressed. It has a complex relationship with its southern neighbor: The two governments are united in their communist ideology and distaste for Western democracy but are historical adversaries and fought their latest border war in 1979. They now fiercely contest sovereignty over many small islands in the South China Sea. The United States and Vietnam must not spark a “regional tinderbox,” the Communist Party newspaper, China Daily, warned in an editorial Tuesday, noting concerns that Obama’s move was meant to “curb the rise of China.” “This, if true, bodes ill for regional peace and stability,” it argued. The United States accuses China of militarizing the South China Sea by turning contested reefs and rocks into putative military bases. Beijing says it is only asserting its “indisputable” sovereignty over the islands and charges that the United States is interfering by encouraging rival claimants to antagonize China. The nationalist Global Times tabloid called Obama’s claim that the Vietnam move was not aimed at China “a very poor lie,” adding that it would exacerbate the “strategic antagonism between Washington and Beijing.” While not an official mouthpiece, the Global Times nevertheless often represents a strain of nationalist thinking within the ruling Communist Party. It accused Washington of trying to knit three nets around China — in ideology, in security and in economy and trade — in an attempt to secure its dominance of the region. While it is unlikely that Vietnam, whose weapons systems are largely Russian-made, would import significant quantities of U.S. arms for the moment, the paper said, lifting the embargo draws Hanoi into a “U.S.-dominated regional security system.” The paper also implied that there was some hypocrisy in the move to cozy up to Communist Vietnam. “When the U.S. has an urgent need to contain China in the South China Sea, the standards of its so-called human rights can be relaxed,” it wrote. Speaking in Ho Chi Minh City after Obama arrived there Tuesday, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said the relaxation of the arms embargo was not about China but about promoting a “rules-based order” in the fastest-growing marketplace in the world. “If you want to point to the possibility of tinderbox and possibly igniting something, I would caution China, as President Obama and others have, to not unilaterally move to reclamation activities and the militarization of the islands and areas that are part of the claims being contested today,” Kerry told reporters in the former South Vietnamese capital. “We don’t take a position on those claims. China should note that. We are not saying China is wrong in the claims. We are simply saying, ‘Resolve it peacefully; resolve it in the rules-based order.’ ” Relaxing an “out of the ordinary” arms embargo was neither out of order nor inflammatory, Kerry insisted. “I hope China will read this correctly.” Experts in China said they expected that U.S. warships would sooner or later be granted access to Cam Ranh Bay, a deep-water port that served as the key U.S. naval base during the Vietnam War. Shi Yinhong, a professor in international relations at Renmin University of China, said Beijing would not respond in a tit-for-tat way but would continue to build its military power in the South China Sea, while exerting pressure on Hanoi not to draw too close to Washington. “China will try to cozy up to Vietnam but at the same time put pressure on it,” he said. On social media, there were some angry reactions. “It looks like Vietnam is going to be America’s new puppet,” one user wrote. “Vietnam needs to give serious consideration to inviting the wolf into the house.” “The U.S. is walking an arms race path,” wrote another, arguing this was good news as Beijing had deeper pockets. “China can wait until the enemy is exhausted.”

5 stories you need to read to understand the South China Sea ruling

An international tribunal on Tuesday ruled that China does not have "historic rights" to the South China Sea, specifically within the nine-dash line that Beijing has used to designate its sovereignty in the waterway since 1947. The verdict, though nonbinding, is likely to stoke tensions between China and its neighbors, especially the Philippines, which took Beijing to court in 2013 after the Chinese navy seized the Scarborough Shoal, a chain of reefs and rocks off the Philippine island of Luzon. Importantly, the ruling rejects China's claim to the nine-dash line. The Post's Simon Denyer reports:  Here are five stories that help explain the situation in the South China Sea and the importance of the ruling. One of the disputed areas in the South China Sea is the Scarborough Shoal, a rich fishing ground once considered a regional common among the sea's surrounding countries, including the Philippines. Satellite images acquired by The Post in 2015 showed that China has continued to build islands in the South China Sea's Spratly Islands despite Beijing's claims that construction had been halted. The U.S. and its allies are concerned about military assets that have been deployed to the islands. In May, a U.S. warship sailed within 12 miles of one China’s largest artificial islands, prompting China to deploy fighter jets over the South China Sea. It was the latest "freedom of navigation" operation conducted by the U.S. The Philippines' relationship with China was further complicated this year when the island nation inked the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement with the United States, allowing the U.S. military to build facilities at five Philippine bases. Well before the international tribunal in The Hague issued its ruling, Beijing rejected the arbitration and said it would ignore the court’s decision. China also began lining up countries to support its stance over the sea, and it claims as many as 60 countries are siding with Beijing in the dispute.

Satellite images show China may be building powerful radar on disputed islands

Satellite images show China may be building a powerful new radar system on a disputed island in the South China Sea, which could have worrisome military uses in monitoring -- and potentially trying to control -- a strategically vital waterway, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Gregory Poling, head of the Asian Maritime Transparency Initiative at CSIS, said the images appear to show a high-frequency radar installation being built on Cuarteron Reef, one of seven islands China has recently expanded through a massive land reclamation program in the Spratly chain. "If it is an HF radar, then it would enormously boost China’s capacity to monitor ships and aircraft in the South China Sea," Poling wrote by email. "Cuarteron is the logical place for such an installation because it is the southernmost of China’s features in the Spratlys, meaning that it would be the best place if you wanted early warning radar to give notice of ships or planes coming up from the Strait of Malacca and other areas to the south such as Singapore. "This would be very important in a Chinese anti-access area denial strategy that sought to reduce the ability of the U.S. to operate freely in the South China Sea, including bringing forces up through the South China Sea in case of any future crisis in Northeast Asia," Poling wrote. The Strait of Malacca passes between Malaysia and Indonesia and is one of the most important shipping lanes in the world, while a third of the world's shipping, and much of Asia's oil, passes through the South China Sea. China has built up seven islands in the South China Sea, and is in the process of constructing three runways on those islands. The United States says it is concerned about the growing militarization of the South China Sea, Secretary of State John F. Kerry expressed "serious concern" last week when other satellite images showed what appeared to be surface-to-air missile batteries deployed by China on Woody Island, part of the Paracel chain, also in the South China Sea. China says its construction program in the South China Sea is mainly for civilian use, adding that it is only building limited and necessary defensive facilities on what it considers to be its sovereign territory. It points out that other nations have also reclaimed land and built runways in the past, although not on anything like this scale. "It is certainly possible to claim a civilian purpose, and China will," Poling wrote. "But just like you don’t need a 3,000-meter runway to land civilian planes, you don’t need a high-frequency radar (assuming that is what this is) to give early warning of commercial traffic. Radar is inherently dual-use, but just like its other “dual-use” infrastructure in the Spratlys, the real value is military. More limited radar, like China has at every other feature in the Spratlys, is more than sufficient to monitor and ensure the safety of civilian traffic near the features." China points to lighthouses it has constructed on two islands, as well as meteorological stations and shelter and rescue facilities, to highlight the civilian nature of its construction program. One of the new lighthouses sits on Cuarteron Reef. On Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying accused the United States of "sensationalizing the South China Sea issue" and "hyping up tensions." "Islands in the South China Sea have been part of China since ancient times," she said at a daily news conference. "The Chinese side is entitled to safeguard its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests. China conducts construction on relevant islands and reefs mainly for civilian purposes of providing better public services and goods for the international community. China's deployment of limited defense facilities on its own territory is its exercise of self-defense right to which a sovereign state is entitled under international law. It has nothing to do with militarization. It is something that comes naturally, and is completely justified and lawful. The U.S. should view that correctly instead of making an issue of that with deliberate sensationalization."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Other photographs supplied to The Washington Post by CSIS also show radar facilities being built on other islands in the Spratlys, which are also claimed in full or in part by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. **Read more:**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico By 2030, South China Sea will be ‘virtually a Chinese lake,’ study warns    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Report: U.S. aircraft carriers ‘unchallenged primacy may be coming to a close’    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico These are the surface-to-air missiles China apparently just deployed into the South China Sea    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Chinese jets intercept U.S. recon plane, almost colliding over South China Sea

Two Chinese tactical fighters intercepted a U.S. Navy reconnaissance aircraft over the South China Sea earlier this week, a Pentagon spokeswoman announced Wednesday.  The Pentagon described the incident as “unsafe.” In 2001, a U.S. EP-3 collided with a Chinese J-8, killing the pilot and forcing the American plane to make an emergency landing in China. “Over the past year, [the Pentagon] has seen improvements in [Chinese] actions, flying in a safe and professional manner,” Baldanza said in a written statement. Earlier this month, Chinese jets and warships scrambled to intercept a U.S. destroyer that sailed within 12 miles of a disputed island in the South China Sea. The island, known as Fiery Cross Reef and situated in the Spratly Island Chain, was once a cluster of rocks before being turned into a fully functional military base complete with a port and runway by the Chinese. The small island has been claimed by China, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines and is emblematic of the current struggle between countries attempting to secure portions of the resource-rich waters of the South China Sea. While the United States has maintained its distance in the territorial disputes, the Pentagon has consistently said it will not be deterred by China’s militarization of the region. “The United States will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows,” Cmdr. Bill Urban, a Pentagon spokesman, said earlier this month. “That is [as] true in the South China Sea as in other places around the globe.”

Japan, China struggle to curb tensions

BEIJING — Judging by some of the commentary in the Chinese media, an outside observer might think war with Japan is imminent. “The Chinese military could win a war over the Diaoyu Islands in half an hour,” Major General Zhang Zhaozhong, a Chinese military scholar, was quoted as saying last week. Chinese hawks are not the only ones raising the spector of a military clash between Asia’s two largest economies. Since Tokyo infuriated Beijing last September by nationalizing some of the disputed Senkaku Islands, known as the Diaoyu in China and Taiwan, tensions between the two countries have escalated. Both militaries regularly fly fighter jets in the airspace above the islands and have scrambled them against each other. Japan’s coast guard on Monday cited three Chinese vessels in waters near the islands. In response to warnings to leave the area, the Chinese ships broadcast messages over loudspeakers in Japanese and Chinese stating, “This is historically Chinese territory.” It is the latest in a series of bellicose exchanges that some observers fear could lead to a clash. “There is indeed a risk of an accident, although the possibility that it could escalate further into a full-scale conflict is very, very small,” said Huang Dahui, a professor at Renmin University in Beijing. In the U.S., which could see itself dragged into a conflict as Japan’s military ally, diplomacy has moved up a gear in recent days. Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for east Asian and Pacific affairs, said on a visit to Tokyo last week: “We’ve made very clear our desire to see cooler heads prevail.” The U.S. was criticized by Beijing on Monday after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, argued last week that Washington opposed “any unilateral actions that would seek to undermine Japanese administration” of the islands. “The U.S. bears undeniable historical responsibility,’’ for the situation, Hong Lei, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, was quoted as saying. Washington, anxious to avoid a confrontation with China so early in the tenure of Xi Jinping, the ruling Communist party’s new leader, has told Japan not to give China an excuse to overreact. But Japan also has a new leader and both Shinzo Abe, prime minister, and Xi will fear that showing weakness could damage them domestically. In China, the military and a nationalist public hope that Xi, who is expected to lead the world’s most populous country for the next decade, will assert China’s interests more forcefully than Hu Jintao, his predecessor. The Chinese government has seized on Tokyo’s nationalization move to cement its own claim to the Senkakus with a series of legal, administrative and military moves. In Japan, the Liberal Democratic party and its nationalist leader, Abe, won a landslide election in December after a campaign which promised a tougher stance on China. Abe has quietly dropped a campaign proposal to station civilian government officials on the islands but risks alienating conservative supporters if he fails to respond to perceived Chinese provocation. Japanese authorities also fear that if they don’t challenge China, Beijing could present Japan’s passivity as evidence of a lack of control over the islands. Already, Beijing has called on Tokyo to recognize a change in the status quo. Echoing that stance, Liu Jiangyong, an international relations expert at Tsinghua University, claims that “the Diaoyu islands are by no means exclusively controlled by Japan.” Since taking office, Abe has called for more defense spending and initiated a program of regional diplomacy that looks aimed squarely at countering China. At the same time, advisers in Beijing and Tokyo insist the governments want to de-escalate, but are struggling over how to lower tensions. Kuni Miyake, a former Japanese foreign ministry official and now a visiting professor at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, believes any climbdown would have to be negotiated secretly. “There is a face issue involved, and neither side wants to be the one to initiate [a de-escalation].” One step Tokyo might take would be to abandon its official position that no territorial dispute exists. People close to the government say Japan might accept adjudication by the International Court of Justice, but only if China requests it. “The Chinese government will not do that,” said a person who has been advising the government on relations with Japan. “Japan has had actual control of the islands for a long time, and that would not be in China’s favor.” **— Financial Times** Geoff Dyer in Washington and Zhao Tianqi also contributed to this report.

The first new rule for South China Sea talks: Don’t talk about the South China Sea

BEIJING — National security adviser Susan E. Rice was in Beijing on Monday to talk about the South China Sea, the scene of a deepening territorial dispute that pits China against some of Washington’s most important Southeast Asian allies. But Rice did not talk about the South China Sea — at least not publicly. The diplomatic sidestep was a clear sign of just how sensitive the standoff has become. For Beijing’s leaders, control of the South China Sea is a critical show of resolve. For the United States and its Asian allies, it marks a test of how much they can push back against China’s growing military and regional ambitions. In the highest-level U.S. visit since an international tribunal issued a ruling this month invalidating China’s expansive maritime claims, Rice met with President Xi Jinping, State Councilor Yang Jiechi and other senior officials. She alluded to “issues and challenges” but avoided actual references to the long-simmering conflict. In opening remarks before her talk with Xi, Rice played up interdependence and called the U.S.-China relationship “the most consequential in the world today.” Xi told Rice that China remains “strongly committed” to building good relations based upon the ideas of “no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation.” China asserts historic sovereignty over most of the South China Sea — including numerous islands, reefs and shoals — and vows to ignore international rulings backing counterclaims by the Philippines, Vietnam and other nations. Meanwhile, the United States and its allies have become increasingly alarmed over Chinese land reclamation and construction on reefs and rocks, which they fear could become footholds for military bases and disrupt shipping lanes. The most pointed — if indirect — reference to the dispute came in an earlier meeting between Rice and Fan Changlong, a top Chinese general. “We should be honest with ourselves that deep down in this relationship we’re still faced with obstacles and challenges,” Fan told Rice. “If we do not properly handle these factors, it will very likely disturb and undermine this steady momentum of our military-to-military relationship.” The meetings in Beijing coincided with Secretary of State John F. Kerry’s trip to Laos, where he met with Southeast Asian leaders and China’s foreign minister to begin delicate discussions about how to move forward after the divisive ruling. In another display of the high stakes at play, the host of the talks, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, issued a statement that carefully avoided the July 12 court ruling against Beijing. The Permanent Court of Arbitration, based in The Hague, found there was no legal or historical basis for China’s claims to a vast swath of one of the world's most important waterways. The tribunal also ruled that China had violated the Philippines’ sovereign rights by constructing artificial islands and had caused “permanent irreparable harm to the coral reef ecosystem.” China dismissed the ruling as “trash paper” and denounced the process as a “farce.” It has vowed to ignore the ruling altogether. The United States now must find a way to support its Southeast Asian allies, particularly the Philippines, without completely alienating Beijing. “The U.S. is trying to calm things down while at the same time encouraging support for the arbitration ruling,” said Jay L. Batongbacal, director of the University of the Philippines Institute of Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea. “They know China is super-sensitive right now, so they are trying to handle it delicately.” Ian Storey, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said Washington is “waiting for the dust to settle.” “They want to see how the Philippines responds and what next steps China might take,” he said. The Chinese response so far has been a mix of scathing rhetoric and mostly symbolic moves, such as sending civilian aircraft to new airports in the South China Sea. On the sidelines of a recent summit, China reportedly told the Philippines that Beijing was ready to negotiate if Manila ignored the ruling — an offer that the Philippines foreign minister roundly rejected. On Monday, the Philippines' new president, Rodrigo Duterte, vowed to use the ruling as part of “ongoing efforts to pursue a peaceful resolution and management of our disputes.” Members of the 10-country ASEAN group met over the weekend in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, for their most significant conclave since the tribunal decision was announced. Over the weekend, Liu Zhenmin, China’s vice minister of foreign affairs, indirectly accused the United States of interfering in Southeast Asian affairs. ASEAN “should in particular guard against the intervention in regional cooperation by big powers outside the region,” he said, without citing a specific country. Xu Yangjingjing contributed to this report from Beijing.

This is why China’s president envies Russia’s

It’s been a season of love for Russia and China. A two-day May summit in Shanghai culminated in a $400 billion gas deal; in an interview with Chinese state media before the visit, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia-China cooperation reached its highest level in history. And at a meeting this week on the sidelines of the BRICs Summit in Brazil, he and Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to deepen the relationship even further. After decades of hostility during the Cold War, Beijing and Moscow have realized that many of their interests align more closely than with those of the United States. What’s more, there’s kinship in the fact that both countries are locked in territorial disputes with their neighbors.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Russia, of course, recently annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, continues to sponsor a rebel movement in eastern Ukraine, and aids separatist enclaves in other former Soviet republics such as Georgia, Moldova, and Azerbaijan. In early May, Beijing dispatched a billion-dollar oil rig to waters in the South China Sea claimed by both China and Vietnam. Chinese naval vessels reportedly rammed at least one Vietnamese patrol boat while bombarding others with water cannons. A Chinese foreign ministry official said China had shown “utmost restraint” in the confrontation – though China has been turning up the pressure dramatically not only against Vietnam, but also several other Southeast Asian countries with which it has territorial disputes.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday But while both clearly have imperial ambitions, Putin has the freer hand to act. Xi is bound by the reality of his neighborhood. China has the bad luck to be hemmed in by U.S. allies along its eastern seaboard, from Japan and South Korea to the north, to Taiwan and the Philippines in the south. Its southern flank is not much better: India strongly prefers the United States to China, and so does strategically important Burma. Vietnam, which sits on China’s southeast border, is also drawing closer to the U.S. as antagonism towards China grows. In a July 11 New York Times op-ed calling for an alliance between Vietnam and the United States, Tuong Lai, a former adviser to two Vietnamese prime ministers wrote: “Our priority is to defeat our present-day enemy: China.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Xi can’t push too hard in Vietnam because that could encourage the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional grouping made up mostly of U.S. allies,to close ranks against him — a process that already seems to be happening. Of the 10 ASEAN members, five of them currently have territorial disputes with China, and relations are strained. In February, Philippines President Benigno Aquino compared China’s territorial push to Nazi Germany’s annexation of the Sudetenland — not a comforting comparison for a country trying to portray its rise as peaceful. The rest of the neighborhood is worried as well. Pew, in a survey of global opinions released July 14, found that “in all 11 Asian nations polled, roughly half or more say they are concerned that territorial disputes between China and its neighbors will lead to a military conflict.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Putin does not face the same constraints, because NATO isn’t what it used to be. The end of the Cold War has left many of its European members apathetic about defense, and only a few maintain defense budgets at the needed levels. The European Union is heavily dependent on energy imports from Russia, while its member nations are deeply divided on policy towards Moscow — divisions that Putin happily exploits. In stark contrast to ASEAN, no EU countries have open territorial disputes with Moscow, so none feel directly threatened. Russia is also building a new, cross-border grouping, the Eurasian Union, from some of its post-Soviet neighbors that will help it to expand its geopolitical reach and may also assist in expanding its control of regional energy resources. Unlike China, Russia has the benefit of neighbors that are mostly well disposed towards it, and the Eurasian Union is designed to reinforce that buffer zone by drawing these countries even closer to Russia. Intentionally or not, the Obama administration has repeatedly signaled that it is far more worried about the long-term strategic risks posed by a rising China than by the activities of Moscow. Earlier this year, Obama dismissed Russia as a “regional power” acting out of weakness– a categorization that clearly doesn’t fit China. The relationship between Washington and Beijing is additionally complicated by the intricate financial ties and the enormous volume of trade between the two countries. Sino-American trade last year totaled $562 billion; trade between Russia and the United States, by contrast, was a paltry $37 billion. Moscow accordingly stands to pay a relatively low cost for indulging in behavior that irks the Americans, while the stakes for China are far higher.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday This also helps explain why Beijing seizes upon every opportunity to proclaim China’s “peaceful rise.” Acting in an aggressive way is far more damaging for China’s interests than for Russia’s. That’s why it’s hard to imagine a commentator on Chinese TV following the lead of Russian commentator Dmitri Kiselev, who has boasted of his country’s ability to transform the United States into “radioactive ash.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday And then there’s the “soft power” conferred by language and culture. Of all the countries surrounding China, Taiwan is the only one with a majority Chinese population or the shared language of Mandarin. Ethnic Chinese communities in the countries surrounding China are wealthy, but small and marginalized. By contrast, the Russian language remains a powerful force in the belt of ex-Soviet countries surrounding Russia, and Moscow has used this advantage to powerful effect, hammering home its claims with the help of state-controlled TV broadcasts far beyond its borders. Putin can use his close cultural ties to Russian minorities in the former countries of the USSR to destabilize any leaders in those nations who express the desire for closer relations with the European Union or NATO (as he has done so effectively in Ukraine). Putin also has far more leeway to indulge in foreign policy brinkmanship. Fourteen years ago, he took over a Russia reeling and weak after the political and economic turmoil of the 1990s. Consolidating power was a matter of taming a few powerful and deeply unpopular business tycoons. His seizure of Crimea has merely served to cement his sky-high popularity ratings among a Russian public exultant over Crimea’s ‘return.’ The political payoff from Putin’s land grab has been enormous. Having long since dispatched his potential rivals, he looks out on a political landscape that is completely under his control. Xi faces a dramatically different dynamic. His government’s popularity among his own people draws less upon a sense of nationalistic grievance than on the material achievements of the past 35 years of economic reform. Seeking confrontation could put that at risk. In office for just under two years, Xi is still spending enormous amounts of time and effort consolidating his position. Especially conspicuous has been his massive corruption crackdown: he has reportedly instituted an unprecedented investigation into former security czar Zhou Yongkang, and is probably carrying out the biggest purge in China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, in decades. These are analogous of Putin’s efforts to tame his oligarch opponents in the early years of this century — putting Xi a decade behind the career of his leading frenemy.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday To be sure, things aren’t necessarily rosy for Putin. Economic growth is already slowing dramatically; a decline in prosperity for the average Russian could wipe out all of that hard-earned patriotic euphoria in short order.As for Xi, he probably has at least eight more years in office — he may yet cast himself in the mold of Mao Zedong. That, however, is unlikely. No matter how many officials he purges, Xi is still bound by the surprisingly stable Communist Party system of collective leadership, put in place over the past few decades to prevent the excesses of Mao’s rule from returning. As a result, Xi is still just “the first among equals” in regards to his six comrades in the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s top decision-making body. In other words, no matter how much he may want to, Xi won’t be stripping off his shirt like the macho Putin anytime soon.

Kidnapped fishermen’s case angers Chinese public

BEIJING — The plight of 28 Chinese fishermen who were kidnapped, robbed, stripped and held for 13 days by North Koreans has inflamed Chinese public opinion, with many Internet users taking to microblogging sites to question the Beijing government’s close relationship with its reclusive ally in Pyongyang. But for the moment, experts and diplomats said, the episode seems unlikely to either shake the alliance or lead Beijing’s Communist authorities to heed Washington’s call to apply more pressure on North Korea to limit its nuclear ambitions. The fishermen, who were in three boats, were seized May 8 in what the vessels’ owners said were Chinese waters. The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not report the incident for several days. Since the fishermen’s release Sunday and their subsequent return to the Chinese port of Dalian, emerging details of their captivity have only intensified the public’s indignation. Wang Lijie, the captain of one of the seized boats, said in an interview Wednesday with The Washington Post that five fishermen remained hospitalized, their legs swollen from beatings received during their captivity. He described the captors as North Korean sailors, who gave the fishermen only grain to eat, stripped them to their underwear, beat them repeatedly and drained their boats of fuel before releasing them. “This is the most horrible memory in my life,” Wang said. “They all wore deep-blue military uniforms, and they had a military flag on their boat. They were the North Korean navy.” Wang said that he had encountered North Koreans in the past who were friendly but that this time, “they were even worse than bandits.” Noting that Pyongyang “is supposed to be a friend of China’s,” he added: “What happened to me this time changed my idea of North Korea completely.” The fishermen’s accounts of mistreatment have also appeared widely in Chinese news media, which describe it as “torture.” Shan Shixian, the owner of one of the boats, said in an interview that the kidnappers initially demanded a ransom of about $65,000 per boat but later just stripped the vessels and the men of everything they had. “They stole about one ton of fish on my boat, a dozen tons of diesel, my boat’s radar, the components, the battery and all the cargo,” Shan said. “Everything on the boat was looted.” “I hate North Korea so much,” he said. “They not only robbed my fishermen, they tortured them. I’d kill them if I ever met any of them.” He added: “They are more like hooligans than the real hooligans. People are all scared.” The sentiments of the captain and the boat owner were echoed even more vociferously on the Twitter-like microblogging site Weibo, which has emerged as China’s sounding board for public opinion. And public opinion has turned decidedly against North Korea, an ally considered so steadfast that Mao Zedong once said the relationship was “as close as lips and teeth.” Some of the vitriol was aimed at the Chinese government. “The anger burned in my heart when I saw this piece of news,” wrote one Internet user, posting under the name The Far Off Time. “North Korea always returns evil for good, and the Chinese government always swallows the humiliation and the anger.” The user added: “It’s all because the Chinese government is too weak. Who would dare do this to American fishermen?! Does the Foreign Affairs Ministry have any use?” Another user, writing under the name Unplugged Cat, wrote: “We raised a dog to watch the door, but were bitten by the crazy dog!” A user named Zhuang Yuance asked, “Why should we shelter this bad neighbor against the will of people in most countries in the world? Will the North Korean people really appreciate us one day?” The kidnapping was one of the hottest trending topics on China’s microblogging sites. That the Chinese government’s normally vigilant censors had allowed the open debate suggested that even Beijing’s leaders were becoming exasperated with Pyongyang. China’s official media, meanwhile, have tried to play down the controversy, noting that all the crew members were eventually released and that no ransom was paid. An article in the Communist Party-owned Global Times newspaper Wednesday carried the headline: “Hype unnecessary over N. Korean sea action.” Despite the online outcry, experts said they do not expect any immediate change in Beijing’s official policy of support for Pyongyang. China provides the destitute and isolated North Korea with most of its fuel, its food aid and its limited foreign investment. North Korea is also trying to crack open its doors to tourism as a source of cash, with the vast majority of tourists coming from China. A U.S. delegation led by Glyn T. Davies, the special envoy for North Korea, visited Beijing this week but left for Tokyo without much apparent progress in persuading China to increase pressure on Pyongyang over its nuclear program. North Korea conducted its second nuclear test in May 2009, and U.S. officials have voiced concern that another test could follow soon. But Shi Yuanhua, director of the Center for Korean Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, said the fishermen’s case may have exacerbated the negative views of North Korea that the Chinese public began to express after the nuclear test, especially online. “Chinese people may have a different attitude toward North Korea than the Chinese government,” he said. “And as Chinese society becomes more and more open, it is not strange that Chinese people will form different opinions on North Korea. It’s a long-term process.” **More world news coverage:** \- 6-nation group meets for Iran nuclear talks \- Egyptians vote in historic presidential election \- In poll, Russians see wide gap between democratic ideals and reality \- Read more headlines from around the world

With China pressing south, U.S. ships return to the Philippines’ Subic Bay

SUBIC BAY, Philippines — The newest bar to grace this former U.S. military base is painted with American flags and shaded by a scaled-down Statue of Liberty. Nearly 25 years ago, Philippine politicians fought to expel U.S. forces stationed here, vowing to “unchain” the country from its former colonial master, promising a future free of girly bars and foreign domination. Now, with Chinese ships cruising just off the coast, the Americans are back, chowing down on chicken tenders and drinking Budweisers served by the Liberty Sports Bar and Grill’s waitresses clad in red, white and blue. Liberty’s owner, Mark Lindsay, 48, set up shop on the dock five months ago, betting that closer military ties between the United States and the Philippines would revive this once-wild port. Since then, he’s seen a steady rise in ships and sailors, with pit stops by U.S. war and supply vessels, an Ohio-class guided-missile submarine and, most recently, a Japanese aircraft carrier on a four-day “goodwill visit.” “The more military the better, the more ships the better,” he said. The U.S. return to Subic is a symbol of the strategic shift sweeping Asia and a flash point heading into the Philippines’ presidential election on Monday. A resurgent China claims nearly all of the South China Sea as its “inherent” territory based on maps with a U-shaped, nine-dash line that scoops deep into exclusive maritime economic zones claimed by the likes of the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia. In recent years, Beijing has built up islands across the area, stacking a growing number of outposts with civilian and military infrastructure. China’s posture is bringing the Philippines and the United States back together. This year, the Philippines moved forward with the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, or EDCA, which allows the U.S. military to build facilities at five Philippine bases and is likely to mean more hardware at Subic Bay, which is now technically a commercial, not a military port. That means U.S. and Chinese ships sailing in close proximity, deepening an already tense and dangerous standoff. For the Philippines, it raises tough questions about how the next administration should balance big powers while protecting Philippine sovereignty and fragile economic gains. “Their challenge is to normalize relations with China in a way that doesn’t look like they are caving in,” said Jay L. Batongbacal, director of the University of the Philippines’ Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea. Subic Bay’s deep, sheltered harbor has long been prized by foreign fleets. The Spanish navy authorized the construction of the Arsenal de Olongapo in the 1880s, and the Americans moved in after the war with Spain in 1898. During the Vietnam War, it was a notoriously raucous “rest and relaxation” hub for millions of U.S. troops. When the United States was pushed out in 1992, China was seen as a foreign-policy pipsqueak, more concerned with bolstering its gross domestic product than gaining a strategic edge. But three years later, Beijing built what it called fishing shelters on Mischief Reef, in the contested Spratly Islands. “When they reclaimed it, we thought what will they do with this?” said Justice Antonio Carpio of the Supreme Court of the Philippines. “Now it’s bigger than some of the cities in the Philippines, with room for air and naval forces.” __In 2012, with Xi Jinping ascendant in Beijing, China and the Philippines were caught in astandoff over the Scarborough Shoal, a cluster of rocks and reefs west of Subic Bay. China eventually seized control of the area, changing the Philippines’ thinking on dealing with Beijing, said Richard Javad Heydarian, an assistant professor of political science at Manila’s De La Salle University. “The Philippines realized we misread this guy; we thought he was Uncle Xi the nice guy, but we learned that Uncle Xi can be even feistier than Uncle Sam.” The return of U.S. troops under EDCA maddens Beijing. “The U.S. military keeps talking about the so-called militarization in the South China Sea,” Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said at a news conference in March. “Maybe they can explain whether their increased military deployment in the South China Sea and nearby areas is an action of militarization or not.” In the wake of the deal — and in the run-up to a ruling by an international tribunal on the South China Sea — U.S. and Philippine military experts increasingly use the term “red line” to discuss the prospect of new Chinese construction on Scarborough Shoal. They refer to it as the “last straw” and worry that China plans to turn the area into a military base. With just days to go before the Philippines picks a new president, the question now is how the next leader will proceed, either sticking with the course charted by President Benigno Aquino III, who compared the People’s Republic to Nazi Germany and has been frozen out by Beijing, or somehow opening the door for better China ties without alienating the Americans. The current front-runner, the tough-talking Rodrigo Duterte, has said he would consider talking to Beijing if the Chinese built a railroad in his home region. He also suggested that he would ride a personal watercraft to the Scarborough Shoal to plant the Philippine flag. Challengers Grace Poe, a rookie senator who spent years living in the United States, and Manuel Roxas II, Aquino’s chosen successor and a Wharton-educated grandson of a former president, have both suggested that they would press ahead with the legal challenge launched by the current administration. “The overall direction looks set,” said Yanmei Xie, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group’s Beijing office. “That means pulling close to the U.S., Japan and other allies, continuing to carry out the arbitration case and trying to compel China to respect the ruling.” In Subic, for now, that means more ships and thirsty sailors — for better and for worse. Those who oppose the sex trade and the violence that often trails it are wary of a U.S. return, remembering the 2014 murder of a transgender woman, Jennifer Laude, by a U.S. Marine. For many others here, the economic benefit of visitors is paramount, and they see boom times ahead for the former base. Said Lindsay, the owner of Liberty: “If China keeps at it, business will be great.”

Kerry spars with China over South China Sea

BEIJING — Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi squared off in talks Saturday over China asserting sovereignty on man-made islands it is creating near heavily trafficked sea lanes in the South China Sea. After a lengthy meeting the two had after Kerry arrived in Beijing, Kerry told reporters he had stressed to Wang that the region needs “smart diplomacy” and “not outposts and military strips” like those Washington suspects Beijing wants to establish on islands it is building from sand dredged from the sea bottom. The United States thinks China is trying to “build sovereignty.” “I urged China, through Foreign Minister Wang, to take actions that will join with everybody to help reduce tensions and increase the prospect of a diplomatic solution,” Kerry told reporters in a news conference. Wang reiterated the Chinese position that “China’s development of some of the islands and reefs . . . falls fully within the scope of China’s sovereignty.” Amid reports that the Pentagon is considering sending ships and planes to expand its patrols near the new islands, Wang said China would act to protect its interests. “We reaffirm the determination of the Chinese side to safeguard our own sovereignty and territorial integrity is as firm as a rock, and it is unshakable,” he said. “It is the request from our people on their government, as well as a legitimate right of ours.” Wang stressed that China is committed to international freedom of navigation that the United States fears may be in jeopardy and to negotiating to settle claims five other nations have to the disputed waters. As for its differences with the United States, Wang added, “It is okay to have differences, as long as we can avoid misunderstanding, and even more importantly, avoid miscalculation.” China’s state-run media has been more blunt about U.S. criticism of the islands. It has portrayed China’s construction of facilities in the South China Sea as part of Beijing’s obligation as the major power in the region to safeguard maritime safety. China has insisted it is primarily interested in building facilities so it can better protect ships from piracy and fishermen during typhoon season, though it has acknowledged they would have some military use as well. In an editorial Thursday, the state-run Global Times said the U.S. threat to expand its patrols near the new islands was a provocation that could turn the South China Sea into “a powder keg.” “It should keep in mind that China is a major power with nuclear weapons, and there is no way that U.S. forces can take reckless actions in the South China Sea,” it said, and added, “Besides, the long-term chaos will eventually deprive the U.S. of its patronage to other countries in the region, which will only be victimized by the war.” The top item on Kerry’s agenda during his two-day visit to Beijing is laying the groundwork for a planned state visit by President Xi Jinping this fall. But his trip coincides with a series of sharp verbal salvos over the South China Sea, which half the merchant ships in the world traverse every year. The tensions stem from a huge land reclamation project that has China aggressively creating islands atop rocks, atolls and submerged reefs. Some of the new islands are large enough to support airstrips and military facilities, and the United States is worried that China, by extending its territorial claims, will also claim exclusive economic zones on the reclaimed islands in areas that are contested by five other nations. “Ultimately, no matter how much sand China piles on top of a submerged reef or shoal, it is not affecting its territorial claim,” said a senior State Department official last week, speaking on the condition of anonymity under agency rules. “You can’t build sovereignty.” The official said that in his talks with top Chinese officials, including Xi, Kerry would stress the “very negative consequences” of China’s assertiveness in the disputed waters on its image, on its relationship with its smaller neighbors that also claim rights in the area where China is building “and potentially on the U.S.-China relationship.” That relationship already shows signs of strain since reports emerged last week that the Pentagon was considering expanding patrols in the South China Sea, venturing within a 12-nautical-mile radius of the islands rising from the sea. Kerry also planned to discuss issues on which Beijing and Washington can cooperate, including climate change and the Iran nuclear talks. As a member of the U.N. Security Council, China is one of the five countries that are negotiating partners with the United States as it seeks a deal that would curb Iran’s nuclear program, although it has not been actively involved in talks. Kerry was to meet Sunday morning with Xi before departing for South Korea. **Read more:** How the South China Sea could help Beijing level the nuclear playing field Beijing's power play in the South China Sea may be killing coral reefs

U.S., China tussle over sea claims

NAYPYIDAW, Burma — The Obama administration insists it isn’t having a contest with China for influence and leadership in Southeast Asia, but both sides were clearly keeping score at a weekend meeting of regional foreign ministers here. China rebuffed a U.S.-backed proposal for a freeze on “provocative acts” in disputed waters of the South China Sea, but U.S. officials still claimed victory in nudging Southeast Asian nations to take a firmer public stand against assertive Chinese behavior. The United States says China has carried out such provocative acts in territorial disputes with the Philippines, Vietnam and others in the South China Sea and in a simmering dispute with Japan in the East China Sea. The disputes have put the region on edge and put the United States on the spot to respond on behalf of allies and partners. China recently announced plans to build lighthouses on five disputed islands in the South China Sea. In Vietnam, there were deadly anti-Chinese riots in May after China installed an oil rig off islands claimed by the country. The Philippines has tried unsuccessfully to bring China before a U.N. tribunal over disputed Chinese maritime operations. Neither the United States nor China belongs to the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), but their shadows loomed large over the gathering in Burma’s inland capital. “There was an extensive discussion, on multiple occasions, about the South China Sea,” Secretary of State John F. Kerry said at the close of the gathering Sunday. “I expressed the concerns of many, which are shared, about the rise in tensions that have occurred.” Kerry said ASEAN diplomats “all underscored the importance of negotiations on a binding code of conduct,” something China has put off indefinitely. “I stressed the importance of everybody clarifying claims under international law and proceeding under the legal process,” Kerry told reporters. “Our hope is that the claimants ultimately can agree among themselves and proceed forward.” Kerry and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met Saturday — Wang complained that Kerry was 30 minutes late — but spent much of the rest of the two days circling one another around the edges of the meeting of diplomats. “It’s no understatement that what happens here matters not just to this region and to the U.S., but it matters to everybody in the world,” Kerry said in introductory remarks to the forum. “That’s why we’re encouraging claimant states to consider voluntarily agreeing to refrain from taking certain actions.” The United States was seeking a united front with China’s Southeast Asian neighbors to put pressure on China to negotiate a “code of conduct” for the waters. The Philippines, with strong U.S. backing, had put forward the “freeze” idea. China’s goal was to head off any strong statements while continuing to assert its claims. Addressing reporters Saturday, Wang rejected Kerry’s call for adjudication based on international law and called the proposal premature. “Any proposal to come up with an alternative would only disrupt discussion of the code of conduct,” Wang said. He turned the tables, saying other nations are provoking China. As a “responsible great power, China is ready to maintain restraint,” Wang said. “But for unreasonable provocative activities, China is bound to make a clear and firm reaction.” A joint statement of the ASEAN members “urged all parties concerned to exercise self-restraint and avoid actions which would complicate the situation and undermine peace, stability and security in the South China Sea.” That was a reference to the territorial and maritime disputes in waters that China claims are almost entirely under its aegis, but the ASEAN statement did not refer to China by name. It urged that disputes be settled “through peaceful means, without resorting to the threat or use of force,” and in accordance with the U.N. Law of the Sea. The statement fell short of U.S. hopes for a stiff declaration that China must reverse course and that disputes must be settled by international arbitration, but U.S. officials claimed a victory. “This language represents a significant setback for China’s efforts to play for time and . . . change the subject,” a senior Obama administration official said. “It’s a criticism of Chinese behavior, and it puts an enormous amount of pressure on the Chinese and signals to them that its relations with countries in the region are deteriorating.” China has a close relationship with a few of the 10 ASEAN states, while others maintain wary partnerships with their much larger and more powerful neighbor. The Philippines has gone furthest in challenging China, with American encouragement, and has suffered Chinese trade reprisals as a consequence. The meeting setting in Burma is itself symbolic of the rivalry for influence. The sterile and largely empty streets of Naypyidaw are lined with buildings built by China, long Burma’s main benefactor until the former military junta in Burma distanced itself from China four years ago. Burma, also known as Myanmar, now courts U.S. business and has adopted reform measures in exchange for a reduction in most U.S. economic sanctions. U.S. officials are sensitive to the perception of a superpower struggle and sought to play it down Sunday. Two officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe Kerry’s closed-door meetings denied that the two powers are trying to line up partisans at ASEAN. “This is not a showdown,” a senior State Department official said Sunday. “This is a serious discussion of the pressing issues.” China’s Wang said tensions are being overstated. “Someone has been exaggerating or even playing up the so-called tension in the South China Sea,” Wang said. “We do not agree with such a practice, and we call for vigilance in the motives behind them.”

China: Disregard the South China Sea ruling. The Philippines: No.

On Tuesday, the Filipino foreign minister, Perfecto Yasay, went public with an account of their conversation, telling ABS-CBN, a local news channel, that China offered conditional talks. "[China's foreign minister] had asked us to open ourselves for bilateral negotiations but outside, or [in] disregard of, the arbitral ruling," Yasay told the cameras. "This is something I told him was not consistent with our constitution and our national interest." The Chinese side did not like that answer, according to Yasay. "They said that if you insist on the ruling and discussing it along those lines, then we might be headed for a confrontation," he said. Although Beijing has yet to comment on the exchange, they've spent the last seven days making their displeasure and defiance clear. In the decision issued July 12, the tribunal found there was no legal or historical basis for China's claims to most of the South China Sea. It also found that China violated the Philippines’ sovereign rights by constructing artificial islands. Beijing dismissed the decision as a piece of "trash paper."  After days of aggressive editorials, China this week began what it said will become regular military air patrols over he South China Sea. Xinhua, a party-controlled newswire, said Monday that China's air force "recently" flew an air combat patrol over the Scarborough Shoal, a disputed fishing ground not far from the Philippine coast. Photographs released by the news agency show a Chinese H-6K bomber cruising high above a submerged shoal in azure sea. China seized controlled of Scarborough Shoal in 2012, and its coast guard has since angered Manila by chasing out Filipino fishermen. The Permanent Court of Arbitration last week ruled that barring Filipinos from the shoal violated "traditional fishing rights."  The air patrol announcement coincided with a meeting between the commander of China's navy, Wu Shengli, and U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson, which ended with more stern words from the Chinese.  It is not clear why Yasay decided to go public on a Chinese offer made on the sidelines of an event. In the run-up to the Asia-Europe summit, which took place in Mongolia last week, a senior Chinese diplomat said the Philippines' case would absolutely not be discussed. "The ASEM leaders' summit is not a suitable place to discuss the South China Sea. There are no plans to discuss it there on the agenda for the meeting. And it should not be put on the agenda," Kong Xuanyou, assistant foreign minister, told the press. Yasay's comments seem to defy that sentiment, but he insisted there is still room for negotiation. "I really honestly feel that this is something they have to make on a public basis but I also sensed there was room for us to talk very quietly using backdoor channeling" — a very public call for private talks.

A Beijing power play in the South China Sea is met with U.S. inaction

WITH A $1 billion oil rig the size of a football field, China has literally laid down a new marker in its ambition to dominate the South China Sea — and challenged President Obama’s “rebalancing” policy in Asia, only weeks after the president’s tour of the region. The rig is about 130 miles off the coast of Vietnam, in waters that Vietnam claims as an exclusive economic zone under international law. China’s claim is more tenuous, but it is backed up with a flotilla of some 80 ships that for a week have engaged in a dangerous contest of ramming and water-hosing Vietnamese vessels. The message of the deployment is as simple as it is provocative: The regime of Xi Jinping intends to unilaterally assert China’s sovereignty over almost all of the South China Sea without regard for the competing claims of five other countries or Mr. Obama’s newly restated commitment to uphold defense agreements with two of those nations. In that sense, the rig, like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is a fundamental challenge to the international order the United States has tried to preserve since the end of the Cold War. China’s ambitions are described by an audacious map, dating from the pre- Communist era, that claims some 80 percent of the South China Sea and a number of island chains or waters also claimed by Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, Brunei and Indonesia, in addition to Vietnam. For years Beijing has talked with those countries and others in Southeast Asia about establishing a code of conduct for the sea, and it discussed the possibility of joint development of oil and gas with Vietnam a few months ago. The move of the oil rig appears to reflect a calculation that a more aggressive policy will not meet meaningful resistance from China’s neighbors or the United States. The target of the initiative, Vietnam, is particularly vulnerable, as it lacks strong military ties with Washington and is ruled by a Communist Party with a strong, pro-Chinese faction. The Vietnamese leadership has responded rather vigorously: In addition to the several dozen ships that are sparring with China’s near the rig, the regime allowed anti-Chinese demonstrations in Hanoi on Sunday, and its prime minister condemned China at a summit meeting of Southeast Asian nations. China’s neighbors, however, predictably declined to take sides, issuing a communique that expressed “serious concerns” about “ongoing developments” without mentioning China. The Obama administration, for its part, issued a statement saying China’s action was “provocative” and “part of a broader pattern” to “advance its claims over disputed territory in a manner that undermines peace and stability in the region.” But the U.S. response is not likely to extend beyond rhetoric; a State Department official said in Hanoi last week that the administration took no position on the competing territorial claims. Vietnam and the Philippines could bring a case against China at an international tribunal under the Law of the Sea treaty. But Beijing is likely to shrug off that form of pressure. Most likely it will continue to act unilaterally in the region until it meets concerted resistance, whether diplomatic or military. If the United States and its allies have a plan for that, it isn’t evident. **Read more on this topic:** Fred Hiatt: Rocky waters between China and Japan could buffet America David Ignatius: China’s assertiveness leaves its neighbors anxious Fareed Zakaria: Southeast Asia ponders what is going on in China The Post’s View: China must rescind its air zone over disputed islands

Philippines broadens claims of Chinese reach into disputed South China Sea

BEIJING — The Philippines released photos Wednesday purporting to show Chinese boats near a shoal in the South China Sea, claiming that the presence of new ships in the area could signal another attempt by Beijing to build in disputed fishing grounds. The outcry could exacerbate tensions during a summit of U.S. and Southeast Asian leaders in Laos over China’s reach into the South China Sea, where Beijing has already constructed artificial islands and other facilities that the West and allies fear could be used as a military foothold in the region. China claims sovereignty over the sea, which borders the Philippines and several other nations that have challenged Beijing’s push in the area. The United States also has raised concerns about possible Chinese attempts to limit fishing rights and shipping lanes. In July, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled against China’s assertion of control over the South China Sea. China has refused to recognize the ruling. The latest move by the Philippines came two days after its Defense Ministry expressed “grave concern” about a larger-than-normal number of ships in the area, and just hours before U.S., Chinese and Southeast Asian leaders met for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit. The pictures from Scarborough Shoal may add a new dimension to an already awkward summit. Before it began, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte used the Tagalog term for “son of a whore” in railing against President Obama and perceived American interference in Philippine affairs. Obama then canceled a meeting with Duterte. Scarborough Shoal, a triangular chain of reefs and rocks in rich fishing grounds, lies about 120 miles west of Subic Bay, the site of a former U.S. naval base that American ships, planes and Marines have resumed using in recent years. So far this week, China has tried to downplay the Philippine claims. Asked Monday about the presence of new Chinese ships, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman in Beijing said there has been no change in China’s policy or posture and urged reporters not to “hype” the matter. But observers in Philippines and beyond say it is hard to ignore what could be a move to strengthen China’s presence in the area. “These pictures are extremely alarming, lending credence to reports by sources in China indicating that Beijing was planning to build facilities in the Scarborough Shoal,” said Richard Javad Heydarian, an assistant professor of political science at Manila’s De La Salle University. “If China indeed pushes ahead with actual construction, it could lead to collapse in burgeoning negotiations between the Duterte administration and Beijing." The Philippine Defense Ministry said the vessels included Chinese coast guard ships, barges that could be used for dredging, and potential “troop carriers.” But experts said they could not determine from the photos alone what they Chinese ships can do — or why China may have sent them. “It’s hard to draw any conclusion yet,” said Yanmei Xie, a Beijing-based analyst at the International Crisis Group, "But I'd be skeptical that China would choose to start dredging while the G-20 is ongoing and on the eve of the ASEAN summit." “It looks like a mixture of coast guard ships and fishing vessels — hardly the precursor of a massive reclamation project,” said Ian Storey, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. But Storey said Duterte could be put in a difficult spot. “As only America can help the Philippines push back against China and protect its maritime claims, Duterte may well come to regret insulting President Obama," he added.

U.S. ramps up military presence in Philippines, starts joint patrols in South China Sea

BEIJING — The United States announced Thursday it has started joint patrols with the Philippines in the disputed waters of the South China Sea and is ramping up its military presence in the area, a move that China immediately denounced as “Cold War thinking.” In Manila, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said the first two patrols took place in March and April and that missions would continue on a regular basis. The deployment comes amid growing concerns about Chinese reach in the strategically and economically important waters of the South China Sea, which borders the Philippines, Vietnam and several other nations. Beijing has built artificial islands and runways on seven disputed reefs, raising fears that China could seek new military outposts in the region. The latest U.S. moves are certain to boost tensions. “Countries across the Asia-Pacific are voicing concern with China’s land reclamation, which stands out in size and scope, as well as its militarization in the South China Sea,” Carter told reporters, according to Reuters news agency. Carter said he will be visiting the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis in the South China Sea on Friday. About 300 U.S. troops, including Air Force crews with combat aircraft and helicopters, will stay in the Philippines through the end of the month. They are among a contingent already taking part in 11 days of combat exercises, the Associated Press reported. Troops and military equipment will also be sent on regular rotations to the Philippines. China, in turn, accuses the United States of militarizing the region as part of President Obama’s strategic rebalance to Asia. It has also pointed to a 2011 deal to station Marines in Darwin, Australia, and a recent announcement allowing U.S. troops access to five bases in the Philippines. “Reinforcing a military alliance is a sign of Cold War thinking, and it runs against the trend of this era — peace, development, cooperation and win-win,” the Ministry of National Defense told China Daily in response to the latest news. Tensions between China and the Philippines have been steadily building ahead of a ruling expected soon from an international tribunal in The Hague on the South China Sea dispute. The government in Manila initiated proceedings after China seized control of Scarborough Shoal in the Spratly Islands in 2012. China says that it will not recognize the tribunal’s decision and that all disputes must be settled bilaterally. The Philippine government worries that China could begin a new program of land reclamation and building on the shoal, which lies 145 miles west of the Philippines and 620 miles from the Chinese coast. The Philippines’ ambassador to Washington, Jose L. Cuisia Jr., recently appealed for U.S. help to block any Chinese expansion. While the United States insists its growing support for allies in the Asia- Pacific region is not aimed at any one nation, officials have openly expressed concerns over Beijing’s actions in the area. Adm. Harry Harris Jr. told Congress in February that China aimed to achieve regional “hegemony.” Last week, the Pentagon announced $40 million in military assistance to the Philippines to beef up intelligence sharing, surveillance and naval patrols. China has built airstrips and appears to be building a sophisticated military radar system in the Spratlys. It also stationed surface-to-air missiles and fighter jets in the Paracel Islands — a separate chain over which China has enjoyed full control since a 1974 naval battle with Vietnam but whose sovereignty Hanoi still bitterly contests. China says those deployments are only for defensive purposes on its sovereign territory. It also argues that the United States did not complain when the Philippines and Vietnam reclaimed land or built airstrips in the South China Sea in the past. Beijing reacted furiously this week to reports that the Philippines was upgrading its own airstrip in the Spratlys, accusing it of hypocrisy and trying to extend its “illegal” occupation. In a testy exchange with reporters in Washington on Tuesday, State Department spokesman Mark Toner appeared reluctant to criticize Manila for its actions, pleading that he did not have details. China also asserts that U.S. “interference” is destabilizing the region and warns that U.S. cooperation with the Philippines should not target a “third party.” “I also want to mention that the U.S. military has kept talking about the so- called militarization in the South China Sea,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a typical comment last month. “Maybe they can explain whether their increased military deployment in the South China Sea and nearby areas is an action of militarization or not?” Chen Xiangmiao, a researcher at the National Institute for South China Sea Studies on China’s southern island of Hainan, said the latest U.S. move was expected but could inflame tensions if the patrols and the increased military presence are viewed as pressuring China. “The United States should not just do things on impulse, which will cause strong resistance from the public in China and distrust among decision-makers here,” he said. “The distrust between the two may get deeper, and the conflicts will rise in a spiral.” Gu Jinglu contributed to this report.

China’s rise and Asian tensions send U.S. relations into downward spiral

BEIJING — Hundreds of rocky islands, islets, sandbanks, reefs and cays lie scattered across Asia’s eastern waters, unimportant-looking to the naked eye but significant enough to spark what may be the most worrying deterioration in U.S.-China relations in decades. China’s military rise, and its increasingly assertive claims to sovereignty over these largely uninhabited lumps of rock, coral and sand, have set it on a possible collision course with its neighbors, which also make various claims on the archipelagos, and with the United States, which has important alliances with three of the rival claimants and would be obliged to defend them in the event of an attack. As Chinese and Vietnamese ships ram each other in the contested waters, and Chinese and Japanese fighter jets play games of chicken in Asia’s disputed skies, the risk of military escalation is growing. Even more significantly, the standoff is generating bad blood between Washington and Beijing and could torpedo cooperation on important global issues, including the Middle East, climate change and nuclear proliferation. Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will visit Beijing on Wednesday and Thursday for the sixth annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue. And while Washington has been focused more on Iraq, Syria, Ukraine and Russia, some say the U.S.-China relationship is facing its stiffest test since President Richard M. Nixon traveled to Mao Zedong’s China in 1972. “U.S.-China relations are worse than they have been since the normalization of relations, and East Asia today is less stable than at any time since the end of the Cold War,” said Robert Ross, a political science professor at Boston College and associate of Harvard’s John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. The Obama administration’s foreign policy rebalance, or   “pivot,” to Asia has been widely interpreted in China as an attempt to contain its rise. U.S. efforts to bolster ties with regional states such as Vietnam and to reassure nervous Asian allies such as Japan and the Philippines that it stands ready to defend them militarily have created a new narrative in Beijing — that the United States has encouraged China’s neighbors to push their territorial claims more aggressively. “It is clear that the disputes are between two sides, but the United States is taking sides, and it is not impartial,” Adm. Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of the general staff of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, said in an interview. In Washington, a rival narrative is taking hold: that China is intent on pushing its territorial claims through the threat of military force and that it ultimately wants to push the United States out of Asia. There have been more intense crises in U.S.-China relations, including the fallout from the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy protesters, but none, perhaps, as fundamental and structural as this. In November, China spooked its neighbors by announcing an air defense identification zone over the East China Sea, including over islands administered by Japan. In March, the Chinese coast guard tried to block Philippine vessels from resupplying soldiers stationed on the disputed Second Thomas Shoal. Two months later, it deployed a $1 billion deep-sea oil drilling rig into disputed waters off the Vietnamese coast. It has also been building artificial islands in the South China Sea that U.S. officials say are meant to enhance its stance on sovereignty. China says it has historical claims to a huge swath of the South China Sea, but its recent assertiveness has puzzled experts, appearing to undermine last year’s efforts to promote a more cooperative, development-focused relationship with its neighbors. Some argue that President Xi Jinping may see external threats as useful in ushering in tough reforms, including of the military; others say that China is simply baring its fangs as it seeks to build a new Asian order in which it, not the United States, is the major player in the region. Most agree, though, that China is asserting itself partly because it now possesses a modern deep-water navy and professional coast guard. Whatever the reason, China’s rise has left the United States caught between its commitments to allies and its desire to maintain a constructive relationship with China. In recent months, it has seemed to emphasize the former, sending B-52 bombers to fly through China’s air defense zone and threatening to reevaluate its military posture in Asia if China extends the zone to the South China Sea. In April, President Obama visited U.S. allies Japan, South Korea and the Philippines in a trip that pointedly excluded China. While in Japan, he became the first president to explicitly say that the U.S. defense treaty covered islands administered by Japan. In the Philippines, he signed a new 10-year defense agreement. There has been an equal and opposite reaction from Beijing. When U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel implicitly accused China in May of “intimidation, coercion or the threat of force” in asserting its territorial claims and warned that the United States “will not look the other way when fundamental principles of the international order are being challenged,” Lt. Gen. Wang Guanzhong called Hagel’s comments “excessive” and “suffused with hegemony, incitement, threats and intimidation,” China Central Television reported. Daniel Russel, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, argues that the blunt exchanges between the countries could be beneficial. “It is an indication of health, I believe, that we are able to be so direct with China, without fearing that we are tanking the relationship or the prospects for cooperation,” he said in an interview. “We do not pull our punches, but at the same time, we are working hand in hand in China wherever we can.” Some critics say that the United States should have been more assertive in forging closer economic links with Asia through a Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and with China through a bilateral investment treaty. “We need a lot more weight on the economic side, because that’s what keeps your relationship from tipping into a Cold War relationship,” said Christopher Johnson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Also fueling China’s adventurism is a feeling among some Chinese officials that the United States is inconsistent and lacks resolve. They point to the administration’s unwillingness to punish Syria for using chemical weapons and its failure to prevent the Russian move into Crimea as showing it to be a “paper tiger,” said Johnson, the CIA’s former top China analyst, who is in regular contact with Chinese officials. “They believe Obama is fundamentally weak and disinterested,” he said. But, Johnson added, Beijing would be wrong to underestimate the U.S. commitment to defend Asia. “America is a sleeping giant,” he said, “and if you prod us too hard, we are going to mobilize.” Either way, foreign policy experts agree that the relationship deserves much more attention than it is getting. Kerry is widely seen as more interested in the Middle East, while national security adviser Susan E. Rice has yet to visit Beijing, leaving China policy without a sufficiently senior voice in Washington. Meanwhile, Obama’s refusal to visit China for a return version of last year’s Sunnylands summit in California with Xi has also “personally irritated” his Chinese counterpart, Johnson said — although he is scheduled to visit Beijing for an Asia-Pacific summit in November. With that visit, at least, and with this week’s Strategic and Economic Dialogue, the administration has a chance to focus minds on one of its most serious foreign policy challenges, experts say. “Summits,” said Ross, of Boston College, “have the value of making presidents pay attention.” Gu Jinglu contributed to this report.

How the South China Sea could help Beijing level the nuclear playing field

HAIKOU, China -- The dispute over the South China Sea is about fish, oil, gas, freedom of navigation and, to a very large extent, assertions of national pride. But there could be another element as well, one that makes the sea especially crucial to China and has nothing to do with the rival claimants.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Here on Hainan Island, on the northern edge of the sea, China bases its nuclear submarines, including the four equipped to launch ballistic missiles. China's problem is that it is hemmed in. Its coastline consists of the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, and the South China Sea -- which means its only access to the Pacific and beyond is through relatively narrow straits bordered by Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia or Indonesia. [ _Tensions rise between Washington and Beijing over man-made islands_ ]    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Brad Glosserman, of the Honolulu office of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, suggests that one reason China is promoting its claim to most of the land features in the South China Sea against its most vocal rivals -- Vietnam and the Philippines -- is a desire to push the U.S. Navy out of the area. Even before this week's news about the American proposal to sharply step up naval patrols around the artificial islands China is constructing in the sea, American vessels and planes have been regularly tracking the subs, something that China is not at all happy about. China is "most concerned" about U.S. intelligence gathering in the South China Sea, Wu Shicun, president of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies here, told a group of foreign journalists Wednesday. The journalists were on a tour sponsored by the East-West Center of Hawaii. If Beijing could effectively keep the reconnaissance at bay by establishing its sovereignty over most of the sea at the expense of its neighbors, Glosserman says, that would clear the way for the subs to ease out into the Pacific without being so obvious about it. For the record, Chinese defense and foreign affairs officials say China has no intention of restricting navigation or overflights, as long as they are conducted "in accordance with international law." But Zhou Bo, a senior colonel at the defense ministry's foreign affairs office, said Tuesday that that would still leave China and the United States at loggerheads because they interpret international law on the matter quite differently. There is, in any case, another way of looking at the submarine factor. Nuclear submarines are intended as a deterrent to nuclear war. China's subs have no practical value in its disputes with Vietnam and the Philippines. Almost the only reason to have them is to deter an American attack. (India's nuclear weapons are also a consideration for Beijing.) Submarines are less vulnerable than land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles or nuclear bombers -- and that makes them the most valuable leg of any nation's deterrent arsenal. China's problem is this: Its nuclear subs are too noisy to avoid detection. So China has to figure out an operational routine, even in peacetime, that makes sense. The boats can't spend all their time in port, because any sudden deployment in a crisis would tip China's hand. They can't cruise the high seas, because the United States military would be able to follow their every move. Tong Zhao, an analyst at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing, thinks China may have decided on a "bastion" policy, with the South China Sea as the bastion. If by enforcing its claims to sovereignty Beijing could turn the sea essentially into a Chinese lake, guarded by surface vessels and aircraft, and that would give the subs some protected room to maneuver, Zhao says. It's akin to a Cold War Soviet strategy, but with a few key differences. The Soviets could put their subs in the remote seas that border the Arctic Ocean, where they could take advantage of the ice cover, and where there was no commercial shipping to get in the way. The South China Sea, in contrast, carries 80 percent of China's overseas trade, and as much as half of all global tanker shipments. It is bordered by less than obedient neighbors, which are quite happy to host American and Indian naval operations. Denying access to the U.S. and other navies would require, as the Soviets found, an expensive deployment of conventional surface ships. And, in a place like the busy South China Sea, that would only increase the chances of a confrontation between conventional forces, Zhao says. "All in all, the South China Sea is becoming increasingly crowded." American navy officials say that, as important as the Chinese submarine fleet is to Beijing, they don't think it's the principal driver of Chinese policy in the South China Sea. Their Chinese counterparts would appear to agree. It's not about strategic considerations, Capt. Tian Shichen, of the defense ministry's information office, told the visiting journalists Tuesday. "It's our own territory. We need to defend it." And it doesn't get any more complicated than that, he said, as much as China's neighbors might dispute the assertion. **Related on WorldViews**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico How China is killing coral reefs to build up its power in the South China Sea    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Satellite photos of new Chinese airfields and artificial islands in the South China Sea    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Japan says China aimed military radar at Japanese ship near disputed islands

SEOUL — A Chinese military vessel last week locked its weapons-targeting radar on a Japanese warship, Japan’s Ministry of Defense said Tuesday, marking a brief but dangerous escalation in the showdown over maritime territory between Asia’s two largest economies. The Chinese ship eventually unlocked its radar without firing a shot, the ministry said, but the alleged incident underscores how the neighbors — wrangling over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea — are just one mistake away from potential armed conflict. On Tuesday, Japan lodged a protest with the Chinese government over the incident, which it said took place near the contested islands that Japan calls Senkaku and China calls Diaoyu. “Beaming of radar for firing is very abnormal, and it could have put us in a very grave situation if things went wrong,” Japan’s defense minister, Itsunori Onodera, told reporters, according to the Kyodo news agency. He added that in January, a Chinese ship targeted a Japanese helicopter in the same manner. The two incidents mark the first times during the six-month maritime standoff that China has supposedly used such radar on Japanese ships or aircraft. According to Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper, which cited Japanese Defense Ministry officials, the Chinese vessel and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship were less than two miles apart when the radar was used. Although Tokyo and Beijing have long been at odds over the rocky chain of remote islands — the countries have competing narratives about decades- and centuries-old claims — tensions spiked in September when Japan bought three of the islands from a private landowner. Previously, Japan rented and controlled the islands, although China and Taiwan also staked claims. Since the purchase, relations between China and Japan have hit their lowest point in decades. China has steadily increased its surveillance of the waters around the islands; incursions into Japanese territory, once rare, now occur almost daily. More recently, China has been sending aircraft to the area, and on one occasion, China and Japan scrambled fighter jets in a game of cat-and-mouse. Both governments, hemmed in by nationalism, are limited in their ability to calm the situation, security analysts in Asia say. China’s government describes its right to the islands as an “undeniable fact backed up by historical records,” and analysts say Beijing is pressing Tokyo to acknowledge that the territory is up for grabs. Japanese officials refuse to admit that a territorial dispute even exists; they say the islands are an “inherent” part of Japan, based on “historical facts,” according to a Foreign Ministry statement. Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, said several days ago that there is “no room for negotiations” over the islands, but he did raise the prospect of a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Ash Carter, the South China Sea and Teddy Roosevelt

The Wall Street Journal reported:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico No one was happier than the Republican senators who have been urging the United States to match its words with deeds. For months senators had been waiting and urging the administration to demonstrate its commitment to protecting open navigation in the South China Sea. Last week the White House _finally_ authorized a patrol within 12 nautical miles of one of the artificial reefs China has constructed in an attempt to lay claim to the waters. Reuters reported:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Just hours after reports of the belated patrol came to light, Carter happened to be testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC). Asked about the effort, Carter shied away from confirming that yes, in accordance with U.S. policy, it had sent a patrol establishing that these are international waters, not China’s domain. In almost comical fashion, Sens. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) tried to get Carter to admit the U.S. had, for once, acted consistently and with the bipartisan support of the Senate. Obviously uncomfortable — caught between the senators seeking reaffirmation of our policy and the White House trying to do as little as possible — Carter deflected their questions as best he could.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Ironically, this is one area where there has been little partisan bickering. Democrats and Republicans have been supportive of efforts to reassure allies and to restrain China’s ambitions. In a phone interview, Sullivan remarked that U.S. foreign policy works best “when the executive and legislative branch are on the same page.” Sullivan argued that one of the most serious problems is “the loss of credibility. We say things and don’t act.” Here, when the administration finally acted with bipartisan encouragement, it then muffed an opportunity to publicly show solidarity with allies and explain our policy. Sullivan and others on the SASC are concerned this single patrol is all the administration will do. “What is important is that we do it again so it becomes routine,” he explained. “And next time we might have an ally with us.” As for Carter’s trip on the Theodore Roosevelt, Sullivan said it was an important statement that “is not lost” on China or our allies. Amid all the partisan fighting, the SASC under McCain’s chairmanship has functioned well. In a series of high-profile hearings examining the complex web of threats we are facing, Sullivan points out that questions flow seamlessly regardless of party affiliation, with Democrats following up on Republicans’ questions and vice versa. There is general agreement that we have a gap between serious international threats and a sufficiently funded and modernized military. The fly in the ointment is more often than not the White House, as when it vetoed a bipartisan, overwhelmingly popular defense authorization bill. Likewise, both Republicans and Democrats have publicly expressed frustration with a lack of coherent policy in fighting the Islamic State. Although frustrating to deal with a White House that has to be dragged kicking and screaming to do the right thing (and then call it quits), senators of both parties under a new president, Democratic or Republican, should find some common ground, as they have in examination of force structure and modernization. “I think Congress has played a useful role,” Sullivan said. “We will continue to play an oversight role.” Now all we need is a serious and competent commander in chief who appreciates the multiplicity of threats and the need for U.S. leadership, which ultimately rests on the power of the U.S. military. For that we will need to wait until January 2017.

China issues video of aerial games of chicken — and maritime collisions — in Asia’s seas

BEIJING — Temperatures are rising in Asia’s oceans as China and its rivals Japan and Vietnam engage in perilous airborne games of chicken and crude maritime shows of strength as they try to enforce their claims to contested waters and islands. This week, China took its beef with its neighbors to the court of international opinion, issuing fresh video that purports to show Japanese fighters flying dangerously close to a Chinese fighter over the disputed waters of the East China Sea, and Vietnamese ships ramming Chinese boats in the South China Sea. The release of the video footage was, Beijing said, a response to accusations — from Japan, that Chinese planes were responsible for the latest bout of aerial brinkmanship, and from Vietnam, that Chinese boats had been ramming their ships and had actually sunk a fishing trawler last month. In the video below, filmed Wednesday and released Thursday, China says a Japanese fighter approaches to within 100 feet of a Chinese plane. China’s Defense Ministry described Tokyo’s attempt to blame Beijing for the incident as a “vile” attempt to smear the image of China’s military and “turn black into white.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday The tension with Japan is particularly worrying, security experts say, posing the risk that an aerial collision could spark an escalation of military tensions between the powerful Asian rivals. “When you are down to 100 feet, and flying a supersonic jet, bad things can happen,” said Chris Johnson of the Center for Strategic International Studies in Washington, adding that the ability of both sides to de-escalate in the event of an accident is complicated by the fraught nature of their relations and “the absence of any solid back channel” for negotiations. Indeed, this is exactly the concern that the U.S. government expressed when it objected to China’s decision last year to unilaterally declare an Air Defense Identification Zone over large swaths of the East China Sea, including over islands administered by Japan.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Japan says it scrambled fighters against Chinese planes 415 times in the year that ended in March, an increase of 36 percent on the year, while in waters near the disputed island chain, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, patrol ships from both countries have regularly been playing cat-and-mouse. Meanwhile, tensions with Vietnam have also risen alarmingly since China towed an oil rig into disputed waters, setting off riots in Vietnam that caused several deaths.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday The video below, released Friday, purports to show Chinese ships being rammed by Vietnamese vessels in the South China Sea last month. China says Vietnamese boats have rammed their vessels 1,547 times since the stand-off began. Here is one of several Vietnamese videos released earlier that appear to show Chinese vessels doing the ramming, in this case targeting Vietnamese police vessels. It was released by Vietnam's Foreign Affairs Ministry on June 5: Another video, broadcast by Vietnam Television (VTV) recently, shows a Vietnamese fishing boat sinking after it was hit by what was allegedly a Chinese vessel. Johnson said the reported presence of Chinese naval vessels in some of these incidents, “in the middle of the scrum, rather than over the horizon,” also represented another dangerous escalation of tensions, “because when you put stuff with guns in a small space, accidents happen.” But China denied Vietnamese accusations that its naval ships have been involved in the clashes. China and Vietnam are both one-party states, which to some degree use nationalism to bolster the internal legitimacy of the Communist Party, making it harder for either side to climb down at the risk of appearing weak, experts point out.

The tougher U.S. stance in the South China Sea could make it a crisis zone

SINGAPORE The United States appears to be moving toward a military test of China’s claims of sovereignty in disputed areas of the South China Sea, and officials here seem pleased that President Obama is prepared to put more muscle into his famous “pivot” to Asia. The United States has been briefing Asian allies about its new readiness to assert “freedom of navigation” by sending ships within the 12-mile limits that China has placed around its newly reclaimed “islands.” Adm. John Richardson, the new chief of naval operations, said in Tokyo a week ago that U.S. warships will be “just steaming in international waters,” and that this shouldn’t be seen by Beijing as “provocative.” Since ducking a confrontation with China over the disputed islands since 2012, the administration has decided to take a tougher stance. “The United States will continue to sail, fly and operate anywhere that international law allows,” Obama said at a news conference with President Xi Jinping during the Chinese leader’s visit to Washington last month. Xi insisted that China won’t militarize the islands. What will China do as U.S. warships sail past the maritime limits Beijing claims? Its foreign ministry warned that “there is no way for us to condone infringement of China’s territorial sea.” But officials here expect that the Chinese will do no more than shadow U.S. vessels, and perhaps attempt to block their passage, rather than open fire. The maritime game of chicken that’s looming could easily escalate out of control. So the United States and China would be wise to agree on clearer rules for dealing with incidents at sea, before vessels actually come into contact. Superpowers shouldn’t make “invidious premature choices,” warned Bilahari Kausikan , a Singapore ambassador-at- large and former top official of the foreign ministry. Southeast Asian leaders, who have been worried that Obama has been too passive about China’s island grab, appear relieved. They want Washington to follow through on the logic of the pivot, which was that U.S. military focus should shift from the Middle East, where it has been bogged down in seemingly unwinnable wars, to Asia, where many believe the United States’ economic future lies. “America has been distracted,” a former top Singapore official said. “There’s been a lack of focus on Asia. If America had been more alert, the Chinese could not have moved in the South China Sea. They’re opportunists. They will continue to push until they hit a wall.” Southeast Asian leaders were pleased when administration officials began talking about the pivot back in November 2011. But they have been disappointed at the lack of follow-through, which some say encouraged the Chinese to press ahead with their reclamation of reefs in the South China Sea, turning them into artificial islands where the Chinese could assert sovereignty and eventually build military bases. The Chinese concluded several years ago that the Obama administration “would talk but do nothing” about the disputed islands, a senior Singapore official said. The official speculated that the Chinese may have been “rushing” to construct the islands because they feared that the next U.S. president would have a more “robust” stance than Obama. The debate here about checking Chinese power in Asia has a different (and more positive) tone than the relentless Washington focus on Russia and the Middle East. Officials here see the Middle East as an unfortunate diversion from the more important challenge of a rising China. Obama would probably say the same thing. Kausikan said he’s not worried about a U.S. retreat from the Middle East. “ ‘Offshore balancer’ is fine,” he said, using the term foreign-policy experts use to describe a less engaged U.S. military strategy in the Middle East. “When you tried to be an onshore balancer, you [messed] it up royally,” he said, referring to the Iraq war. “Now you are finding a new equilibrium. And you are part of Asia, inextricably.” Talking with Southeast Asian officials is the foreign policy equivalent of changing the channel. The Middle East is a continuing demonstration of the limits of U.S. military power, and antipathy toward its use. But in the Pacific region, countries invite that same U.S. power to check China’s bid for regional dominance. The common theme, perhaps, is that nations want the United States to fight their wars, until they go bad. “We speak of the U.S. as a ‘benign hegemon,’ ” said Chan Heng Chee, Singapore’s former ambassador to Washington. Have you ever heard that phrase applied to the U.S. role in the Middle East? _Read more fromDavid Ignatius’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook._ **Read more on this issue:** The Post’s View: China should tread carefully in the South China Sea The Post’s View: A ‘Great Wall of Sand’ in the South China Sea The Post’s View: It’s time to get tough on China and President Xi Fareed Zakaria: Whatever happened to Obama’s pivot to Asia? Tom Donilon: Obama is on the right course with the pivot to Asia

China bristles at ‘irresponsible’ U.S. flight near disputed islands

BEIJING — China accused the United States on Friday of “very irresponsible” and potentially dangerous actions after a U.S. surveillance plane flew near disputed islands in the South China Sea and was warned off by the Chinese navy this week. On Wednesday, a P-8A Poseidon aircraft passed near the disputed Spratly Islands and viewed huge Chinese land-reclamation operations in the vicinity. The plane was told to leave eight times by the Chinese navy, according to a CNN team aboard the plane. Experts said China appears to be trying to create a military exclusion zone around the islands, a move that could heighten regional tensions. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the U.S. plane’s flight represented “a potential threat to the security of the Chinese island and reef,” adding that such actions could easily lead to an accident. “It is very irresponsible and also very dangerous,” he said at a routine news conference Friday. “It undermines regional peace and security. China expresses strong dissatisfaction.” China claims sovereignty over more than 80 percent of the South China Sea. Rival claimants to islands and reefs in the area — set amid fertile fishing grounds and potentially oil- and gas-rich waters — include the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei. In the Spratly Islands, China has been engaged in an extensive program of land reclamation and construction, including building artificial islands. When the U.S. plane approached the area this week, it was told to leave. “Foreign military aircraft. This is Chinese navy. You are approaching our military alert zone. Leave immediately,” a radio operator reportedly told the aircraft, later bluntly instructing: “Go, go.” After each warning, the U.S. pilots responded that the P-8A was flying through international airspace, according to the CNN team. The Philippines says similar warnings have been delivered to its military aircraft in the past three months, suggesting that China is trying to exclude foreign military planes from the area. Hong urged the United States to refrain from risky and provocative actions. “The Chinese side will keep a close watch on the situation in relevant waters and airspace and take proper and necessary measures accordingly, so as to guard against any harm to the security of China’s maritime features, as well as sea and air accidents,” he said. In a commentary published Friday, the official Xinhua News Agency accused the United States of “senseless meddling” in China’s territorial disputes with other nations. The state-owned tabloid Global Times said the United States was trying to contain China and “sensationalize” the issue in a bid to apply pressure on Beijing. It argued that neither side wanted a showdown and that “hard-liners in the Pentagon” would soon realize they could not stand in China’s way. “Now, China has the initiative, and as long as China can finish the construction, this round of intervention by the U.S. will end up futile,” the paper said. Beijing’s policies in the South China Sea, it said, would ultimately safeguard regional security and could establish the Spratly Islands as a “navigation and fishing hub.” On Thursday, a Pentagon spokesman, Col. Steve Warren, said that “freedom of navigation operations” would continue in the South China Sea, but he insisted that U.S. military aircraft do not fly directly over areas claimed by China in the Spratly Islands. “We will continue to fly in international airspace,” he said in Washington. Liu Liu in Beijing and Missy Ryan in Washington contributed to this report. **Read more:** Disputed islands part of regional energy hunt Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

China’s choice: Stop construction in the South China Sea, or risk a dangerous escalation

CHINA’S COMMUNIST regime is reacting with rhetorical frenzy to a ruling by an international tribunal rejecting its expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea. President Xi Jinping, who has aggressively pushed what has now been formally deemed as illegal construction of bases on contested islets, issued a statement saying that China “will never accept any claim or action based on these awards.” He’s right that the judgment, in a case filed by the Philippines, is unenforceable. But it is a major blow to Mr. Xi’s attempt to establish Chinese hegemony in the region and presents him with a fateful choice: embark on a dangerous escalation, or slowly and quietly back down. Beijing’s insistence that the court decision is “invalid and has no binding force” only goes so far. The Philippines sued under the Law of the Sea treaty, which China has ratified. That means the decision is legally binding whether Mr. Xi recognizes it or not. Nations far beyond Asia will watch to see if the rising superpower violates a treaty it agreed to be bound by. If it does, the damage to China’s international standing and influence could prove considerably greater than whatever it might gain from fortifying a few coral reefs. Though the unanimous court judgment was more sweeping than some experts expected, it wasn’t particularly surprising. China has been claiming up to 90 percent of the South China Sea, an area larger than the Gulf of Mexico, based on a vague 1940s map with a “nine-dash line” sketched across it. But the treaty it ratified voided such historical claims and awarded sovereignty over waters based on their distance from coastlines. Scarborough Shoal, the fishing ground that China seized from the Philippines three years ago, is about 500 miles from the Chinese mainland; the tribunal found that Beijing had engaged in multiple unlawful actions in Philippine waters. Having decisively won its case, the Philippines’ new government is reacting prudently. Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr. held out the possibility of negotiations with the Xi regime and said the two governments had agreed not to take “provocative action” in the meantime. The Obama administration, which has beefed up its military alliance with the Philippines in an attempt to deter further Chinese aggression, also responded temperately. That’s fine for now: Mr. Xi, who is due to host a summit of the Group of 20 nations in September, must be given a chance to change course without losing face. The United States nevertheless must be prepared for the possibility that Mr. Xi will double down on his adventurism, perhaps hoping to take advantage of a president in his last months of office who has responded weakly to red-line crossings in other parts of the world. For some time experts have been concerned China would attempt to militarize Scarborough Shoal, placing planes or missiles 150 miles from Subic Bay in the Philippines; it has also threatened to declare an air defense zone over the South China Sea. Any such action must be contested by the United States. The alternative would be to sanction Mr. Xi’s use of raw power to advance his nationalist aims — and open the way to serious conflict in East Asia. **Read more about this topic:** Paul Gewirtz: Why law can’t solve the South China Sea conflict The Post’s View: Dangerous rocks in the South China Sea David Ignatius: The U.S. is heading toward a dangerous showdown with China Dennis C. Blair and Jeffrey W. Hornung: China’s self-defeating provocations in the South China Sea

Beijing’s actions in South China Sea aimed at ‘hegemony,’ U.S. admiral says

The two sides of U.S.-China relations were on full display Tuesday, as the top U.S. military officer in the Pacific told Congress that “China is clearly militarizing the South China Sea,” while Secretary of State John F. Kerry, after meeting with his Chinese counterpart, said there is only one U.S. foreign policy in the region and that is to seek a negotiated resolution of the issue. Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr. said that “you have to believe in a flat Earth” to think China’s goal is not to militarize the area and achieve “hegemony in East Asia.” Harris told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he had asked the Pentagon for more overhead surveillance in the disputed South China Sea area. Kerry, in a news conference with visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, said that the State and Defense departments were “on the same page” but that the Pentagon’s job was to “address what happens if . . . [diplomacy] fails.” “They have to be prepared for any eventuality,” Kerry said. The exchanges followed a report this week, based on satellite imagery, that China has installed a series of radar facilities on artificial islands it has built from dredged material on atolls in areas that other countries in the region either claim or say are international waters. Last week, the administration said that China appeared to have deployed surface-to-air missiles on another artificial island in the disputed sea. A U.S. official on Tuesday night confirmed a report from Fox News that China has deployed fighter jets to the same island. Harris said that “surface-to-surface, surface-to-air missiles” on one island and “the new radars on the Cuarteron Reef . . . are actions that are changing in my opinion the operation of the landscape in the South China Sea.” The weaponry “could pose a threat” to U.S. aircraft carriers in the region, he said. Wang, speaking beside Kerry later in the day, said that “China sees the islands historically as China’s territory” and “has a right to uphold its territorial integrity and lawful and legitimate maritime rights and interests.” At the same time, he said, “we are committed to resolving the disputes through dialogue and negotiations in a peaceful way.” The United States has called for international arbitration of the regional dispute and sent warships and aircraft to patrol what it says are international waters. Wang said that the “South China Sea issue is not and should not become an issue between China and the United States” and that it should be resolved directly between the regional parties. “There have not been any problems with regard to freedom of navigation,” he said, and “no commercial vessel has encountered any problems.” China and the countries of the region, he said, “have the capability to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea, which we see in our own interests. And we don’t hope to see any more close-up military reconnaissance or the dispatch of missile destroyers or strategic bombers” to the area. For much of their news conference, both Kerry and Wang hailed what they described as growing U.S.-China cooperation on issues including the Iran nuclear deal, climate change, counterterrorism and ending the civil war in Syria. “The reason that we’ve been able to cooperate in areas where our interests and our values are aligned, despite the fact that we have clear differences on some other issues, is that both the United States and China are deeply committed to an open and frank dialogue,” Kerry said. “We are two powerful nations, the two largest economies today, and we have an ability therefore to be able to make good things happen when we decide to.” Both said that the United Nations was close to agreeing on a new resolution against North Korea for its recent nuclear and ballistic missile tests that violated U.N. mandates. Both also called for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and a resumption of diplomatic talks with the North. In addition, Wang pointed out that China is now the largest U.S. trading partner, with bilateral trade last year of $558.4 billion. Although that still puts China slightly behind Canada for the whole of 2015, the Chinese overtook Canada for the last several months of the year. Simon Denyer in Beijing and David Nakamura in Washington contributed to this report.

Philippines pushes back against China

MANILA — China’s most daring adversary in Southeast Asia is, by many measurements, ill-suited for a fight. The Philippines has a military budget one-fortieth the size of Beijing’s, and its navy cruises through contested waters in 1970s hand-me-downs from the South Vietnamese. From that short-handed position, the Philippines has set off on a risky mission to do what no nation in the region has managed to do: thwart China in its drive to control the vast waters around it. Analysts say the Philippines’ strategy, in standing up to Asia’s powerhouse, is just as likely to backfire as succeed. But it provides a crucial test case as smaller countries debate whether to deal with China as a much-needed economic partner, a dangerous maritime aggressor, or both. The Philippines doesn’t view China exclusively as a threat, officials here say, noting that trade between the countries is growing. The Philippines has also used caution at times, most notably by holding off on provocative plans to drill in what could be the nation’s richest oil and gas field. But analysts point to a series of steps taken in recent months that suggest that Manila is increasingly willing to confront Beijing. They also note that the Philippines has suspended or canceled several development deals that depended on generous Chinese aid. Earlier this year, the Philippines filed a case with the United Nations contesting China’s maritime claims. More recently, the Philippines has increased its manpower on disputed islands, approved upgrades to decrepit military equipment and discussed plans that would give the United States expanded access to Philippine air and naval bases. Speaking to his armed forces in May, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III said the nation needed to protect its maritime territory from “bullies.” Battles over territory in Asia go back centuries, but China has made an increasingly aggressive play in recent years to recover land that it says fell wrongly into foreign hands. China has made a case for ownership of nearly the entire South China Sea, marking its territory with a nine-dash line on a map that it submitted to the United Nations in 2009. At least four other neighbors — Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam — are skirmishing with China over the tiny islands and the waters within that boundary. They covet sovereignty not just as a matter of pride but also to claim rich fisheries and underwater oil and gas resources. But they have reason to tread cautiously. China is Malaysia’s largest trading partner. Brunei depends on China as a market for its fossil fuel exports. Taiwan’s president, Ma Ying-jeou, has fostered a major improvement in relations with Beijing. Comparatively, Vietnam has been more willing to anger China. The two nations have a legacy of centuries of animosity, including a brief border war in 1979 and more recent clashes at sea. But the two are also communist partners, capable of patching up frayed ties. Some Filipinos say their country is more suited than others in the region to play tough with China. The Philippines has deep ties to Washington, stemming from a U.S. colonial period that ended in 1946. China and the Philippines took opposite sides in the wars in Korea and Vietnam, as well as in the Cold War. Political experts here say the Philippines’ strategy on China is being mapped out by its foreign affairs secretary, Albert del Rosario, a former ambassador to Washington. Aquino is said to be fully on board with the policy. Del Rosario last year called on the Philippines to “take a position of patriotism that what is ours is ours.” “It is possible that we may be tested,” he said, “and if we are tested, it is possible that everyone would need to make a sacrifice.” **** Just a few years ago, China tried to make friends with the Philippines — and nearly succeeded. The reason it fell short indicates the limits of soft power — namely, aid and investment deals — at a time when China has made a priority of expanding its foreign influence. Under the previous Philippine president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Beijing showered Manila with more than $2 billion in loans. Some of the money was meant for railroad projects. An additional $330 million was designed to fund a broadband network that would connect 25,000 municipal offices. As the money was flowing, the Philippines signed off on what Arroyo called a “diplomatic breakthrough” — a tripartite deal that allowed China and Vietnam to survey contested maritime territory near Philippine shores, in the hope of joint oil and gas development. The goodwill collapsed in short order. The broadband deal was laced with kickbacks for Philippine officials, as a congressional investigation revealed. The joint surveying deal came under even fiercer attack, as opposition politicians and many prominent Filipinos said Arroyo had violated the constitution by essentially giving away territory. Although the Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking (JMSU) was never described by Arroyo as a quid pro quo for economic cooperation, it was signed in 2005, when relations with Beijing were at their best. “In my opinion, it was a sellout,” said Rommel Banlaoi, chairman of the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research. “The terms of the JMSU were so biased. Only areas of the Philippines were allowed for exploration.” Arroyo, under domestic pressure, allowed the initial three-year JMSU contract to lapse in 2008. But the collapse of the deal reopened a decades-long debate between the Philippines and China over the rights to seabed hydrocarbons. The Philippines worked out unilateral deals to prospect for oil and gas. And China, in turn, increased its surveillance of the waters, badgering Philippine vessels in places where they had previously gone unbothered. None of the standoffs have turned violent, but in March 2011, Manila accused two Chinese coast guard boats of harassing a Philippines-commissioned oil exploration vessel near Reed Bank, a promising drilling site about 80 nautical miles off the coast of Palawan, the Philippines’ westernmost major island. The Philippines has since put the project on hold, citing political tensions. That holdup has proved to be the most costly repercussion of the row with China. The Philippines had been exploring the Reed Bank for nearly four decades and considered it crucial to the energy security of a nation that imports most of its fossil fuels from the Middle East. “This site could be earning $1 billion per year for the Philippines,” said Ismael Ocampo, assistant director at the Energy Department in Manila. “So, yes, this holdup is costly.” A vocal minority in the Philippines says that Aquino should re-embrace China and again pursue joint development. “Right now, nobody’s getting rich,” said Jose de Venecia, speaker of the House under Arroyo, who helped broker deals with China. “Here, we are getting zero resources. And not only that, but also a lot of stress and problems.” Aside from standoffs between vessels at sea, China and the Philippines have only the most furtive maritime contact, as each monitors the activities of the other around the South China Sea’s tiny islands, reefs and sandbars. China and the Philippines, along with Vietnam, have spent recent years establishing settlements on these islands on a first-come basis. The Philippines inhabits nine of the 53 such rocks or islands that it considers its own, citing a U.N. maritime treaty. The Vietnamese have claimed 22, though without eliciting quite the same scorn from Filipinos as China. Meanwhile, China has placed an estimated 1,000 troops on seven islands. It has turned one tiny reef into a concrete fortress with a windmill and a basketball court. Philippine officials see little chance that the Chinese will withdraw. “It’s like they have already invaded us,” said Eugenio Bito-Onon, mayor of the Philippine-claimed islands, which are an official municipality. Carmela Cruz contributed to this report.

Navy aircraft carrier group moves into contested South China Sea

The U.S. Navy has dispatched an aircraft carrier and several ships accompanying it into the South China Sea in the last few days, a deployment of thousands of U.S. sailors to a region a top U.S. admiral said last week is increasingly militarized by China. The USS John C. Stennis, the carrier, arrived in the South China Sea on Tuesday, Navy officials said. It is accompanied by the cruiser USS Mobile Bay and the destroyers USS Stockdale and USS Chung-Hoon, said Navy Cmdr. Clay Doss, a spokesman for U.S. Pacific Fleet. The ships arrived in the Western Pacific on Feb. 4 on a deployment from the West Coast of the United States. Doss said the carrier is carrying out a routine patrol of the South China Sea, where China has in recent weeks moved Chinese fighter jets, military radar and surface-to-air missiles. The Navy will continue to appear in the South China Sea regularly, Doss said. Pacific Fleet ships spending a combined 700 days there last year. _[China testing Obama as it expands its influence in the South China Sea]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Aside from the carrier group, the Japan-based USS Antietam, a cruiser, also is currently patrolling the South China Sea, Doss said. The USS McCambell, a destroyer, and the USS Ashland, an amphibious dock landing ship, completed similar patrols last week. It is not clear if or when any of the ships will complete any freedom of navigation patrols. The Navy has carried out two controversial ones in the South China Sea since October, using destroyers to sail within 12 nautical miles of artificial islands claimed by China. Beijing has claimed the surrounding waters as its own, but the Pentagon has said it will continue to sail through them because they have long been considered international waterways. China has called the patrols provocative.

Challenging China’s hegemony in the South China Sea

The April 9 editorial “ ‘Great Wall of sand’ ” asked the right question: “Why is China paving over these Pacific atolls?” The “why” is clear: to gain unchallenged hegemony in the South China Sea. And the threat is stark: The sea is a vital commercial and security link between the Pacific and Indian oceans. The question is what to do about it. Beyond President Obama’s “pivot” to the region, how do we get China to see peaceful coexistence as in its best interest? Actions should include: Be clear that China’s intrusions into the Exclusive Economic Zones of smaller nations are violations of the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which China ratified in 1996. Congress should give the president “fast-track” authority to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Smaller nations — Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, even Indonesia — should resolve all their differences in the South China Sea and form a coalition to pressure China into multilateral negotiations, which it has resisted to date. Move quickly and then invite bigger friends — the United States, Japan, Korea and Australia — to join, adding pressure on China. ****André Sauvageot** , Reston**

Beijing’s dilemma after South China Sea ruling: Double down or cool down?

BEIJING — China’s President Xi Jinping is in a pinch. For months now, the Communist Party has been whipping up nationalist sentiment, casting the Philippines’ South China Sea case as an illegal and humiliating foreign plot. On Tuesday, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague delivered what was widely seen as stunning rebuke, finding “no legal basis” for the country’s expansive maritime claims. Now China’s leader is left with a delicate choice. Does he double down on strident nationalism at the risk of stoking the conflict, or does he find a way, somehow, to take a step back? “As far as international opinion is concerned, China has effectively isolated itself,” said Andrew Mertha, a Cornell University specialist in Chinese politics. “Domestically, Beijing has painted itself into a corner and may find itself compelled to act in a potentially reckless fashion, if only to demonstrate to its domestic audience that it is not, to use a Cold War term, an ‘empty cannon’ in the eyes of its own citizens.” On Wednesday morning in Beijing, the firepower was mostly rhetorical. The front pages of Chinese newspapers repeated the government’s solemn pledge not to recognize, accept or execute any part of the ruling, while the Communist Party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, vowed the nation would take “all necessary measures to protect its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests.” China sent two civilian aircraft to two new airports on reefs it controls in the South China Sea, Mischief Reef and Subi Reef, according to Xinhua, a party-controlled news agency. The planes reportedly returned to Hainan, an island off China’s southern coast, later in the day. In Beijing, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs held a 90-minute news conference to release a 13,000-word policy paper on the South China Sea. At the event, broadcast twice — in full — on state television, Deputy Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin said the decision should be thrown away and even accused the five- member panel of jurists of taking money from the Philippines and “possibly other people.” Liu pushed again for bilateral talks with the Philippines under its newly elected president, Rodrigo Duterte — provided, of course, that no one mentions what the tribunal just decided. “After the storm of this arbitration has passed, and the sky has cleared, we hope this day will come,” he said, referring to the possibility of talks. “Whether it can come, we still have to wait.” Liu also reiterated China’s willingness to engage in joint development of the vast resources in and under the waters of the South China Sea, and he said his country could offer the Philippines “tangible benefits.” “I think, be it cooperation in fishing or oil and gas resources, China can reach agreements with neighboring countries in the South China Sea,” he said. In Manila, the ruling was met with a mix of jubilation and calls for calm. Wednesday morning’s papers showed crowds of people dressed in the red, blue, white and yellow of the Philippine flag, celebrating with banners and balloons. “Court junks China claims,” one headline said. Another front page read, “It’s Ours.” The official response, though, has been strikingly muted. The foreign minister immediately called for “restraint and sobriety.” The vice president issued a three-paragraph statement saying she was “glad” and urged “respect for the ruling." The Philippines clearly plans to tread carefully. During his presidential campaign, Duterte spooked some observers by, for instance, promising to ride a water scooter to the Scarborough Shoal, a Chinese-held chain of reefs and rocks near the Philippines, to plant his country’s flag. He has since softened his rhetoric, suggesting that he is open to talks with China at some point and signaling a desire to forge closer economic relations. His challenge will be to balance his desire to reset Sino-Philippine ties without looking like a sellout at home or jeopardizing ties with the United States. Reaching an agreement on the joint development of resources will not be easy because international law has delineated a vast arc of ocean as the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines, but China has reiterated what it deems its “indisputable” rights to much of those waters. One sliver of hope is that the tribunal, while negating China’s “historic rights” to the disputed sea, backed the idea that the waters around Scarborough Shoal are the traditional fishing grounds of both nations. “That could offer a basis for negotiation on joint management of fisheries,” said Yanmei Xie, senior China analyst for the International Crisis Group. The big surprise came from Taiwan, whose new president, Tsai Ing-wen, addressed sailors aboard a naval vessel before it set sail into the South China Sea. The frigate was set on Thursday to visit Taiping Island, a disputed feature administered by Taiwan, but was sent off a day early, according to reports in the Taiwanese news media. On Tuesday, the tribunal ruled Taiping is merely a “rock,” not an island, and is therefore not entitled to a 200-mile exclusive economic zone. Taipei rejected the ruling. “The South China arbitration ruling, especially in the part about Taiping Island, has seriously hurt our rights to the South China Sea islands and their relevant waters,” Tsai said. “This naval mission is to demonstrate the resolution of Taiwanese people in defending our national interests.” But most eyes are on Beijing’s reaction and, specifically, how Xi will decide to push things forward. China is playing host to a summit of leaders of the Group of 20 major economies in September, and it is unlikely to take any dramatic steps until then, many experts predict. Further ahead, Xi has a number of options on the table to extend his nation’s de facto control of the waters of the South China Sea, including building a new artificial island and military base on Scarborough Shoal and deploying fighter jets to other newly constructed islands. Ultimately, China could even declare an air defense identification zone over the entire region — under which incoming aircraft would be asked to declare themselves to Chinese authorities. Liu, the deputy foreign minister, said Wednesday that China has the right to take such a step “if our security is being threatened” but said that would depend on its overall assessment. “We hope that other countries will not take this opportunity to threaten China, and work with China to protect the peace and stability of the South China Sea, and not let it become the origin of a war,” he said. But Mira Rapp-Hooper, a senior fellow with the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, said Beijing would be unwise to take any steps that would close the door to bilateral talks, in which it would have significant bargaining power. “The Philippines would now be negotiating from a position of substantial legal strength, but is still a much smaller power,” she said. “Manila, like all others involved, has no ability to enforce” the court’s ruling “and clearly feels it stands to gain from an improved economic relationship with China.” Jerome Cohen, an expert in Chinese law at New York University School of Law, wrote that the tribunal’s decision has had the “healthy effect” of reducing the importance of the reefs and rocks in the South China Sea by denying them exclusive economic zones, “which will eventually make it easier to deal with these issues.” But he also said the tribunal’s decision had rebounded badly on China’s leader, who he thinks faces significant internal dissent. “I think this ruling will add significantly to Xi Jinping’s internal problems,” he wrote. “It was a disastrous call to thumb China’s nose at United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) even while claiming to respect it, and the outcome gives many dissatisfied members of Beijing’s elite more fuel for the fire they are lighting under him.”

China’s self-defeating provocations in the South China Sea

_Dennis C. Blair, chairman of Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA, was commander of the U.S. Pacific Command from 1999 to 2002 and director of national intelligence from 2009 to 2010. Jeffrey W. Hornung is a fellow with Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA._ China’s deployment of surface-to-air missile launchers to the largest island in the Paracels chain has led to a spike in alarmist analysis. China’s provocative act is being portrayed as a watershed indicator that it is bent on military dominance of the South China Sea. It is important to understand the facts and history to identify the true concerns. First, facts and history: Satellite images of Woody Island in the Paracels from early February showed the HQ-9 air defense system deployed there for the first time. Woody Island is in the northern section of the South China Sea. It is about 250 miles southeast of Hainan Island and 500 miles north of the Spratly Islands that China has enlarged by land reclamation. Unlike the Spratly Islands, which are contested by multiple states, the Paracel Islands are claimed by only China (and Taiwan) and Vietnam. Woody Island itself has been controlled by Beijing for decades and has been heavily built up with civilian and military structures. In any impartial arbitration, China would have a strong claim to this island. Woody Island has long been home to surveillance radars, an airfield and shelters for military aircraft. Late last year, China deployed advanced jets there and it has apparently done so again in the past few days. According to U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Adm. Scott Swift, this is at least the third time that antiaircraft missiles have been deployed to Woody Island, although previous deployments were of less advanced systems. On the previous occasions, these deployments were part of exercises, which may or may not be the case in this instance. Last year during his visit to Washington, President Xi Jinping stated that China did not intend to militarize the islands it had enlarged in the Spratlys. The missile and aircraft deployments to Woody Island do not violate that pledge. These deployments do not in themselves affect any of the important U.S. interests in the South China Sea: They do not increase the threat to U.S. freedom of navigation and flight; they do not bring another island under China’s control by non-peaceful means; they do not threaten international shipping in the sea; they do not protect Woody Island from destruction by the United States during a military crisis or conflict. So why all the concern? There are two well-founded concerns about the Chinese action: timing and precedent. First, timing: Whether the air-defense and jet-fighter deployments are a long-planned exercise or the beginning of a permanent presence, they belie China’s professed commitment to peaceful solutions to conflicting claims in the region. They are the latest in a line of closely spaced Chinese actions that undercut and contradict Beijing’s soothing words about their aims. Countries with peaceful intentions do not enlarge islands with military-capable airfields, harbors and logistics facilities at a breakneck pace in one part of the South China Sea, then deploy advanced missiles and jets to another part. Second, precedent: If China conducts deployments like this to the islands it has enlarged with runways in the Spratlys, it will violate Xi’s pledge and introduce an air control capability that ratchets up the military stakes in an area of the South China Sea far from China’s borders. There is a final point that all the excited commentary misses. These deployments and the reaction to them throughout Southeast Asia highlight the self-defeating aspects of China’s aggressive policies. By its small-scale tactical military deployments on indefensible islands in the South China Sea, China is antagonizing all the other littoral countries, which are building their own defenses and turning to the United States and Japan to offer access to their ports and airfields, to increase military cooperation and to request additional security assistance. China’s strategic position in the region is much weaker now than it was six years ago, before it embarked on its truculent and aggressive policies. Meanwhile, to the north, China is unable to restrain its client North Korea. The result is to solidify South Korean, U.S. and Japanese policies and cooperation. Finally, China’s economy is sliding. China looks less like a shrewd, confident and successful regional power bent on hegemony and more like a flailing and blustering collection of bureaucrats continuing short-term, outmoded policies to the detriment of their country’s larger interests. **To read more on this topic:** The Post’s View: China’s missile gambit Joshua Kurlantzick: Let China win George F. Will: China’s deeply flawed ascent Eswar S. Prasad:5 myths about China’s economy Fred Hiatt: China’s critics aren’t safe anywhere

China’s dangerous provocation demands a response from the U.S.

THE UNITED States last week stepped up its efforts to call attention to China’s massive and provocative expansion of infrastructure in a disputed portion of the South China Sea. The Navy invited CNN aboard a surveillance flight and released video the next day of what one U.S. official called an attempt “to make sovereign land out of sand castles” in the Spratly Islands. The flight by a P-8A Poseidon aircraft drew eight warnings from the Chinese navy and an angry denunciation by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, which called it “very irresponsible and also very dangerous.” But the U.S. action was legal and appropriate. China is attempting to steal a march on its neighbors by rapidly constructing airstrips, ports and other infrastructure on reclaimed land in one of the most sensitive maritime areas in Asia — one with multiple overlapping sovereignty claims. While it probably cannot be stopped, the project should be fully exposed — and China’s attempts to restrict air and sea traffic near its installations decisively rejected. According to U.S. officials, China has created 2,000 acres of land since 2014 on five coral outcroppings in the Spratly chain, parts of which are also claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Taiwan and Malaysia. The video released by the U.S. Navy shows dozens of dredging vessels engaged in land-reclamation work, as well as a radar installation and a new airstrip capable of accomodating heavy military aircraft. Other nations have reclaimed land and built installations in the Spratlys. But China’s operation stands out for its scale and speed and for the brazenness with which the regime of Xi Jinping advances questionable territorial claims while rejecting international mediation or a negotiated code of conduct. Relying on a slapdash map dating to the 1940s, which consists of nine dashes across the waters east of China, Beijing claims 80 percent of the South China Sea, which is crisscrossed by international shipping lanes. It seeks to exclude foreign ships and planes from a 200-mile zone around its claimed territory, rather than the 12 miles recognized by the United States. The communist regime has dismissed U.S. objections to the island-shaping. “Now, China has the initiative, and as long as China can finish the construction, this round of intervention by the U.S. will end up futile,” crowed the government-run Global Times, according to The Post’s Simon Denyer. Still, overflights — as well as sail-bys by warships that the Pentagon is said to be considering — can make clear that the United States rejects China’s claims. Similar tactics by the United States and Japan neutered a Chinese announcement of an air-defense identification zone in the East China Sea in 2013. A show of U.S. firmness can also help rally Asian nations that oppose China’s claims and its heavy-handed tactics but that have hesitated to unite against them. As eager as it is to establish its hegemony in the region, China also wants to avoid major conflicts with neighbors and with the United States. It has staged tactical retreats in the past when its maritime aggressiveness has encountered resistance. A regional security summit in Singapore this weekend gives the United States and China’s neighbors an opportunity to push back against the sand castles in the Spratlys. They should join in speaking up. **Read more on this topic:** Michael J. Green and Mira Rapp Hooper: Push China toward diplomacy Fareed Zakaria: Whatever happened to Obama’s pivot to Asia? Fred Hiatt: Tensions in Asia add urgency to Obama’s ‘pivot’

Beijing’s claims to South China Sea rejected by international tribunal

BEIJING — China’s expansive assertion of sovereignty over the South China Sea suffered a major blow Tuesday when an international tribunal ruled that its claims have no legal or historical basis, throwing up the possibility of a new period of tension and confrontation in the region. Beijing fiercely rejected the decision by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which sided unequivocally with the Philippines against China. The United States urged calm. China’s government has whipped up nationalist sentiment in recent years to support its “indisputable sovereignty” over a huge swath of the South China Sea, and it has engaged in an intensive program of island-building there to extend its de facto control. China is now faced with a dilemma: It can signal its displeasure at the ruling by extending that program and militarizing the islands it controls, risking confrontation and even conflict with emboldened Asian neighbors and the United States. Or it can suspend the program and adopt a more conciliatory approach, at the risk of a loss of face domestically. “It’s a slap in the face for China,” said Shen Dingli, a professor of international relations at Fudan University. “It’s a lose-lose situation for China — take action and risk armed confrontation or, while reiterating its tough stance, stop building and fishing, which is what the ruling asks.” The tribunal also ruled that China had violated the Philippines’ sovereign rights by constructing artificial islands and had caused “permanent irreparable harm to the coral reef ecosystem.” The decision was hailed as a landmark victory for those worried that Beijing is extending its military control over waters with key strategic and commercial significance. But Chinese President Xi Jinping signaled that he was in no mood to back down. “The islands in the South China Sea have been Chinese territories since ancient times,” he said, according to state media. “China opposes and will never accept any claim or action based on these awards.” The Foreign Ministry said China “solemnly declares that the award is null and void and has no binding force.” Nor would it be easy for Xi to back down after making the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” one of his signature slogans, drawing a rhetorical line from its past “humiliation” at the hands of Western colonial powers and Japan to his vision of a strong, proud China under Communist Party rule. But the verdict will nevertheless undermine Beijing’s claim to sovereignty within what it calls the “nine-dash line,” which it draws around most of the South China Sea. The Philippines took China to the PCA in January 2013 after the Chinese navy seized control of Scarborough Shoal, a largely submerged chain of reefs and rocks amid rich fishing grounds off the Philippine island of Luzon. The ruling could lead to more friction between China and the United States, with the issue seen as a key test of Washington’s ability to maintain its leading role in Asian security in the face of China’s rising power. The State Department said it “hopes and expects” that China and the Philippines will abide by the ruling. “We urge all claimants to avoid provocative statements or actions,” said State Department spokesman John Kirby. Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr. called the ruling a “milestone,” but he also urged “restraint and sobriety” for all concerned. Richard Javad Heydarian, an assistant professor of political science at Manila’s De La Salle University, said the verdict is “the best-case scenario that few thought possible.” “It is a clean sweep for the Philippines,” Heydarian said, “with the tribunal rejecting China’s nine-dashed line and historical rights claim as well as censuring its aggressive activities in the area and, among others, the ecological damage caused by its reclamation activity.” In China, Chen Xiangmiao, an assistant research fellow at the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, said: “The nine-dash line is the foundation of China’s claim to sovereignty activities in the South China Sea, which has been smashed by the ruling. It is highly possible that the Philippines will expand its presence in the South China Sea, which will create conflict.” Beijing refused to participate in the arbitration process and launched a global propaganda campaign. Foreign Minister Wang Yi was quoted as telling Secretary of State John F. Kerry last week that the case was a “farce.” His ministry said it was delusional to think China would bow to diplomatic pressure to accept the ruling. Some $5 trillion in commerce, roughly one-third of global trade, flows through the South China Sea every year, while its fisheries account for 12percent of the global catch, and significant oil and gas reserves are thought to exist under the seafloor. The waters are some of the most fiercely disputed in the world, with claims to various parts staked by Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan, in addition to China and the Philippines. China claims sovereignty over almost all the islands, reefs and rocks in the sea — including those hundreds of miles from Chinese shores. In the past two years, Beijing has turned seven reefs and rocks into nascent military outposts, with airstrips and radar installations under construction. But the tribunal backed the Philippines’ submission that none of those features are islands — as defined by the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Only natural — rather than artificial — islands that can sustain human habitation qualify for both the 12 nautical miles of territorial waters and 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zones under UNCLOS. In other words, the ruling drastically undermines China’s claim to the waters surrounding the island bases it is building. Beijing says the tribunal lacked the jurisdiction to rule on Manila’s various submissions. Though its decision is legally binding, the court lacks any mechanism to enforce its rulings. Nevertheless, the outcome of the case will provide an important indication of China’s willingness to submit to international law, and of what kind of global power it wants to become. “This is a breathtaking indictment of China’s position in the South China Sea,” said David Welch, a global-security scholar at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Ontario. “It will be very difficult for Beijing to pretend that the tribunal’s finding does not matter legally, politically or practically. How China reacts over the next days and weeks will essentially determine its international standing for decades.” What happens next will depend on how all the key players react. The U.S. Navy has already conducted several “freedom of navigation” exercises in the South China Sea, sending warships within 12 nautical miles of islands, reefs and rocks controlled by China and other claimants. Washington is also rebuilding military ties with the Philippines. China cites this as evidence that President Obama’s actions — not its own island-building — are responsible for militarizing the region. China could attempt to reinforce its position by building a new military base on Scarborough Shoal, a move that would clearly be viewed as dangerously provocative by Washington and Manila. Paul Reichler, the Philippines’ chief counsel in the case, said the ruling was likely to unite all the rival claimants to the waters of the South China Sea against China. “China may face a prolonged period of embittered neighbors and an uncertain, unstable and insecure situation in the South China Sea unless and until it finds a way to accommodate itself to the rule of law as clearly set forth in the arbitral award,” he said. China, which hosts a summit of the Group of 20 major economies in September, may want time to gauge the reaction from Manila, where the newly elected president, Rodrigo Duterte, has sent mixed signals. Early in his election campaign, Duterte implied he might be willing to soften his stance on China in return for Chinese infrastructure projects on his home island of Mindanao. But he later promised to ride a water scooter to Scarborough Shoal to plant the Philippine flag.

GOP minds are at sea — but not the right one

Neither the unanimous decision by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, nor China’s rejection of it, was surprising. The timing of it was, however, as serendipitous as China’s rejection is ominous. Coming as Republican delegates convene on Lake Erie’s shore, the tribunal’s opinion about the South China Sea underscores the current frivolousness of U.S. politics, which is fixated on a fictitious wall that will never exist but silent about realities on and above the waters that now are the world’s most dangerous cockpit of national rivalries. China’s “nine-dash line” aggression — asserting sovereignty over the South China Sea — is being steadily implemented by the manufacture and militarization of artificial “islands” far from China’s mainland, and by increasingly reckless air and naval actions in the region. China is attempting to intimidate the six nations (the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia) whose claims conflict with China’s. China has threatened these nations’, and others’, freedom on the seas, fishing rights, oil exploration and more. In 2013, the Philippines took its case to the Court of Arbitration, whose jurisdiction China preemptively rejected. The Philippines has now won most of its claims but has achieved nothing unless the United States leads regional powers in enforcing this decision. The Hague has no navy. International law fulfills important functions but often is most successful when least important: It arbitrates disputes about rights and duties among like-minded nations that acknowledge its underlying norms. When, however, a rising nation’s interests and aspirations conflict with those norms, trying to restrain this nation with those norms is like lassoing a locomotive with a cobweb. So, although it was prudent for the Philippines to bring this case, and although the court conscientiously measured China’s claims and behavior next to the pertinent precedents, the court’s correct legal decision makes the world more dangerous: China now _knows_ that only force can achieve its ends. We are, as Defense Secretary Ash Carter has said with notable understatement, in a “long-term competitive situation.” The projection of U.S. power to the far side of the Pacific depends on alliances and cooperation — including access to bases — with Australia, India, the Philippines, Thailand, Japan, South Korea and others. China’s aim of dominance in the region can be achieved only by weakening the U.S. allies’ confidence — particularly that of the Philippines, which seems susceptible to China’s promises of development projects — in U.S. resolve, and by weakening confidence in U.S. skill at calibrating the pressure requisite for countering China’s ambitions without provoking a Chinese miscalculation in a region where U.S. military assets, especially naval, still dominate. Two U.S. carrier groups have visited the region this year. China is developing and deploying a modern nuclear submarine fleet, land-based aircraft and anti- ship ballistic missiles, and other means of pushing back the U.S. presence. Chinese military aircraft have made dangerous approaches to U.S. military aircraft. A Taiwanese naval vessel accidentally sank, with an anti-ship missile, a Taiwanese shrimp boat. Accidents happen. And intentional acts can have unintended consequences. A single assassination loosed the cascade of events that produced the war that was devouring Europe 100 years ago. At the turn of the 20th century, the world’s most formidable challenge was to integrate into the international system a rising, restless, assertive Germany. This did not go well. Early in the 21st century, China poses a comparable challenge. If this does not go well, the differences might be arbitrated by weapons undreamt of a century ago. This week, the Republican Party is formalizing its judgment that the Navy, the nuclear launch codes and other important things should be placed in the hands of someone not known for nuance, patience or interest in allies and collective security. Americans, dismayed by two consecutive commanders in chief — the recklessness of one and the inconstancy of his successor — must now decide whether, and if so how and by whom, they want U.S. power to be projected. In the South China Sea, Carter said, the United States must steel itself for “a long campaign of firmness, and gentle but strong pushback.” This will require freedom-of-navigation assertions, involving naval and air operations that challenge, among other things, China’s expansive claims to sovereignty over islands and waters far from its mainland. If the next president does not conduct such operations with steady, measured skill, the result could be the collapse of the United States’ position in the world’s most populous, dynamic and perhaps dangerous region, or war. Is any of this on anyone’s mind in Cleveland? _Read more fromGeorge F. Will’s archive or follow him on Facebook._ **Read more on this issue:** Paul Gewirtz: Why law can’t solve the South China Sea conflict The Post’s View: China: Stop construction in the South China Sea, or risk an escalation Blair and Hornung: China’s self-defeating provocations in the South China Sea David Ignatius: The U.S. is heading toward a dangerous showdown with China

In Asia, a wave of escalating territorial disputes

TOKYO — The disputed islands and islets in Asia are, on the whole, an unimpressive bunch. Most are rocky, windswept outcroppings far from any mainland. One has a lighthouse but no people. But these tiny territories, sweeping from southeast to northeast Asia, are fiercely contested among countries that are buoyed by nationalism and by a growing thirst for the natural resources off their shores. At a time when the United States has promised to play a greater role in Asia, some security experts say the territories represent the region’s greatest potential flash point aside from North Korea. The territorial disputes involve nearly a dozen countries in at least three major seas, and they have set off a chaotic crisscross of conflict in some of the world’s most trafficked shipping lanes. The disputes are not all connected, but analysts say that several of Asia’s key countries — China, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines — have in recent months followed a similar pattern, turning old historical squabbles into national priorities, escalating tensions and raising the chances of a small-scale armed conflict. The countries are driven to claim these far-flung offshore territories in part because of their growing need for the oil and gas reserves in the waters around them. Japan fears prolonged energy shortages as it turns from nuclear power, and China, already responsible for one-fifth of the world’s energy consumption, is racing to increase its share as its economy modernizes. “Energy resources are increasingly a critical issue here,” said Rory Medcalf, director of international security at the Sydney-based Lowy Institute. “Particularly from a Chinese and Japanese point of view, there’s a new sense of the need for energy security. None of these countries want to categorically give up claims to territory where there could be large hydrocarbon deposits.” The countries are also driven by fierce, though sometimes small, nationalist movements in their own back yards. The nationalism has been intensified by social media, some analysts say, particularly in China, where hundreds of millions of Internet users can share their opinions and public sentiment is harder than ever to ignore. Countries such as South Korea and China are set for leadership changes this year, making government officials wary of backing off claims and appearing weak. “We’ve seen over history countries go to war over territory — area that seems to be meaningless, but it’s the soil of the country,” said Bruce Klingner, a senior researcher and a Northeast Asia expert at the Heritage Foundation. “Even if it would appear illogical for countries to risk conflagration over rocks. . . that is what is occurring.” The most notable current disputes involve Japan and South Korea, China and Japan, and China and a host of southeast Asian countries, most vocally the Philippines and Vietnam. China, with its increased military spending and naval might, is often pinpointed by foreign leaders as the regional bully, pushing its boundaries and intimidating smaller neighbors. But other countries have responded with shows of force of their own. Several southeast Asian countries have tightened alliances with Washington and conducted joint military drills. Japan realigned its Self-Defense Forces with the aim to better defend disputed waters. In July, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III asked his country’s congress to approve a massive military upgrade involving new planes and combat helicopters that could be used to defend contested areas in the South China Sea. “If someone enters your yard and told you he owns it, will you allow that?” Aquino said. “It’s not right to give away what is rightfully ours.” Managing the territorial disputes has become a fraught issue for Asian leaders. One much-criticized move came Friday when South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, in an apparent ploy to boost his low support ratings, traveled by helicopter for a 70-minute visit to the Dokdo (or Takeshima) islets, also claimed by Japan. “Dokdo is genuinely our territory,” Lee said on the island, where he laid flowers in front of a monument commemorating Koreans who died defending the territory. “Why did he visit there at a time when we need to consider issues from a broad viewpoint?” Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba said soon after. “It is extremely regrettable.” Security experts say the Japan-South Korea dispute has little chance of escalating into violence, because the two countries — Washington’s closest allies in Asia — are mostly cooperative economic partners, despite lingering animosities from Japan’s 35-year occupation. But other areas in the region are more troubling, particularly those claimed by China. A recent report from the Brussels-based International Crisis Group described how China is patrolling the sea with “nine dragons,” a tangle of conflicting government agencies, many of them trying to increase their power and budget. The People’s Liberation Army Navy tends to take a background role in sea disputes, the report said, allowing a greater role for civilian law enforcement or paramilitary agencies. An increasing number of rogue Chinese fishing vessels are also operating in contested areas, as seen in an April standoff between Beijing and Manila that started when Chinese fishermen were caught poaching near the disputed Scarborough Shoal. Eventually, China won the standoff and the fishermen made off with their catch. Washington has tried to stay neutral in the various disputes but has emphasized the importance of freedom of navigation. During a June meeting with Aquino, President Obama urged Asian countries to settle on a “strong set of international norms and rules governing maritime disputes in the region.” Regional leaders, though, have failed to agree on any set of rules, and at a July foreign ministers’ meeting in Cambodia, conflicts about the South China Sea prompted the leaders to walk away without even a basic communique. A recent Pentagon-commissioned proposal by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington, pointed out that “stakes are growing” in the region because of China’s aggressive maritime activities. The think tank’s proposal on U.S. strategy in Asia raised the possibility of basing a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier on the Australian coast, allowing the U.S. a second carrier strike group in the region. But Australia’s defense minister quickly rejected the idea, and analysts in Australia suggested the country was unwilling to antagonize China, its largest trading partner. **More world news coverage:** \- Foes hit France’s Hollande over Syria \- S. Korean president visits Japan-claimed islets \- Same-sex couples in Latin America fight for rights \- Read more headlines from around the world

China returns seized U.S. naval drone despite Trump’s call to ‘keep it’

BEIJING — China on Tuesday returned a U.S. naval drone seized in the South China Sea last week, a peaceful resolution to a military standoff that threatened to inflame maritime tensions ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration. The Chinese Defense Ministry said in a statement that the drone was transferred to the United States after “friendly negotiation.” In a separate statement, the Pentagon confirmed the drone’s return but offered a less friendly-sounding account. The incident was “inconsistent with both international law and standards of professionalism for conduct between navies at sea,” the Pentagon statement said. The United States has “called on Chinese authorities to comply with their obligations under international law and to refrain from further efforts to impede lawful U.S. activities,” the statement said. The standoff started last week after a Chinese submarine rescue ship close to the USNS Bowditch, an oceanographic survey vessel operating northwest of Subic Bay in the Philippines, took possession of the U.S. drone. The U.S. side said that it asked the ship to return the drone and that the Chinese side refused. The drone was seized about 50 nautical miles northwest of Subic Bay, a Philippine port that was once a U.S. military base and still plays host to visiting U.S. troops and ships. The area is not far from Scarborough Shoal, a U-shaped cluster of reefs and rocks that has been a flash point in China’s relations with the Philippines and the United States. Though Washington says it has no position on rival sovereignty claims in the South China Sea, it has been critical of China’s posture, particularly its island-building in contested waters. The U.S. Navy conducts patrols — officially called “freedom of navigation operations” — in the area. China sees the presence of U.S. ships as interference and has repeatedly said it is the United States, not China, that wants to militarize the South China Sea. Unsurprisingly, Beijing and Washington offered conflicting accounts of the drone flap. The U.S. side said its vessel, known as a “glider,” collects unclassified data on water temperature, salinity and other factors that may affect navigation. In Washington, its seizure was seen as a provocation. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, on Friday called the incident a “flagrant violation” of the law of the sea. China, meanwhile, played down the incident. Yang Yujun, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry, said in a statement that the Chinese ship took the U.S. drone “to prevent the device from harming the navigation safety and personnel safety of the ship.” “The U.S. military has frequently dispatched naval vessels to carry out reconnaissance and military measurements in China’s water. China resolutely opposes this and urges the U.S. side to stop such activities,” he said. As the standoff dragged on, Trump weighed in, posting a message on Twitter that said: “China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters — rips it out of water and takes it to China in unprecedented act.” When the Chinese eventually agreed to return the vessel, Trump reacted on Twitter again. “We should tell China that we don’t want the drone they stole back.- let them keep it!” he wrote. Asked about Trump’s comment, Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry, on Monday questioned his wording.  “We don’t like the word ‘steal’ — the word is absolutely inaccurate,” she said. “This is just like you found a thing on the street, and you have to take a look and investigate it to see if the thing belongs to one who wants it back.” Han Xudong, a military expert in Beijing, said the United States had “made a mountain out of a molehill” by hyping up the seizure. “It’s a simple matter that could have been easily resolved via diplomatic or military channels,” he said, adding that China’s handling of the event was by the book. “It’s not appropriate for Trump to comment on this,” Han said. But Han said the outcome showed that, tweets aside, Washington and Beijing wanted a peaceful resolution: “The U.S. turn from high key to low key helped in solving the problem smoothly.” Trump’s response to the drone incident will no doubt compound Chinese concerns about the president-elect’s Asia policy. After winning the presidential election, Trump surprised Beijing by taking a phone call from Taiwan’s leader, Tsai Ing-wen, a move that broke with decades of diplomatic practice. Trump’s Twitter comments on Taiwan and the drone have made him a subject of derision and ridicule in the Communist Party-controlled press. “Trump is not behaving as a president who will become master of the White House in a month,” the Global Times wrote in an editorial. “He bears no sense of how to lead a superpower.” Luna Lin in Beijing contributed to this report.

U.S. model for a future war fans tensions with China and inside Pentagon

When President Obama called on the U.S. military to shift its focus to Asia earlier this year, Andrew Marshall, a 91-year-old futurist, had a vision of what to do. Marshall’s small office in the Pentagon has spent the past two decades planning for a war against an angry, aggressive and heavily armed China. No one had any idea how the war would start. But the American response, laid out in a concept that one of Marshall’s longtime proteges dubbed “Air-Sea Battle,” was clear. Stealthy American bombers and submarines would knock out China’s long-range surveillance radar and precision missile systems located deep inside the country. The initial “blinding campaign” would be followed by a larger air and naval assault. The concept, the details of which are classified, has angered the Chinese military and has been pilloried by some Army and Marine Corps officers as excessively expensive. Some Asia analysts worry that conventional strikes aimed at China could spark a nuclear war. Air-Sea Battle drew little attention when U.S. troops were fighting and dying in large numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now the military’s decade of battling insurgencies is ending, defense budgets are being cut, and top military officials, ordered to pivot toward Asia, are looking to Marshall’s office for ideas. In recent months, the Air Force and Navy have come up with more than 200 initiatives they say they need to realize Air-Sea Battle. The list emerged, in part, from war games conducted by Marshall’s office and includes new weaponry and proposals to deepen cooperation between the Navy and the Air Force. A former nuclear strategist, Marshall has spent the past 40 years running the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, searching for potential threats to American dominance. In the process, he has built a network of allies in Congress, in the defense industry, at think tanks and at the Pentagon that amounts to a permanent Washington bureaucracy. While Marshall’s backers praise his office as a place where officials take the long view, ignoring passing Pentagon fads, critics see a dangerous tendency toward alarmism that is exaggerating the China threat to drive up defense spending. “The old joke about the Office of Net Assessment is that it should be called the Office of Threat Inflation,” said Barry Posen, director of the MIT Security Studies Program. “They go well beyond exploring the worst cases. . . . They convince others to act as if the worst cases are inevitable.” Marshall dismisses criticism that his office focuses too much on China as a future enemy, saying it is the Pentagon’s job to ponder worst-case scenarios. “We tend to look at not very happy futures,” he said in a recent interview. Even as it has embraced Air-Sea Battle, the Pentagon has struggled to explain it without inflaming already tense relations with China. The result has been an information vacuum that has sown confusion and controversy. Senior Chinese military officials warn that the Pentagon’s new effort could spark an arms race. “If the U.S. military develops Air-Sea Battle to deal with the [People’s Liberation Army], the PLA will be forced to develop anti-Air-Sea Battle,” one officer, Col. Gaoyue Fan, said last year in a debate sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a defense think tank. Pentagon officials counter that the concept is focused solely on defeating precision missile systems. “It’s not about a specific actor,” a senior defense official told reporters last year. “It is not about a specific regime.” The heads of the Air Force and Navy, meanwhile, have maintained that Air-Sea Battle has applications even beyond combat. The concept could help the military reach melting ice caps in the Arctic Circle or a melted-down nuclear reactor in Japan, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the U.S. chief of naval operations, said in May at the Brookings Institution. At the same event, Gen. Norton Schwartz, the Air Force chief, upbraided a retired Marine colonel who asked how Air-Sea Battle might be employed in a war with China. “This inclination to narrow down on a particular scenario is unhelpful,” Schwartz said. Privately, senior Pentagon officials concede that Air-Sea Battle’s goal is to help U.S. forces weather an initial Chinese assault and counterattack to destroy sophisticated radar and missile systems built to keep U.S. ships away from China’s coastline. Their concern is fueled by the steady growth in China’s defense spending, which has increased to as much as $180 billion a year, or about one-third of the Pentagon’s budget, and China’s increasingly aggressive behavior in the South China Sea. “We want to put enough uncertainty in the minds of Chinese military planners that they would not want to take us on,” said a senior Navy official overseeing the service’s modernization efforts. “Air-Sea Battle is all about convincing the Chinese that we will win this competition.” Like others quoted in this article, the official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. Air-Sea Battle grew out of Marshall’s fervent belief, dating to the 1980s, that technological advancements were on the verge of ushering in a new epoch of war. New information technology allowed militaries to fire within seconds of finding the enemy. Better precision bombs guaranteed that the Americans could hit their targets almost every time. Together these advances could give conventional bombs almost the same power as small nuclear weapons, Marshall surmised. Marshall asked his military assistant, a bright officer with a Harvard doctorate, to draft a series of papers on the coming “revolution in military affairs.” The work captured the interest of dozens of generals and several defense secretaries. Eventually, senior military leaders, consumed by bloody, low-tech wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, seemed to forget about Marshall’s revolution. Marshall, meanwhile, zeroed in on China as the country most likely to exploit the revolution in military affairs and supplant the United States’ position as the world’s sole superpower. In recent years, as the growth of China’s military has outpaced most U.S. intelligence projections, interest in China as a potential rival to the United States has soared. “In the blink of an eye, people have come to take very seriously the China threat,” said Andrew Hoehn, a senior vice president at Rand Corp. “They’ve made very rapid progress.” Most of Marshall’s writings over the past four decades are classified. He almost never speaks in public and even in private meetings is known for his long stretches of silence. His influence grows largely out of his study budget, which in recent years has floated between $13 million and $19 million and is frequently allocated to think tanks, defense consultants and academics with close ties to his office. More than half the money typically goes to six firms. Among the largest recipients is the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a defense think tank run by retired Lt. Col. Andrew Krepinevich, the Harvard graduate who wrote the first papers for Marshall on the revolution in military affairs. In the past 15 years, CSBA has run more than two dozen China war games for Marshall’s office and written dozens of studies. The think tank typically collects about $2.75 million to $3 million a year, about 40 percent of its annual revenue, from Marshall’s office, according to Pentagon statistics and CSBA’s most recent financial filings. Krepinevich makes about $865,000 in salary and benefits, or almost double the compensation paid out to the heads of other nonpartisan think tanks such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Brookings Institution. CSBA said its board sets executive compensation based on a review of salaries at other organizations doing similar work. The war games run by CSBA are set 20 years in the future and cast China as a hegemonic and aggressive enemy. Guided anti-ship missiles sink U.S. aircraft carriers and other surface ships. Simultaneous Chinese strikes destroy American air bases, making it impossible for the U.S. military to launch its fighter jets. The outnumbered American force fights back with conventional strikes on China’s mainland, knocking out long-range precision missiles and radar. “The fundamental problem is the same one that the Soviets identified 30 years ago,” Krepinevich said in an interview. “If you can see deep and shoot deep with a high degree of accuracy, our large bases are not sanctuaries. They are targets.” ********Some critics doubt that China, which owns $1.6 trillion in U.S. debt and depends heavily on the American economy, would strike U.S. forces out of the blue. “It is absolutely fraudulent,” said Jonathan D. Pollack, a senior fellow at Brookings. “What is the imaginable context or scenario for this attack?” Other defense analysts warn that an assault on the Chinese mainland carries potentially catastrophic risks and could quickly escalate to nuclear armageddon. The war games elided these concerns. Instead they focused on how U.S. forces would weather the initial Chinese missile salvo and attack. To survive, allied commanders dispersed their planes to austere airfields on the Pacific islands of Tinian and Palau. They built bomb-resistant aircraft shelters and brought in rapid runway repair kits to fix damaged airstrips. Stealthy bombers and quiet submarines waged a counterattack. The allied approach became the basis for the Air-Sea Battle. Although the Pentagon has struggled to talk publicly about Air-Sea Battle, CSBA has not been similarly restrained. In 2010, it published a 125-page paper outlining how the concept could be used to fight a war with China. The paper contains less detail than the classified Pentagon version. Shortly after its publication, U.S. allies in Asia, frustrated by the Pentagon’s silence on the subject, began looking to CSBA for answers. “We started to get a parade of senior people, particularly from Japan, though also Taiwan and to a lesser extent China, saying, ‘So, this is what Air-Sea Battle is,’ ” Krepinevich said this year at an event at another think tank. Soon, U.S. officials began to hear complaints. “The PLA went nuts,” said a U.S. official who recently returned from Beijing. Told that Air-Sea Battle was not aimed at China, one PLA general replied that the CSBA report mentioned the PLA 190 times, the official said. (The actual count is closer to 400.) Inside the Pentagon, the Army and Marine Corps have mounted offensives against the concept, which could lead to less spending on ground combat. An internal assessment, prepared for the Marine Corps commandant and obtained by The Washington Post, warns that “an Air-Sea Battle-focused Navy and Air Force would be preposterously expensive to build in peace time” and would result in “incalculable human and economic destruction” if ever used in a major war with China. The concept, however, aligns with Obama’s broader effort to shift the U.S. military’s focus toward Asia and provides a framework for preserving some of the Pentagon’s most sophisticated weapons programs, many of which have strong backing in Congress. Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Cornyn (R-Tex.) inserted language into the 2012 Defense Authorization bill requiring the Pentagon to issue a report this year detailing its plans for implementing the concept. The legislation orders the Pentagon to explain what weapons systems it will need to carry out Air-Sea Battle, its timeline for implementing the concept and an estimate of the costs associated with it. Lieberman and Cornyn’s staff turned to an unsurprising source when drafting the questions. “We asked CSBA for help,” one of the staffers said. “In a lot of ways, they created it.” Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Navy’s top admiral: U.S. is not at an impasse with Beijing after South China Sea ruling

The Navy’s top admiral said Tuesday that the United States and China are not at an impasse despite ongoing tensions and a recent contentious ruling about the South China Sea, describing the military relationship between the two nations as complicated but growing. Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, met with reporters at the Pentagon after returning from a recent trip that included stops in Bejiing, at a Chinese submarine academy in Qindao, and on the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning. The Chinese navy’s interaction with the U.S. fleet has generally been positive, Richardson said, citing regular communication between ships and China’s participation at the multi-national Rim of the Pacific now underway. The admiral’s visit to China, in planning since February, came after months of Chinese development in the South China Sea that has alarmed U.S. allies and heightened tensions across the Pacific region. China has undertaken a land reclamation project in the South China Sea that includes building manmade islands and militarizing them. “It’s a complex situation. They’ve established a dynamic, I think, where they’re trying to posture many of their actions as a responsive measure,” Richardson said of Chinese growth in the South China. “I made it fairly clear that our activity in the South China Sea is by and large relatively constant for a long time. The activity levels and the complexity and all that has not really changed.” China has sought to characterize its activity and claims of “indisputable sovereignty” over most of the South China Sea as reasonable. But that position took a blow July 12 when the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague sided with the Philippines over China in a case filed by the government in Manila. Chinese President Xi Jinping said afterward that his country “never [accepted] any claim or action” citing the decision. Richardson met with Adm. Wu Shengli, the commander of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), and Richardson underscored that the United States will continue to conduct freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea and demonstrate that it remains open to commercial traffic. Wu is expected to attend a conference at the U.S. Naval War College in Portsmouth, R.I., in September. “I think they kind of understand that we are going to be there,” Richardson said of the South China Sea. “I think it’s just a matter of continuing to exercise these types of things, and it will be less a point of discussion and more just what we do.” Asked if the United States and the Chinese were in a stalemate, Richardson said he would not characterize the dynamic that way. “As any relationship between two very complex nations is going to be, we’re not going to agree on 100 percent, right?” he said. “There’s going to be areas where there is a little bit of stuff to work out.”

Study: Offshore drilling has prompted a rise in maritime conflicts around the world

In 1947, 12 miles out into the Gulf of Mexico from the Louisiana coast, an oil rig dubbed "Kermac 16" began operating. It was owned by Kerr-McGee Oil Industries, and represented a major technological breakthrough: For the first time, humans were drilling for oil so far out at sea that they couldn’t glimpse land any longer. Granted, the rig could only drill in waters 18 feet deep. But it was a predecessor to today's profusion of advanced, deepwater drilling ventures that can now access ever harder-to-get hydrocarbon resources, in some cases in waters deeper than 10,000 feet.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico While the explosion and subsequent spillage from the Deepwater Horizon in 2010 focused dramatic levels of attention on one risk from offshore drilling, there may also be another one -- actual conflict between the countries who lay claim to the waters that host such valuable resources. Such, at least, is the contention of a new study in the journal _Energy Research and Social Science_ , which suggests that the growth of offshore drilling around the world has gone hand-in-hand with more maritime disputes, sometimes involving threats of violence or even violence between states.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico "It’s someone saying, 'I want this and I’m willing to fight you for it' -- or showing through their actions they’re willing to fight, so maybe moving a naval ship into the area, or actually firing weapons," says Elizabeth Nyman, the study's author and a political scientist at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. So we're not talking about large scale military actions here -- but still conflicts that are hardly trivial between world powers. As an example of such conflicts, Nyman cites a recent dispute between China and Vietnam over the seas near the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea -- one of a number of such disputes involving China and other countries including Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines. "China moved a drilling rig into disputed waters, there were anti-China riots, Vietnamese fishing vessels were purportedly attacked by Chinese vessels," says Nyman.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Nyman's paper takes the year 1947 -- the year that Kermac 16 began its work -- as a technological break point in the development of offshore drilling technologies, noting that by 1956, less than 10 years later, successful drilling was being performed in 350 feet of water. At around the same time, she notes, Harry Truman issued the 1945 Truman Proclamation, in which the United States asserted a territorial right over all the resources contained in the country's continental shelf. The proclamation explicitly noted the “long range world-wide need for new sources of petroleum and other minerals,” and observed that technological advances were placing subsea resources within reach.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But the US's assertion of its rights to ocean areas prompted other countries to do the same. This process, notes the paper, has produced a "miasma of confusion and conflict," with oil resources being a primary cause. To demonstrate a trend in maritime conflicts, Nyman examined a database that tracks "militarized interstate disputes," defined as "the threat, display, and/or use of force by one state against another." She pulled data for the 20th century in particular and controlled for factors that included changes in the price of oil, whether the states involved in the conflict were democracies (which are known not to fight each other very often), and the relative military capacities of the countries involved.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Sure enough, there were more militarized interstate disputes involving ocean areas thought to host oil resources after 1947 than before, controlling for these variables -- but the trend was not true for other territorial conflicts. It was only in the oceans. "Contested maritime areas with oil and gas resources were more likely to see conflict after the extraction of those resources was an accomplished feat," notes the study. The paper is "a solid piece of research," says political scientist Sara Mitchell of the University of Iowa, who is familiar with the study. "I like how she shows the effect of post 1947 years to be significant for maritime claims but insignificant for disputes involving land borders or ownership of islands." The findings may be particularly relevant in light of climate change -- the rapid melting of the Arctic is expected to set off a new resources race, as countries with Arctic seascapes like Russia, Canada, and the US move in to exploit the hydrocarbons deep beneath the surface. "A lot of people are trying to figure out what’s going to happen up there," says Nyman. "There’s a lot of different ideas."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico "Most visions are peaceful," she adds.

Obama was right to order a sail-by in the South China Sea

THE USS Lassen, a guided-missile destroyer, on Tuesday sailed by a reef in the South China Sea’s Spratly archipelago that China has built up into an island capable of hosting an airstrip. Predictably, China’s foreign ministry quickly announced its “strong discontentment and resolute opposition” to what it regarded as a violation of its territory and pledged to “take all necessary measures as needed.” While that sounds like a potential recipe for conflict, the Obama administration was right to order the sail-by. In fact, the action was long overdue. For nearly two years, China has been engaged in a massive and provocative effort to turn seven specks of land in the Spratlys into outposts it could use to fortify and defend its outrageous and legally indefensible territorial claims in the South China Sea. According to a recent Pentagon report, it has pumped sand onto coral reefs to build up 2,900 acres of new land, in the process creating islets that can accommodate airstrips, ports and barracks. The activity has alarmed the five other nations that claim parts of the Spratlys, including U.S. allies the Philippines, Taiwan and Malaysia. And it has raised the prospect that China will use force to gain control over a region that is crisscrossed by international shipping lanes carrying 30 percent of the world’s maritime trade. Almost as alarming to Asian governments has been the failure of the United States to respond to the Chinese activity until now with anything more than rhetoric. While U.S. commanders have been arguing for months that Beijing’s claims should be challenged by Navy ships, President Obama withheld permission before last month’s visit to Washington by Chinese President Xi Jinping . Mr. Xi pledged that China would not militarize the islets it is building — but that dubious promise, like his already-broken pledge to end cyberattacks on U.S. companies, needs to be tested in practice. That’s one reason the patrol by the U.S. destroyer should be the first of a measured but regular series. Another is that, under international law, it is unquestionably legal. The Law of the Sea Treaty (which, unfortunately, the U.S. Senate has never ratified) holds that countries that create artificial islands do not gain the usual right to 12 miles of territorial waters around them. Beijing’s claim that its territory is being infringed upon therefore rests on a sketchy map dating to the 1940s in which nine dashes are superimposed across 80 percent of the South China Sea. There is nothing to back up this sovereignty assertion, or objections to U.S. patrols, other than intimidation and threats of force. By demonstrating that China’s aggressive claims and base-building will be answered with more than words, the United States may have better luck in inducing Beijing to listen to those words, which for years have called for negotiations and arbitration to resolve competing territorial claims in the Spratlys and elsewhere in the South China Sea. Mr. Xi appears to have concluded that this U.S. administration can be bluffed into standing by while China alters the physical status quo in the region to its long-term advantage. It will take more maneuvers like that of the USS Lassen to convince him otherwise. **Read more on this issue:** The Post’s View: China should tread carefully in the South China Sea The Post’s View: China’s military parade was a ‘peaceful’ show of force Fred Hiatt: At the state dinner, leave some seats empty for China’s political prisoners Fareed Zakaria: With an absent United States, China marches on

U.S. Navy alarmed at Beijing’s ‘Great Wall of sand’ in South China Sea

BEIJING — China is building a “Great Wall of sand” through an unparalleled program of land reclamation in the South China Sea, raising concerns about the possibility of military confrontation in the disputed waters, according to the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. In one of the strongest and highest-level criticisms of the reclamation project to date, Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr. told a naval conference in Australia late Tuesday that competing territorial claims by several nations in the South China Sea continue to stoke “regional tensions and the potential for miscalculation.” “But what’s really drawing a lot of concern in the here and now is the unprecedented land reclamation currently being conducted by China,” he added. Satellite images show rapid construction on various coral reefs and rocks controlled by China within the disputed Spratly Islands, including harbors, piers, helipads, buildings and potentially at least one airstrip, experts say. Last month, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki expressed concerns that the program was an attempt to “militarize outposts on disputed land features.” Harris said that China has created 1.5 square miles of artificial landmass in recent months. “China is building artificial land by pumping sand onto live coral reefs — some of them submerged — and paving them over with concrete,” he said. In a region known for its beautiful natural islands, he said, “China is creating a Great Wall of sand with dredges and bulldozers over the course of months.” China claims almost all of the South China Sea as its territorial waters, but its claims overlap with those of Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei. Last month, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that the country was merely carrying out “necessary construction on its own islands and reefs” and that it would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the busy shipping waters of the South China Sea, as well as resolve disputes through “direct dialogue” and consultation. “The construction does not target or affect anyone,” he said at a news conference. “We do not accept criticism from others when we are merely building facilities in our own yard. We have every right to do things that are lawful and justified.” State news agency Xinhua was more forthright in rejecting U.S. criticisms last month, accusing Washington of displaying a “perverted sense of insecurity” and a “pirate-style mindset.” While China’s attention was focused elsewhere in previous decades, the other major claimants to the Spratly Islands occupied various islands and rocks throughout the archipelago, building ports, piers, bases and airstrips there. China now appears to be rushing to underline its own claims. “This history matters a great deal, because what Washington and its friends and allies may see as punctuated, lightning-speed construction is likely viewed in China as a perfectly legitimate game of catch-up,” Mira Rapp-Hooper, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative and a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), wrote in a recent report. “What sets China’s activities apart, however, is that Beijing has been dramatically changing the size and structure of existing physical land features, while other claimants have built upon or modified existing land masses,” she wrote in a related report. The only major claimant without an airstrip in the archipelago, China appears to be turning the hitherto largely submerged Fiery Cross Reef into the largest island in the Spratly Islands, experts said. Yanmei Xie, senior China analyst with the International Crisis Group in Beijing, said the island reclamation project was a deliberate strategic decision. “Although China’s exact intention is unclear so far, they are likely mainly designed to extend China’s power projection, by expanding, for example, its surveillance, early warning and air interception capabilities further out into the sea,” she said. “With these added capabilities, China could have a de facto ‘air defense identification zone’ in the South China Sea, even though it may not rush to declare one out of concern for the political and diplomatic fallout.” China provoked strong U.S. criticism when it unilaterally declared an air defense identification zone over disputed waters in the East China Sea in 2013, and Secretary of State John F. Kerry was among those who warned Beijing not to do the same for the South China Sea. Harris said that the pace of China’s construction of artificial islands “raises serious questions about Chinese intentions.” He added, “How China proceeds will be a key indicator of whether the region is heading toward confrontation or cooperation.” Foreign-policy experts said China’s activities would not reinforce its legal claims to the islands under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea because only natural land features are relevant to maritime rights. But it could help China enforce de facto control of some of the disputed waters. Chris Johnson, a senior CSIS adviser, said that China had carried out more reclamation work on the islands in the past five months than other claimants had done in the past five years. “They want to be able to operate with impunity in these waters, and they want the rest of us to accept it,” he said. “So what does the game plan ultimately entail? Is it to be able to move around in these areas and operate, and by doing so, in a de facto manner, emphasize their claims? Or do they have intent, over time, to kick rival claimants off?” he asked. “I don’t think there’s a sense of that, but I do think their behavior suggests they are moving in one direction, and they expect the other claimants to respect their growing power.” Liu Liu contributed to this report. **Read more:** U.S. flies two warplanes over East China Sea, ignoring new Chinese air defense zone China withdraws oil rig from waters disputed with Vietnam, but warns it could return China’s rise and Asian tensions send U.S. relations into downward spiral Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

U.S., China spar on cyberspying, maritime issues even as they stress cooperation

BEIJING — The United States and China ended two days of talks Thursday, sparring over cyber-espionage and Asian maritime tensions but insisting that they are still actively cooperating on a broad range of other issues. Washington and Beijing have been trading complaints about cyberspying after accusations that Chinese military hackers were stealing trade secrets from American companies and Edward Snowden’s revelations of extensive U.S. spying on foreign governments. “The loss of intellectual property through cyber means has a very chilling effect on innovation and investment,” Secretary of State John F. Kerry said at a news conference at the end of the sixth annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Beijing. “I emphasized that incidents of cybertheft have harmed our businesses and threatened our nation’s competitiveness.” In May, the Justice Department charged five members of the Chinese military with cyber-espionage against U.S. firms. Beijing responded by calling off talks on cybersecurity. While the United States has been appealing for that dialogue to resume, China put the ball squarely back in Washington’s court Thursday. “Cyberspace should not become a tool for damaging the interests of other countries,” Yang Jiechi, China’s top diplomat, said. “China hopes the U.S. will create the conditions for the two sides to have a dialogue and cooperate on cyber issues.” There also was no sign of progress in calming tensions in the East and South China seas, where China’s assertive staking of territorial claims has spooked other nations that also lay claim to hundreds of islands, rocks, sandbanks and reefs scattered across the potentially oil- and gas-rich waters. The United States has been bolstering security ties with allies Japan and the Philippines, as well as with other nations in the region, but insists that it is not trying to contain China. Beijing appeared unconvinced. “We urged the United States to adopt an objective and fair stance and to honor its commitment to not taking sides,” Yang said. Kerry said the United States had no position on any side’s territorial claims but opposed “unilateral action meant to enforce a particular assertion of sovereignty.” Although he also expressed concern about China’s “recent detention and arrest of journalists, lawyers and activists,” Kerry maintained that there were many areas of common interests and cooperation, including climate change, counterterrorism and wildlife trafficking. He also said there is room to work together on efforts to check Iran’s nuclear ambitions and persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program. The United States and China, which together account for nearly half of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, also kicked off joint projects to promote the capture and storage of carbon, boost energy-efficient “smart” electricity grids and reduce emissions from industrial boilers. Although they remain far apart on goals for capping overall emission levels, Kerry said the new cooperation on climate change was a marked shift from two years ago, when he was in the U.S. Senate, and added that it raised hope for greater action in the future. “It is our hope that this will actually be given greater meat on the bones than it has today, but at this point in time, this is an improbable act that is being played out, and we hope it ultimately will be well received and will be fruitful,” he said. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, who was part of the U.S. delegation, said China had agreed to limit its interventions in the foreign-exchange market “as conditions permit,” marking a step toward establishing a market-determined exchange rate for its currency, the yuan. Washington has long accused Beijing of keeping the yuan’s value artificially low, boosting Chinese exports at the expense of U.S. jobs. Lew also said China had agreed to open up its service sector, including financial services, to greater foreign investment, but he gave no details. Gregory Gilligan, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, said in a statement that U.S. companies welcomed the announcement but that “more needs to be done to reduce the restrictions on foreign companies that continue to impede innovation and deprive consumers of choice.” U.S. companies complain that there are significant barriers to investment in China and that the playing field is increasingly tipped against them and in favor of domestic firms, especially those owned by the state. Overall, Kerry said the two sides had shown significant levels of cooperation on major issues and a capacity to manage their differences while recognizing the need “to avoid falling into the trap of a zero-sum competition.” More poetically, Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang said the two sides had ensured that “the giant ship of U.S.-China relations will continue to brave the winds and the waves and continue on the right course.” Liu Liu contributed to this report.

Rise of Philippines’ Duterte stirs uncertainty in the South China Sea

BEIJING — Rodrigo “the Punisher” Duterte looks poised to be the Philippines’ next president, news that could have a major impact on the standoff in the South China Sea. With unofficial tallies giving him a commanding lead, the tough-talking mayor asserted a win. “It’s with humility, extreme humility, that I accept this, the mandate of the people,” Duterte told Agence France-Presse, the French news agency, as the results came in. But Duterte’s rise has been anything but humble and quiet, with the longtime mayor making international headlines for threatening to kill suspected criminals, joking about the rape and murder of a missionary, and promising to ride a Jet Ski to plant a Philippine flag on disputed reefs. For his legions of fans in the Philippines, Duterte’s brash comments are as appealing as his promise to completely stamp out crime and corruption in just six months. They see him as a superman ready to challenge the status quo and willing to stand up for the little guy. To his critics within and beyond the country, including in the United States, Duterte’s win is worrisome. They wonder how the man Human Rights Watch dubbed “the death squad mayor” will handle domestic and international policy, and are concerned about the return to the country of strongman politics. One of the biggest unknowns is his China policy. “Foreign relations has been a major gap in Duterte’s published platform to date, and he and his team have yet to publicly define their approach to the South China Sea,” said Jay L. Batongbacal, director of the University of the Philippines’ Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea. China claims nearly all of the South China Sea as its “inherent” territory, based on maps that scoop into exclusive maritime economic zones claimed by the Philippines and others. In recent years, Beijing has built up islands across the area, adding civilian and military infrastructure to the outposts. President Benigno Aquino III took a hard line with Beijing — once comparing China to Nazi Germany — and found himself frozen out. With Chinese ships pressing farther south, Aquino moved to ramp up military cooperation with the United States. A defense pact upheld this year allows the U.S. military to build facilities at five Philippine bases, and more ships already are stopping by the former U.S. naval base at Subic Bay. The deal, signed in the run-up to a ruling on the South China Sea by an international tribunal, will put more U.S. ships and troops in close proximity with Chinese forces, deepening the standoff. On Tuesday morning, the day after the election, a U.S. warship sailed close to the Chinese-occupied Fiery Cross Reef, Reuters reported. It is unclear how Duterte plans to navigate the issue. In February, he shocked many by suggesting he might be willing to soften the Philippines’ stance significantly — if Beijing is willing to pay. The arrangement Duterte proposed would see the Chinese build railroads in his home region in return for his temporary silence on the South China Sea. “Build us a railway just like the one you built in Africa, and let’s set aside disagreements for a while,” he said. Duterte later expressed skepticism about the Philippines’ case at the tribunal, questioning the worth of a ruling that China has said it won’t accept. “I have a similar position as China’s. I don’t believe in solving the conflict through an international tribunal,” he said. He also expressed support for bilateral talks with Beijing and suggested the possibility of joint exploration of the area’s natural resources. “If negotiations will be in still waters in one or two years, I will talk to the Chinese,” he said. Beijing has been calling for bilateral talks with its South China Sea neighbors, one by one. Critics in the Philippines and elsewhere argue that such an approach would give Beijing an unfair advantage over the smaller countries. And then there was the Jet Ski pledge. “I will go there on my own with a Jet Ski, bringing along with me a flag and a pole, and once I disembark, I will plant the flag on the runway and tell the Chinese authorities, ‘Kill me,’ ” he said. Of course, China would prefer less talk of heroism and heated nationalism. Though Beijing has been characteristically quiet on how it plans to engage Duterte, it is no doubt pleased by his apparent willingness to strike a deal. On Tuesday, the English-language edition of Global Times, an organ of the ruling Communist Party of China, accused Manila and the media of “hyping” the political dimensions of the conflict at the expense of economic concerns. An editorial in the same paper struck a similar tone, noting that the Philippine public “cares most about livelihoods, and nationalistic slogans cannot feed them.” The piece blasted Aquino but expressed optimism about Duterte’s ability to change Manila’s “unscrupulous policy toward China.” “If there is anything that can be changed by Duterte, it will be diplomacy,” it stated. His challenge will be engaging China without alienating the United States. If Duterte pushes ahead with joint development agreements or bilateral talks, he will need to tread carefully, said Richard Javad Heydarian, an assistant professor of political science at Manila’s De La Salle University. “Given strong domestic anti-China sentiment and institutionalized security ties with America,” he said, “Duterte will have to keep Washington — a key strategic partner — on [his] side.”

U.S. destroyer sails near disputed island in South China Sea

An American guided-missile destroyer sailed near a disputed island in the South China Sea on Sunday, a U.S. defense official said, marking the second such operation since President Trump took office.  Triton Island is claimed by China, Vietnam and Taiwan. In May, a U.S. destroyer sailed well within 12 miles of Mischief Reef, a man-made island in the Spratly Islands to the south of the Paracels. During Sunday’s operation, a Chinese warship tailed the USS Stethem, Fox News reported, although it is unclear how close the ship came to the American vessel. The 12-mile line is the internationally recognized distance that separates the shores of a sovereign nation from international waters. The United States has routinely conducted voyages within this 12-mile limit around islands in the South China Sea as a message to countries such as China, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines. Many of these nations have laid claim to islands in the South China Sea, some of which are no more than tiny strips of sand and reef. The last time the U.S. Navy sailed near Triton Island was in January 2016, when the USS Curtis Wilbur came within 12 miles of its shores. The Pentagon did not notify any of the island’s claimants before that operation. Capt. Charlie Brown, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet, did not confirm the Sunday operation but said in an emailed statement that the Navy routinely conducts FONOPs and that the operations are not “about any one country, nor are they about making political statements.” “U.S. forces operate in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region on a daily basis, including in the South China Sea,” Brown said. “All operations are conducted in accordance with international law and demonstrate that the United States will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows. That is true in the South China Sea as in other places around the globe.” In the Paracels and Spratlys, China has built up a number of small islands into fully functional military facilities complete with airfields and antiaircraft defenses. The White House, in both the Obama and Trump administrations, has seen the militarization of the South China Sea as a threat to stability in the resource-rich region, where ships from numerous countries have long fished.

U.S. spy plane buzzed by Chinese jets in ‘unsafe’ intercept

BEIJING — A U.S. spy plane was buzzed by Chinese jets Tuesday as it flew over the East China Sea, with one of the fighter planes approaching in an “unsafe” manner, the U.S. military said. It was the second such incident in three weeks. China responded by accusing the United States of “hyping” the incident but said the real problem was U.S. surveillance planes flying too close to its territory. Tensions between the two nations have risen in the past two years over China’s moves to assert sovereignty over the disputed waters and busy shipping lanes of the South China Sea. The United States accuses China of militarizing artificial islands built on reefs and rocks in waters that are also claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei. The U.S. Pacific Command said a U.S. Air Force RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft was intercepted Tuesday by two Chinese J-10 fighter planes while flying in international airspace. “One of the intercepting Chinese jets had an unsafe excessive rate of closure on the RC-135 aircraft,” it said in a statement. “Initial assessment is that this seems to be a case of improper airmanship, as no other provocative or unsafe maneuvers occurred.” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei insisted that his nation’s pilots always act responsibly and professionally. “Judging by the report, the U.S. side is again deliberately hyping up the issue of the close surveillance of China by U.S. military aircraft,” he said Wednesday at a regular news conference. “The root of relevant issues is that the frequent close reconnaissance on China’s coast by U.S. military aircraft severely threatens China’s air and maritime security,” he added. “China has the right to take defensive measures against it. We demand the U.S. side stop close reconnaissance activities and avoid the reoccurrence of such things.” In May, the Pentagon said two Chinese fighter jets flew within 50 feet of a U.S. EP-3 aircraft over the South China Sea. State news agency Xinhua responded to that incident by accusing the United States of flexing its military muscles on China’s doorstep and of “dangerous and irresponsible activities” that significantly increase the risk of military misjudgment. The nationalist Global Times tabloid also reacted to the May incident by recalling a midair collision between a U.S. spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea in 2001. That crash caused the death of a Chinese pilot and a forced landing by the U.S. plane. “If the Pentagon continues its close-up offshore surveillance operations against China, as our military prowess increases, more interceptions can be expected. As a result, the odds of another collision will go up,” it wrote. “The simmering distrust between China and the U.S. will probably explode if there is another collision.” On Sunday, Secretary of State John F. Kerry warned China not to consider declaring an “air defense identification zone” over the South China Sea, as it did over the East China Sea in 2013. He said such a move, which would assert control over air traffic in the region, would be a “provocative and destabilizing act.” Gu Jinglu contributed to this report.

Senkaku dispute reinforces military shifts

TOKYO — Tuesday’s confrontation between Japanese and Taiwanese coast guard vessels hardly ranks among the great naval battles — the only weapons deployed were water cannon, and the Taiwanese beat a dignified retreat after a few hours. But the televised maritime contest certainly highlighted the rising passions surrounding the Senkaku islands, a tiny Japanese-controlled archipelago that is also claimed by Taiwan and, more dangerously, by its giant neighbor, China. Worrying cracks have appeared along a diplomatic fault line that lay mostly quiet for decades, sparking heated talk among international commentators of a possible Sino-Japanese war. The stakes are certainly high. Japan’s pacifistic constitution may outlaw aggressive war, but in Tokyo there is a firm political consensus that the Senkaku are an integral part of the nation’s territory, to be defended by force if necessary. But China, which calls the islands the Diaoyu, appears increasingly willing to test Japan’s control by sending state fisheries vessels through their territorial waters. And the tone and martial language of protests in China this month against Japan’s purchase of three of the islands made clear that some Chinese at least are spoiling for a fight. Moves by Chinese and Taiwanese state vessels and fishing boats to challenge Japan’s de facto control of the islands could lead to a potentially fatal accident that some analysts say could further escalate hostility from China. Kunihiko Miyake, research director at the Canon Global Institute in Tokyo, says such an escalation remains unlikely in the near term, given the strength of Japan’s navy — officially known as the Maritime Self-Defense Force — and its alliance with the United States. While Washington does not take a formal position on who owns the Senkaku, it has repeatedly made clear that it would stand with Japan in the island’s defense. “China will not use force, because it would lose,” Miyake said. Instead, he says, Beijing plans to continue using nonmilitary forces to challenge Japan’s control of the group — a strategy in line with the teachings of classical Chinese strategist Sun Zi. “They want to win without fighting,” he said. “This is Sun Zi theory.” Still, Japanese policymakers are acutely aware that China’s rapid economic growth and the development of its People’s Liberation Army is likely to narrow any current military superiority. On Tuesday, the Chinese navy put its first aircraft carrier into formal service. Development of other Chinese weapons systems such as sophisticated anti-ship missiles poses a potentially even bigger challenge. Senkaku tensions are likely to strengthen Japan’s determination to refocus its military forces toward stronger defense of southern islands and away from the emphasis on northern ground troops once seen as a bulwark against the Soviet Union. Under a new defense policy unveiled in 2010, Japan will increase the number of its submarines from 16 to 22, while tank forces — many based on the northern island of Hokkaido — will be cut from 830 tanks to just 400. The island dispute is also likely to prove a funding windfall for Japan’s already impressively equipped and well-armed coast guard, which has the frontline role in the absence of an overtly military threat. Candidates in Wednesday’s leadership election of Japan’s Liberal Democratic party, which polls suggest will topple the ruling Democratic party at a general election that must be held by next summer at the latest, have already called for action to beef up the coast guard. In a set of policy proposals released on Monday, the Japan Institute of International Affairs, a think tank, called for “significant improvements” to the service’s “capacity and equipment” as well as the deployment of more large patrol vessels to the Senkaku area “as a matter of priority.” The institute also suggested that the tensions might create an opportunity to push the United States to formally endorse Japan’s territorial claim as part of efforts to ensure a “rock-solid” alliance. Washington is likely to be reluctant to get involved in the sovereignty debate, but the Senkaku tensions have certainly distracted attention from alliance frictions, such as public worries in Japan about the safety of the newly deployed U.S. Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. They have also given a boost to those like Miyake who think postwar Japan moved too far to the left and who favor a closer alliance with the United States and more robust defense policy. “I’m sure China is making a big mistake. The harsher they are and the more assertive, the more they push us to America’s side,” Miyake said. “I personally thank them.” ** — Financial Times  **

During G-20, Philippines spots more Chinese ships near disputed shoal

BEIJING — The Philippines has asked China to explain the presence of a larger- than-usual number of ships near the Scarborough Shoal, raising the prospect of fresh tension in the South China Sea. With the Group of 20 leaders gathered in the southern Chinese city of Hangzhou, a Philippine Air Force overflight reportedly spotted at least eight ships near the disputed shoal, including four Chinese coast guard vessels, two barges and two boats that could be troop carriers, according to the Department of National Defense. Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana on Sunday expressed “grave concern” about the number and nature of the vessels, saying the presence of barge-like ships could signal Chinese plans to dredge — and potentially build — in the area. In a regular press briefing on Monday, Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry, downplayed the idea of a change in policy or posture. “The situation has not changed,” she said. Yet the timing and nature of the Filipino reports make the news tough to ignore. Since July, when a European court ruled there is no legal or historical basis for China’s claims to most of the South China Sea, the Scarborough Shoal has been seen as a likely hotspot. The shoal, known as Panatag in the Philippines and Huangyan Island in China, is located about 120 miles from the Philippine coast, close to the former U.S. military base at Subic Bay, where a growing number of U.S. ships now dock. China seized controlled of Scarborough in 2012 and has since angered Manila by chasing out Filipino fishermen. In July, the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled that barring Filipinos from the shoal violated “traditional fishing rights” — but the Chinese did not budge. Many foreign experts and diplomats believe China may ultimately build on Scarborough, potentially turning it into a military outpost, just as they have done in the nearby Spratly Archipelago. But most believed China would wait until after this week’s G20 meetings, or even after the U.S. presidential election, to make any move. The fact that new ships were reported the day before China’s Xi Jinping had tea with President Obama in Hangzhou is therefore something of a surprise. In Beijing on Monday, Hua, the spokeswoman, warned against seeing a message in the timing. “We hope the situation won’t be hyped up,” she said.

Filipino hackers wage cyberwar on Chinese Web sites

Attention this week has centered on the covert cyberwar taking place between the United States and China. Chinese authorities pointed to the supposed hypocrisy of Washington leveling cyberspying charges against China, even while the United States maintains its own vast network of clandestine surveillance and monitoring.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday There are myriad other stealth attacks launched from the dark ravines and hideaways of the Internet that governments have to monitor and protect against. And the Chinese aren't just facing the United States. On Tuesday, the Philippine branch of the hacker collective Anonymous announced on its Facebook page that it had hacked and defaced nearly 200 Chinese government sites. The full list of sites is available in the embedded post below.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday The raid on the Chinese state Web sites comes amid heightened tensions between Beijing and Manila. The two countries have locked horns in a heated maritime territorial dispute over islands in the South China Sea, initially provoked, Philippine authorities argue, by illegal Chinese poaching of endangered species in islands not far from the archipelago nation's coast.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Those provocations have escalated into dangerous standoffs between Chinese and Philippine naval vessels. Fear over China's increasingly expansionist behavior spurred the government in Manila to tie up a new security deal with Washington last month.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday The Anonymous hackers from the Philippines are clearly riled up by this state of events. "China’s alleged claim on maritime territories and oppressive poaching can no longer be tolerated,” read one message posted on a hacked Chinese Web site. Previously, though, Anonymous Philippines targeted Web sites of its own country's government, following the passage of a controversial cybercrime law.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday The Philippines has a considerable pool of Internet-savvy people, some of whom end up dabbling in the Web's dark arts. Recently, with the aid of Interpol, Philippine authorities arrested dozens in the country involved in global "sextortion" syndicates that would trick gullible netizens around the world into exposing themselves in lewd ways online and then blackmail them. They claimed more than 530 victims in the Chinese special administrative region of Hong Kong alone.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday

Duterte’s deal with China seen by satellite: Fishing allowed but no change in control of disputed shoal

The yellow dots are visual confirmation of a deal with real geostrategic significance. These are Philippine fishing boats, plying their trade in the rich waters around Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, their presence here implying an agreement was reached during President Rodrigo Duterte's recent visit to Beijing. On that visit, Duterte announced his “separation” from the United States and his embrace of China: something that would amount to a significant strategic realignment for a key regional American ally. In return, he won a pledge of Chinese investment to upgrade his country's infrastructure. He also, it seems, won permission for fishermen to return to these rich waters, around a shoal that China seized in 2012. Here's another image, courtesy of Planet Labs, of the same shoal on the following day: the Chinese coastguard is still inside the lagoon but the fishing boats have moved slightly further south. Yet there are reasons to question the limits of the concession that Duterte gained. The first is the single red dot on the satellite image. It's a Chinese coast guard vessel, guarding the mouth of the lagoon and preventing Philippine fishing boats from entering, according to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. China's claim of sovereignty over the shoal, which it knows as Huangyan Dao, has not been relaxed, as Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying underlined Monday. “The Chinese side has always been exercising normal jurisdiction over Huangyan Dao. The situation there is and will remain unchanged,” she told a regular news conference. “We have seen all-round improvement of China-Philippines relations following President Duterte's visit to China,” she added. “Under such circumstances, the Chinese side makes proper arrangements based on the friendship between China and the Philippines in response to the issue of President Duterte's concern.”  Rather than any dramatic new deal, it seems that China has just returned to the status quo that was in effect for most of the Benigno Aquino III presidency, prior to the July ruling, said Gregory Poling, the director of AMTI. “That effectively meant a permanent China Coast Guard presence in the lagoon, which prevented any Filipino access inside the reef, and regular Chinese patrols farther out that sometimes allowed Philippine fishermen to work the outside of the shoal and sometimes chased them off,” he wrote in an email. On his return from Beijing, Duterte suggested a deal had been reached that fishermen from neither country would be allowed to fish inside the lagoon for environmental reasons — it is a spawning area for tuna and other fish. But that environmental concern has come rather late in the day, Poling argues. “On the environmental issue, I suspect Duterte is looking for a way to sell continued inability to access the lagoon without conceding the reality of Chinese control,” he wrote. “We haven’t seen any Chinese fishermen inside the lagoon in a while, but they did massive damage in 2014 and 2015, especially digging endangered clams.” So how big a win was this for Duterte? Experts are skeptical, said Heydarian, especially because China seemed to have tightened its grip on the shoal in recent months.  Online comments from ordinary Filipinos to the news from Scarborough Shoal have not been uniformly positive, with some people angry that China should be granting a “concession” to the Philippines over a reef they believe is rightfully theirs. Given Duterte's volatility and unpredictability, and China's dogged pursuit of its maritime claims, the risk of further upsets in the relationship cannot be ruled out.  The tribunal ruled that Mischief Reef lies within the Philippines' continental shelf and Exclusive Economic Zone, and criticized China's land reclamation and building program there as creating a “fait accompli.” “President Duterte has said the ruling is non-negotiable even as he strengthens Philippine ties with Beijing. His resolve will be tested in Panganiban,” the editorial said. “One of his Cabinet members had remarked that Chinese aid comes with no conditionalities or strings attached. At this point in fact it does, and the conditionality is worse than adherence to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: giving up the Philippines’ sovereign rights in contested waters.”

Japan and China’s island argument is a U.S. concern

_John Pomfret, a longtime Post correspondent, is the author of “Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China.”_ BEIJING The tension in the East China Sea between China and Japan is America’s problem. Sure, there are all sorts of reasons war will “never” break out — from “it just wouldn’t make sense” to “everybody is making too much money to fight.” But given the history of the region and the lack of rules for handling such crises, the reality is that one stupid mistake could start a war. Since the United States is obligated by treaty to defend Japan if it is attacked, it falls to Washington to make sure a conflict does not erupt. Over the past several months, Tokyo and Beijing have played a game of chicken, in the streets, on the seas, in the air and through the airwaves over a cluster of three uninhabited islands and two big rocks called the Senkakus by the Japanese and the Diaoyu Islands by the Chinese. Japan seized them in January 1895, during its first modern war with China (which Japan won). Tensions began escalating last year and have grown from anti-Japanese protests in Chinese cities to a war of words to the present situation, in which an increasing number of Chinese and Japanese ships and planes are frequenting a very small area in the East China Sea. The Japanese government announced Tuesday that twice in the past three weeks Chinese warships have upped the ante even further by “painting” a Japanese warship and helicopter with the same type of radar used to aim missiles. In a region devoid of rules like those that existed between the United States and the Soviet Union when their ships and planes crossed paths, the possibility of a deadly accident is high. In addition to the radar scares, the two sides have exchanged threats, with Japan stating that its fighter jets would fire tracer bullets near Chinese aircraft if they strayed too near the rocks. A retired but influential Chinese army general responded that such an act would constitute a “first shot.” The new chief of China’s Communist Party, Xi Jinping, has even taken to urging the People’s Liberation Army to “prepare for war.” The last time I heard an official Chinese outlet use that expression was 1980, when I was sleeping in my dormitory room at Nanjing University. A speaker just outside our window would erupt at 6 each morning with a tinny call to “increase vigilance, protect the motherland and prepare for war!” (The enemy then alternated between the Soviet Union and the United States.) Xi’s call was echoed Jan. 15 by the army’s official daily. “Bad habits” occur in the military, one article said, when “there is a lengthy period without war.” In China, there is an element of bread and circuses going on. The Communist Party is ginning up nationalist resentment against Japan and its ally, the United States, as a way to deflect attention from China’s significant social challenges. While many people here are justifiably proud of their country’s economic rise, they are not happy about a slew of issues, including endemic corruption, polluted air, lack of press freedom, an opaque legal system and sketchy food safety. Diverting the people’s gaze toward a hated neighbor is an easy, if short-term, fix. Chinese tactics toward Japan, dispatching planes and ships to the Senkakus, also mirror Beijing’s behavior toward the Philippines and Vietnam in recent months — actions designed to humiliate and to make the point that the disputed territories are not really under the control of any single country. Still, Japan is not blameless. The Democratic Party of Japan fell from power late last year partly because of its inability to manage the crisis (although its botching of the country’s economy was more important). The new Liberal Democratic Party government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made the situation no better with its tough talk. When Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell visited Tokyo in January, he said the United States wanted to see “cooler heads prevail” — a clear reference to both Washington’s ally and China. Abe did dispatch an envoy to Beijing for informal talks and has said he is willing to hold a summit with China’s leaders, but it is unclear whether the Communist Party wants to lower the heat. The problem with this crisis is that it seems insoluble. Japan won’t give the islands back to China, and China can’t back down. What’s equally troubling is that the United States does not have a stellar record of avoiding war in Asia. In the beginning of the 20th century, Washington helped facilitate the rise of Japan and then sat by as that country took chunks of China, ignoring decades of bad behavior until it was too late and Pearl Harbor was attacked. Today, Washington faces a similarly nettlesome challenge — only this time the roles are reversed. China is resurgent and Japan is relatively frail. The United States needs to find a way to support its friend without alienating Beijing, a tough balancing act, especially when there is an assumption in China that the black hand of America benefits from bad blood between the two neighbors. That is not the case, but if a conflict erupts in the East China Sea, truth will be the first casualty. **Read more on this debate:** Jennifer Lind: Japan must face its past

Six Chinese ships enter Japanese waters near disputed islands

TOKYO — In an increasingly fierce dispute over control of tiny islands and the sea around them, six Chinese maritime patrol ships entered Japanese waters Friday. Japan’s coast guard asked the ships to leave; China said they had every right to be there. The standoff occurred near a group of contested, uninhabited rocky outcroppings that Japan’s central government recently purchased, prompting threats from China that it will increase surveillance of the area. China’s state-run Xinhua news agency, citing a government statement, said the ships had been sent to the islands — known as Senkaku in Japan, Diaoyu in China — for “law enforcement and patrol activities” and to “demonstrate China’s jurisdiction.” Two or three of the six Chinese ships quickly moved outside of Japanese territory, which extends 12 nautical miles from the islands, Japanese media said, quoting the country’s coast guard. The others left hours later, but not before declaring they were in Chinese territory and ordering the Japanese coast guard to retreat. “Diaoyu is China’s territory,” a Chinese ship said in radio communications, according to the Associated Press, which quoted Japan’s coast guard. “This ship is carrying out lawful operations. We urge you to leave the waters immediately.” The stare-down, which began in the early morning and ended midafternoon, marked a recent high point for tension between Asia’s two largest economies, both of which see the islands as a symbol for national pride and covet the waters around them for their fishing stock and natural resources. As the ships tracked one another, Japan summoned the Chinese ambassador to protest and Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda met with a crisis task force at his office. Chinese ships had last entered Japanese-controlled territory two months ago, but a government spokesman in Tokyo, in an unusually strong condemnation, called the Friday intrusion an “unprecedented scale of invasion into Japanese contiguous waters.” On Saturday, hundreds of people protested in front of the Japanese Embassy in Beijing, throwing objects at the building as police struggled to keep control, Reuters reported. The extended row between China and Japan is already fraying ties between key trading partners; Nissan, for instance, has said its sales in China have been hurt by the recent tensions. Meanwhile, some China-based travel agencies are canceling group tours to Japan, and cultural events in both countries designed to mark the 40th anniversary of China-Japan diplomatic ties have been called off or postponed. The tensions also create a dilemma for the United States, which is treaty-bound to defend Japan but U.S. officials have repeatedly emphasized that they don’t take sides in territorial disputes. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland urged Japan and China this week to “work together” through dialogue. Some security experts fear that China and Japan are risking armed conflict by beefing up their security in the island area, which sits along a chain between Okinawa and Taiwan in the East China Sea. The Senkaku or Diaoyu islands are controlled by Japan, but they are also claimed by China and Taiwan. Japan’s central government, which had previously been renting the islands, finalized a $26.2 million purchase this week with a private Japanese landowner. The move enraged Beijing, which called the purchase a “gross violation” of Chinese sovereignty. China, in turn, released a set of sea coordinates, announcing the exact boundaries to the territory around the Senkaku or Diaoyu islands it considers its own. This move, according to Chinese security experts, gives China new legal ground to act against Japanese vessels in the contested waters. “It’s not impossible for the situation to get out of hand,” said Jin Yongming, an expert on maritime security at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. “It is possible Chinese fishing boats clash with the Japanese fishing boats, Chinese sea surveillance boats clash with Japanese sea surveillance boats, Chinese naval vessels clash with Japanese naval vessels. Theoretically, when a Japanese naval vessel enters the 12 nautical miles of the Diaoyu islands, China has the right of self defense.” **More world news coverage:** \- China’s Xi Jinping still out of sight \- Nuclear phaseout in Japan? \- German court backs bailout fund \- Read more headlines from around the world

Pentagon: Chinese naval ship seized an unmanned U.S. underwater vehicle in South China Sea

A Chinese naval ship seized an underwater naval drone that was being used by the U.S. Navy to test water conditions in the South China Sea, the Pentagon said Friday. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said the incident occurred on Dec. 15 about 50 nautical miles northwest of Subic Bay, in international waters in the South China Sea.  The Bowditch contacted the Chinese ship and asked for the glider to be returned. Officials aboard the Chinese ship acknowledged the radio communication, Davis said, but said they were returning to normal operations. The ship then left the area. “We would like it back and we would like this not to happen again,” Davis said, referring to the underwater drone. The incident occurred around 1:45 p.m. local time, the Navy said. A defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter on the record, said the United States has made an official diplomatic communication to the Chinese government, “demanding the return of our stuff.” There was no immediate response from Beijing, the official said. The incident comes amid mounting tensions over Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, which have alarmed U.S. allies in the region and prompted the U.S. military to conduct “freedom of navigation” operations intended as a show of force. This week, a U.S. think tank reported that China has placed antiaircraft weapons on artificial islands, threatening to intensify the debate over disputed areas. The gliders are piloted by civilian employees of the oceanographic office from Stennis Space Center in Mississippi through the use of encrypted satellite communications. They typically travel just a few miles per hour and are tracked by oceanographic vessels such as the USNS Bowditch. The data the drones collect is unclassified. Wu Shicun, president of China’s National Institute for South China Sea Studies, said the unmanned vehicle posed “a threat to China’s national security” because it could be used to “spy” on China’s land reclamation efforts or collect information about Chinese submarine routes. “Why are [the underwater vehicles] there? I think the U.S. knows it very well,” he said. Sen. John McCain, (R.-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Friday afternoon that the seizure is a “flagrant violation” of the laws of the seas. “China had no right to seize this vehicle,” McCain said. “And the United States must not stand for such outrageous conduct.” McCain said the incident fits a pattern of increasingly destabilizing Chinese behavior. “This behavior will continue until it is met with a strong and determined U.S. response, which until now the Obama administration has failed to provide,” McCain said. “Freedom of the seas and the principles of the rules-based order are not self-enforcing. American leadership is required in their defense.” Chinese analysts, however, downplayed the incident. “It won’t have too much impact on the Sino-U.S. relationship,” said Zhu Feng, dean of the School of International Relations at Nanjing University. “China and the U.S. have been through conflicts far more severe.”  Patrick Cronin, an expert on Asia-Pacific security at the Center for a New American Security, called the seizure “a brazen, calculated act of coercive diplomacy” and said it was intended to send a message to Trump ahead of his inauguration. “Rather than wait several weeks, Beijing is advancing a provocative action offshore from a U.S. ally that had recently kowtowed to China,” Cronin said, referring to the incident’s location near the Philippines. The signal China wishes to send is unambiguous, he said: “‘If you challenge our sovereignty we will challenge yours.’ The U.S. response needs to be equally clear: if anyone messes with with our Navy the response will not be limited to words.” Both sides are merely signalling, said Qiao Liang, a military commentator and major general in the Chinese air force. “You called Tsai Ing-wen, sending a signal; we capture the UUV in South China Sea, our own exclusive economic zone,” he said. “It’s certainly a signal to the U.S.” But, he added, “there will not be any escalation before Trump takes office.”

Tension on the South China Sea draws concerns. So should submarine warfare underneath.

Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter is in Asia this week, making stops in India and the Philippines to bolster relationships that the United States could call on in a time of crisis. Discussion has focused at least in part on the South China Sea, where tensions remain high as China has deployed surface-to-air missiles and other equipment and several countries have made conflicting territorial claims.  Adm. Scott Swift, the top officer of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, said in an interview that submarines are a “critically valuable asset” to him. Surface-to-air missiles and other weapons in the region are deployed as part of a concept known as anti-access area denial (A2AD) to hinder the movement of adversaries, but submarines aren’t affected by them like surface ships and aircraft because they’re below the surface, he said. “It gives me much more open access to areas that would be more contested in a conflict for surface units, for instance, or air units, potentially,” Swift said. The United States, China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Australia are all among the countries looking for ways to upgrade submarine operations in coming years. Swift said it’s in part a “reflection of the angst” in the theater with respect to not just China, but others as well. “It’s certainly centralized in the minds of many in the South China Sea, but we see it more broadly and certainly in the East China Sea and elsewhere,” Swift said.  “We’re investing over $8 billion just next year to ensure ours is the most lethal and most advanced undersea and anti-submarine force in the world,” Carter said last week while previewing his trip to Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “That includes new undersea drones in multiple sizes and diverse payloads that can, importantly, operate in shallow water, where manned submarines can’t.”    Stewart said China’s vocal opposition to freedom of navigation operations by the U.S. Navy in the South China Sea demonstrates “that Beijing recognizes the need to defend these outposts and is prepared to respond to any military operations near them.”  The United States considers the operations legal through the right of innocent passage, in which a ship travels through a territorial sea while meeting a series of restrictions outlined by the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. The restrictions include using weapons of any kind, launching or landing aircraft, or interfering in any way with the communications of a coastal state nearby.

In China, victory for wildlife conservation as citizens persuaded to give up shark fin soup

BEIJING — Once a rare delicacy served to honored guests, shark fin soup had become so popular among China’s fast-growing elite in recent years that it was pushing some shark species close to extinction. Now, there is fresh hope for sharks around the world. The demand for shark fins has plunged, providing a rare victory for conservationists that could have wider implications for other endangered wildlife. Thanks to a former NBA star, a coalition of Chinese business leaders, celebrities and students, and some unlikely investigative journalism, eating shark fin soup is no longer fashionable here. But what really tipped the balance was a government campaign against extravagance that has seen the soup banned from official banquets. “People said it was impossible to change China, but the evidence we are now getting says consumption of shark fin soup in China is down by 50 to 70 percent in the last two years,” said Peter Knights, executive director of WildAid, a San Francisco-based group that has promoted awareness about the shark trade. The drop is also reflected in government and industry statistics. “It is a myth that people in Asia don’t care about wildlife,” Knights said. “Consumption is based on ignorance rather than malice. ” The dramatic expansion in China’s middle and upper classes has transformed the country into a major driver of global wildlife trafficking. The Obama administration is so concerned about Chinese demand for endangered wildlife that it made the subject an important part of its bilateral dialogue this year. More than 70 million sharks were killed last year, largely to satisfy rapacious demand from China’s newly rich for shark fin soup. Lavish spending by China’s wealthy has also sent demand for ivory skyrocketing, fueling a massive expansion in elephant poaching in Africa. The consequences of the traffic go beyond a crisis for wildlife. The illegal ivory trade has financed global crime networks and local insurgents, including Somalia’s al-Shabab — responsible for last month’s attack on a Nairobi shopping mall. “Conservation is more about China now than it is about Africa,” said Knights. “China can be the savior of wildlife or it can be the demise of it.” Shark fin soup is believed to have been created more than 1,000 years ago by an emperor in the Sung dynasty who was trying to show off to his guests. Consumption of the expensive soup was revived in recent years at banquets and weddings as a sign of social status. But it became so popular that 10 of the 14 species of oceanic sharks most commonly fished for their fins are at “very high” or “high” risk of extinction — including iconic species like the Great Hammerhead — and the other four are approaching that status, according to conservation groups. Just a few years ago, most Chinese people were oblivious to what was happening. One survey carried out in 2005-2006 showed 80 percent of respondents did not even know the soup – known in Chinese as “fish wing” soup — was made with shark fins. But in 2006, WildAid enlisted Chinese professional basketball player Yao Ming, who played for the Houston Rockets, to front a public awareness campaign. One ad showed diners refusing the soup when confronted with the gory reality of sharks whose fins have been sliced off. The finless fish are often tossed back into the sea to die. A successful businessman, Jim Zhang, was so moved that he began working to change attitudes about sharks, eventually becoming a full-time environmentalist **.** In 2010, he conducted a poll on the popular microblogging service weibo that drew 30,000 participants, 99 percent of whom supported a ban on shark imports. “That really encouraged me,” he said. “I realized that we have a voice here, and we have to take action.” Zhang convinced about 30 members of China’s 2,987-delegate ****parliament, the National People’s Congress, to sign a proposal in 2011 calling for a ban on shark fin imports. The initial proposal was rejected by the government, but a second one had more success. It came amid a growing effort by many countries to limit the trade in endangered shark species and their fins. In July 2012, the Chinese government pledged to ban shark fin soup from official banquets within three years. Then, as part of its new campaign against extravagance, instructions went out to officials all around the country in February and March to ban lavish banquets. Instead, they were told to serve “ordinary food” and not to offer shark fin soup or dishes made with protected wildlife. In September, similar instructions were sent out by the government in Hong Kong — a major center for the shark fin industry – “to demonstrate its commitment to green living and sustainability.” There was also help from state-run media: China Central Television ran a series of reports this year that found that restaurants were serving up fake shark fin soup — using starch, gelatine and seaweed gum. Even more damaging was the finding that many soup samples contained dangerous levels of cadmium and methyl mercury. The effects of the campaigns have been dramatic. In February, China’s Commerce Ministry said the consumption of shark fin soup during the Spring Break holiday had declined by 70 percent from a year earlier. In Hong Kong, industry groups say imports of shark fin have declined by between 20 and 30 percent this year. Anecdotal evidence also suggests prices of shark fin are falling globally and fishermen in parts of Africa are turning away from the trade. In interviews this month at Beijing’s Lianhong Marine Dry Products Market, traders said business was down by about 70 percent. A half-kilo (1.1 pounds) of dried shark fin that once might have sold for $165 had been reduced to $110 in one shop to clear stocks. “Since the rule came out, who dares to eat shark fin?” said one shop owner, who spoke on condition of anonymity. In high-end seafood restaurants in Beijing, shark fin soup is still on the menu — for between $60 and $325 a bowl — but some hotels and restaurants no longer offer it. Chen Jun, a chef in the western city of Lanzhou, said business was down by more than half, some restaurants had closed and some chefs had been laid off. “Of course I know shark fin is controversial — I learnt it from Yao Ming’s advertisements,” he said by telephone. “I feel guilty in my heart, but what else can I do?” Conservationists said the campaign had been so successful partly because it had mobilized young people. With social media allowing them to express themselves more freely, the shark fin campaign almost became part of pop culture. A 12-year-old student, Huang Weilan, said in an interview that she had collected nearly 200 signatures on an anti-shark-fin petition from friends of her parents. “It’s quite easy to convince people because I am a kid, “ she said. “Generally adults don’t like to say no to children.” On a recent sunny Saturday morning in Beijing, students from the China University of Mining and Technology gathered in a park collecting pledges from young and old not to consume the soup. Sixty-eight-year-old Zhang Xianying, walking his grandson in a stroller, said he had barely had enough food to survive when he was young, and he had tasted shark fin soup more recently “just so I could tell people I had eaten it.” But he said he was happy to sign the pledge after learning how cruel the trade was, and how important sharks were to the marine food chain. Buoyed by the results of the shark fin campaign, conservationists are now turning their attention to the trade in ivory and rhino horn. Some 25,000 elephants were poached last year, and 668 rhinos killed in South Africa alone, with China the largest market for ivory, and the second largest for rhino horn behind Vietnam. The Chinese government is more defensive about the ivory trade, seeing carving as part of traditional culture. Licensed workshops are allowed to use existing stockpiles of ivory to make ornaments, jewelry and chopsticks, but this legal business has provided the cover for a vast illegal trade. But attitudes can change, and the Chinese government is not intransigent. A major investor in Africa, it does not want to be seen as the reason for widespread insecurity caused by poaching. In September, it started sending text messages to every Chinese cellphone user who touched down in Kenya, warning them to “not carry illegal ivory, rhino horn or any other wildlife.“

China, Russia flex muscles in increasing number of close calls with U.S. aircraft

A recent spate of dangerous midair encounters between American military aircraft and Chinese and Russian planes in the Pacific is the result of increasingly assertive strategies by both U.S. adversaries to project power far beyond their borders, according to the top U.S. Air Force commander in the region. Air Force Gen. Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle, the head of U.S. Pacific Air Forces, said China’s naval and air forces in particular are “very much continuing to push” and becoming more active in international waters and airspace in Asia. “They still talk about the century of humiliation in the last century. They still talk about this as the rise of China,” Carlisle said in an interview. “They still talk about this as their great nation. And they want to continue to demonstrate that.” Carlisle said U.S. and Chinese forces are frequently encountering each other in parts of the East China and South China seas where they rarely came into contact in the past. Since commissioning its first aircraft carrier two years ago, China’s navy has conducted more exercises farther away from its shores and is closely patrolling areas in disputed waters where Chinese companies are drilling for oil. Those movements have prompted the U.S. military in turn to deploy its ships and reconnaissance aircraft to keep a close watch. China’s military usually responds by conducting intercepts of U.S. aircraft as the two sides jockey for position, Carlisle said. “All of that makes their tension go up a little bit,” he added. U.S. officials said one such encounter got out of hand in August, when a Chinese J-11 fighter jet flashed past a Navy Poseidon P-8 patrol aircraft, performing a “barrel roll” at close range and bringing its wingtip within 20 feet of the U.S. plane. That incident occurred in international airspace about 135 miles east of China’s Hainan Island. At the time, Pentagon officials protested publicly and released photos of the near-miss, which they cited as evidence of rash and irresponsible behavior on the part of the Chinese pilot. They said the same Chinese military unit had conducted three other risky intercepts of U.S. aircraft earlier in the year. Carlisle was more measured in his assessment, saying that there has always been “an ebb and flow” in the number of Chinese intercepts and that he didn’t think China’s military leadership was looking to provoke a conflict. “I personally don’t think it needs to get too much hype,” said Carlisle, who will leave his post in the Pacific this month to take a new assignment as chief of the Air Force’s Air Combat Command at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Hampton, Va. But he acknowledged that “the opportunity for something to go wrong” will likely increase as China’s military gathers strength and moves farther afield. To prevent such incidents, the Pentagon has tried to enhance communications channels and expand formal ties with the People’s Liberation Army in recent years. Although U.S. officials said progress has been made, they added that they didn’t expect to solve the issue overnight. “I am disappointed. Am I surprised? I’m not necessarily surprised,” Adm. Samuel Locklear, the chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, said at a Sept. 25 news briefing at the Pentagon, when asked about the close calls. He added that the “vast majority” of interactions between U.S. and Chinese military aircraft and ships resulted in no problems. “It’s those outliers that concern us.” While the Pentagon has long expected an increase in Chinese military activity in the Pacific, it has also had to confront a resurgent Russia, which is conducting more long-range reconnaissance and bomber missions in the region and even approaching U.S. territory. On Sept. 17, U.S. fighter jets intercepted a half-dozen Russian military planes — two fighter jets, two long-range bombers and two refueling tankers — as they were flying in international airspace near the coast of Alaska. U.S. officials said they have also seen an increase in Russian bombers flying near Guam, the U.S. territory in the Pacific. Carlisle attributed the Russian flights to a strategy by President Vladimir Putin “to reassert Russia into what he thinks its rightful place in the international order is, and part of that is continuing to push into the Pacific.” He described the Russian maneuvers as “a little harder to figure out” in comparison with Chinese military actions, which he called “more rational.” Russia has also become more active in airspace between its Pacific border and Japan, prompting a sharp rise in Japanese intercepts of Russian military aircraft over the past year. In turn, Russia hasn’t hesitated to challenge U.S. reconnaissance flights near its territory. In April, a Russian Su-27 fighter jet flew within 100 feet of a U.S. Air Force RC-135U aircraft that was operating in international airspace over the Sea of Okhotsk, prompting complaints from the Pentagon.

China said it would return a seized U.S. naval drone. Trump told them to ‘keep it.’

The Chinese government said Saturday it will return a U.S. naval drone seized last week in the South China Sea, a step toward defusing maritime tensions between the two Pacific powers. President-elect Donald Trump reacted to the news by telling them he doesn’t want it back. “We should tell China that we don’t want the drone they stole back.- let them keep it!” he tweeted Saturday evening. The comment could prolong one of the most serious incidents between the U.S. and Chinese militaries in recent memory, potentially complicating ties ahead of Trump’s inauguration. The latest spike in U.S.-Chinese maritime tensions occurred Thursday, when a Chinese submarine rescue ship close to the USNS Bowditch, an oceanographic survey vessel operating about 50 nautical miles northwest of Subic Bay in the Philippines, took possession of the U.S. drone. The incident occurred within sight of the Bowditch, which tracks the drone as it collects unclassified data on water temperature, salinity and other factors that may affect U.S. naval operations. According to U.S. officials, the Chinese ship refused initial requests from the Bowditch to return the drone. “We have registered our objection to China’s unlawful seizure of a U.S. unmanned underwater vehicle operating in international waters in the South China Sea,” Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said in a statement. “Through direct engagement with Chinese authorities, we have secured an understanding that the Chinese will return the [drone] to the United States,” he said. China’s Ministry of Defense on Saturday said they had decided to return the drone in an “appropriate” manner, but did not specify what that meant. Yang Yujun, a spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, said in a statement that the Chinese took the U.S. drone “in order to prevent the device from harming the navigation safety and personnel safety of the ship.” “The U.S. military has frequently dispatched naval vessels to carry out reconnaissance and military measurements in China’s water. China resolutely opposes this and urges the U.S. side to stop such activities,” he said. The statement, which was published before Trump’s “keep it” tweet, called the U.S. response to the drone’s seizure “hype” that is “inappropriate” and “unhelpful for settling the problem.” Beijing has yet to respond to the president-elect’s latest comment. Song Zhongping, an expert on Chinese military affairs who works as a commenter for Hong Kong’s Phoenix TV, said the statement was an effort to warn the United States to not deploy this type of vessel in the South China Sea, “Otherwise, we will keep on picking them up whenever we see them,” he said. Despite sharp words on both sides, official statements from Washington and Beijing suggest that the two governments are eager to avoid further intensifying tensions at a moment of deep uncertainty in U.S.-Chinese relations after Trump’s election. Even as China asserts a right to areas of the South and East China seas also claimed by some of its neighbors, it has embarked on an ambitious program of constructing artificial islands, some of which appear to be intended as military outposts. The U.S. military has conducted repeated shows of force, sailing ships or conducting surveillance flights near disputed areas, while seeking to avoid any serious military escalation with a key commercial partner. Speaking after the Pentagon announced that the drone would be returned, a U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to comment freely, said that the Obama administration was “glad to get it back and put this behind us.” “It’s somewhat reassuring that senior leadership in Beijing agreed that this was something that should be returned, regardless of the individual actions of their people at sea,” the official said. It is not clear who authorized the seizure of the drone. The flap over the drone comes as Trump’s election generates concern among Chinese authorities, with the president-elect questioning long-standing U.S. policy on China and continuing his sharp criticism of Beijing’s trade and monetary policies. Trump angered Chinese officials when he spoke by phone with the president of Taiwan, a thriving democracy that Beijing considers a breakaway province. While it is not clear how the Trump administration will handle efforts by China to assert itself in the South China Sea, his stance toward Beijing suggests a hard line. On Saturday morning, Trump issued a tweet that said: “China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters — rips it out of water and takes it to China in unprecedented act.” In Beijing on Sunday, the Global Times, a Communist Party-controlled newspaper known for its nationalist tone, poked fun at the mixed messages coming from the United States. “Before Trump’s generous announcement that he didn’t want the drone back, the Pentagon had already announced publicly that they have asked China to return the ‘illegally seized’ [unmanned underwater vehicle] through appropriate governmental channels,” the paper wrote. “We don’t know, after seeing Trump’s new tweets, if the Pentagon should feel boggled.” Rauhala reported from Taipei and Luna Lin reported from Beijing.

Beyond ‘Air-Sea Battle’: A military concept that challenges policymakers

_Michael O’Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. James Steinberg, a deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration, is dean of the Maxwell School at Syracuse University._ The new concept of American overseas military operations known as “Air-Sea Battle” has come under scrutiny and criticism. Popular with the Air Force and Navy, it has been construed as an aggressive policy, and some in the Pentagon see it as a way for those two services to grab budget share away from the Army. Across Asia, especially in China, many view it as a way for the United States to challenge a rising People’s Republic. In fact, as a military concept, Air-Sea Battle reflects some needed rethinking in response to global changes in weaponry and military strategy in the Middle East and especially East Asia. The challenge for policymakers is not to discard it and replace it with something more seemingly benign but to place it within a broader security strategy for the Asia-Pacific region that preserves stability and protects U.S. interests without becoming unduly confrontational. China’s military budget is almost $200 billion a year, according to the Defense Department, which makes it the world’s No. 2 military power. With those considerable funds, China is building and purchasing advanced submarines, more and increasingly accurate ballistic and cruise missiles, homing munitions on antiship ballistic missiles, satellites, antisatellite weapons and modern stealthy combat aircraft. American analysts often label these innovations as part of an “anti-access/area denial” strategy that could be employed against U.S. forces in the region. The Chinese would try to push U.S. forces back from areas near China or seek greater ability to dominate waters near Taiwan as well as the South China and East China seas. In response, the Air-Sea Battle concept seeks to use new technologies to counter these perceived Chinese initiatives as well as similar — if more modest — efforts by Iran to challenge U.S. capabilities in the Persian Gulf. Air-Sea Battle rightly emphasizes improved command-and-control, precision strike, advanced missile defenses, robotics, submarine operations, and the use of air and space domains. So far, it has not involved big new weapons platforms. The challenge for policymakers is that each country tends to see the other’s efforts to defend its interests as threatening or even provocative — what political scientists call the “security dilemma.” Chinese strategists are acutely aware of their country’s history of being attacked by sea, so they want to reduce their vulnerability to foreign forces. Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force and Navy argue that the Air-Sea concept is not directed at China but, rather, is about preserving U.S. military access and — perhaps most important — sustaining the credibility of U.S. security commitments to allies. Because of their size and capabilities, China and the United States represent a central element in each other’s major strategic planning. Denials of this lack credibility and feed distrust — which is all the more reason policymakers must put this military doctrine into perspective and not let it become a prescription for unfettered rivalry. While U.S. defense spending and capabilities still appear astronomical to China — and U.S. alliance partners themselves formidable — officials in Beijing should keep in mind that perhaps half of U.S. defense capability is intended for other parts of the world — and that the turbulence in the broader Middle East suggests it will continue to be. The United States is no declining superpower, but the country is nonetheless war-weary and financially strapped. U.S. leaders are cutting military spending even as they speak of “rebalancing” toward Asia. Moreover, the international order that U.S. military force has upheld for decades is serving both countries’ core economic interests. For the United States, China’s rise is impressive and in some ways foreboding. But China is still a developing country: It ranks roughly in the middle of all nations in per capita gross domestic product, at less than $10,000 a year, according to the World Bank. In coming years it will also face enormous demographic, environmental, economic and governance challenges. Although its military budget is growing fast, such spending is just 2 percent of China’s GDP, or less than half of the U.S. level (more than 4 percent). The stock of modern U.S. military equipment is worth $3 trillion; despite its spending, China is at perhaps 10 percent that figure. Nor does China’s military have experience in modern combat operations. None of this attempts to justify every Chinese or American modernization. But the main challenge for those worried about the risks of rivalry and war is to place military innovation efforts in a broader political strategy that recognizes the benefits of Chinese-U.S. cooperation as well as the mutual risks if competition turns into rivalry or conflict. As we continue necessary military modernizations, enhanced dialogue with China’s military and foreign policy actors will become all the more important, as will sober crisis management when problems arise. Our current approach seems well-balanced, but the task will require active management on both sides for decades to come. Air-Sea Battle is not the problem, but neither can it be the entirety of the solution. **Read more on this issue:** Robert H. Scales: Too many wars, too few U.S. soldiers

Hey, China, this is why democracies beat autocracies in a fight. (So back off the South China Sea.)

Who wins a bar fight? The person with the most friends at the bar. Who wins a war? The country that fights alongside the most allies. This simple intuition provides an overlooked explanation for an important academic controversy. Democracies win almost all of the wars they start and about two-thirds of the wars in which they are the targets. If we push the bar fight analogy a little farther, we can also understand why being a democracy, and seeking a particular type of objective, is helping the U.S. build a large coalition to prepare for potential bar fights in places like Eastern Europe, the Middle East or the South China Sea. **Obama told China to slow down in the South China Sea.**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico On his November trip the Philippines, President Obama called on China to halt the militarization of conflicts in the South China Sea, where China has been sparring with the U.S. and its allies over islands, navigation rights, and access to natural resources. Obama also announced $250 million in military aid to our allies in the region.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The U.S. is working actively, and successfully, to build large coalitions to support its goals in the South China Sea and elsewhere. By contrast, adversaries like China and Russia largely stand alone in these disputes. This is counterintuitive in some ways. For many members of the U.S. coalition in Asia, including the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia, China is the nearer neighbor and a rising trade partner. China is likely more economically important to the future of these countries than the U.S. Similarly, Ukraine and the Baltics share a border with Russia, not the United States. So why do these countries (seek to) ally with us? One answer is that the United States is pursuing public goods — like open sea lanes or territorial integrity — while China and Russia are seeking territory, which is a private good. It’s easier to build a coalition around the pursuit of something that benefits everyone, rather than an asset that must be divided up, often unequally. **Democracies fight for public goods–which brings them allies.**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In new research, we argue that democracies tend to pursue public goods like open sea lanes and respect for existing territorial borders, while autocracies tend to pursue private goods like territory. Democracies fight alongside more partners. Those larger coalitions win conflicts more often. Coalition size predicts democratic victory so strongly that we needn’t look any farther for an explanation. Others have argued that democracies fight better, that democratic soldiers are more motivated to win or that democracies mobilize for war more completely. But the biggest advantage of democracies may be that they simply build larger coalitions.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Yet if everyone benefits from large coalitions, why do democracies end up fighting alongside more friends than autocracies? Do autocrats not know that ganging up on their opponents is a good idea? Democracies and autocracies often have different goals in going to war. Fighting alongside friends can be costly as well as rewarding. That’s particularly so when the winner is going to have to share the spoils of victory — oil, territory, or access to the strategic and economic resources in a region such as the South China Sea. For China, adding allies would mean diluting the benefits it achieves by prevailing against its adversaries. States seeking to acquire territory or resources for themselves don’t want any more mouths at the trough than they absolutely need. Sometimes a reluctance to share even means that one side is more likely to lose. In contrast, if a country is fighting for a principle, for the status quo, or for a public good such as free maritime navigation, then more allies cost very little. In the South China Sea, the U.S. is trying to maintain open sea lanes for trade, something that is just about as valuable regardless of whether others also make use of it. The more the merrier! This logic extends well beyond the South China Sea. Because of the large number of participants in domestic politics, democracies’ core interests are usually best met through public goods (stability, good governance, parks and welfare). Open sea lanes for trade. Stable international borders. Limiting terrorism, genocide, and other potentially contagious social, political, and economic ills.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico When democracies go to war for these objectives, they build overwhelming coalitions and they win. **Autocracies fight for themselves–which leaves them isolated.**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Autocracies, on the other hand, must satisfy relatively small numbers of domestic constituents, something better accomplished through private benefits (cash or other dispensations, control over valuable assets). Because of this, autocracies are more likely to see benefit in going to war for private goods like territory or oil. As a result, they’re more likely to keep their coalitions small–and therefore face a greater danger of defeat. Democracies don’t just win because of who they are, but because of what they want (and what they don’t). As long as states seek things that coalition partners can share, they tend to win and to get their way in world politics.  This in turn creates a powerful and evolving dynamic in world affairs in which being able to share makes states (often democracies) more successful. _Benjamin A.T. Graham is an assistant professor in the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California and co- founder of the Security and Political Economy (SPEC) Lab._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _Christopher J. Fariss is the Jeffrey L. Hyde and Sharon D. Hyde and Political Science Board of Visitors Early Career Professor in Political Science and assistant professor in the department of political science at Pennsylvania State University._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _Erik Gartzke is professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, adjunct senior research scholar at Columbia University in the City of New York and is the principal investigator on a Department of Defense Minerva-funded research project on Cross Domain Deterrence._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Here’s the Chinese passport map that’s infuriating much of Asia

China's new official passport carries, on its eighth page, a watermark map of China that has set off diplomatic disputes with four neighboring countries. The small map shows a version of China that includes disputed territory claimed by India, a vast stretch of the South China Sea, including islands claimed by several other countries, and the entirety of Taiwan. The map seems to affront diplomatic protocol around the disputed territory; it risks exacerbating regional fears of Chinese heavy-handedness with its neighbors and their sovereignty. Southeast Asian nations, on guard against China's rising strength and sometimes pushy foreign policy, have been edging away from Beijing in recent years. So this map is probably not going to help. The offended Asian nations are striking back in their own ways. Vietnamese border officials are refusing to stamp the new passports. India is stamping its own version of the map on visas issued to Chinese citizens. The Taiwanese and Philippine governments have formally complained. Here is my rough annotation of the passport maps, with the disputed regions highlighted and labeled. To give a sense of scale, Arunachal Pradesh, the disputed region in the middle of the map, is a bit larger than Maine or South Carolina. The South China Sea islands, of which there are many, are all part of China's sweeping claim. One encouraging sign is that, as far as I can tell, the map does not include the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, which are claimed by China and Japan, and which have become a source of considerable tension and nationalist protests this year.

Dangerous rocks in the South China Sea

HAVING MADE a “rebalancing” toward Asia a pillar of his foreign policy, President Obama may face a fateful test from China in his final months in office. President Xi Jinping already broke a promise he made to Mr. Obama not to militarize islets his regime has been building up in two parts of the South China Sea. Now Beijing appears to be contemplating  building a base on a contested shoal just 150  miles from  Subic Bay in the Philippines. A failure by the  administration to prevent this audacious step could unravel much of what it has done to bolster U.S. influence in the region. Chinese development of Scarborough Shoal, a collection of rocks and coral reefs it seized from the Philippines four years ago, would escalate its already-belligerent behavior in the South China Sea in a number of ways. Until now, Beijing’s landfill work and construction of airstrips have occurred on islets it already controlled that are considerably closer to the Chinese mainland. Scarborough Shoal lies about 500 miles from China. A base there could allow Chinese radar and missiles to threaten Manila, as well as Philippine bases where U.S. forces are positioned. Perhaps most importantly, the Chinese venture would concretize Beijing’s refusal to abide by international law in resolving territorial disputes with its neighbors. The Philippines responded to the seizure of Scarborough Shoal by filing a case with a U.N. tribunal. A ruling by the panel, expected in the coming weeks, could reject China’s expansive claim to 80 percent of the South China Sea, based on a “nine-dash line” dating to the 1940s. Acts that defy that ruling, in turn, would suggest that Mr. Xi intends to use brute force to advance China’s claims across the region. The Obama administration has been trying to head off the Chinese action. Most notably, it has significantly expanded military cooperation with the Philippines, providing millions of dollars in new aid and agreeing on the placement of U.S. assets on five bases there. Last month, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter ended 11 days of U.S.-Philippine military exercises by announcing that the two nations would conduct joint air and maritime patrols. Soon afterward, defense officials announced that U.S. planes flew near Scarborough Shoal on three different days. The question is whether this will be enough. In a congressional hearing last month , senators from both parties questioned the administration’s limited use of freedom-of-navigation operations, in which U.S. ships sail near disputed territories claimed by China; according to the Wall Street Journal, the White House canceled one patrol last month in an attempt to “lower the temperature” over Scarborough. Deputy Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken assured the senators that “we have been very actively and very aggressively messaging China privately and publicly.” But he also offered an all-too-familiar Obama administration analysis: China’s aggressive moves, he said, would be self-defeating, because they would have “the net effect of surrounding itself with increasingly angry, increasingly suspicious neighbors who are increasingly close to the United States.” That is true enough, for now. But if the administration fails to stop a Chinese buildup on Scarborough Shoal, its allies are likely to conclude that alliance with Washington is useless. **Read more on this topic:** David Ignatius: The U.S. is heading toward a dangerous showdown with China Dennis C. Blair and Jeffrey W. Hornung: China’s self-defeating provocations in the South China Sea The Post’s View: China’s missile gambit

U.S. missile destroyer sailed close to island claimed by China

A U.S. missile destroyer passed close to a tiny disputed island in the South China Sea late on Friday in the Pentagon’s latest assertion of U.S. naval freedom despite growing territorial feuds there. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said the ship, the USS Curtis Wilbur, passed within 12 nautical miles of Triton Island, one of a series of coral islands and reefs known as the Paracel Islands, whose ownership is disputed by China, Taiwan and Vietnam. “This operation was about challenging excessive maritime claims that restrict the rights and freedoms of the United States and others, not about territorial claims to land features,” Davis said in a statement early on Saturday. China’s Ministry of Defense spokesman Yang Yujun said in a statement the U.S. action “severely violated the law.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “It damaged the peaceful, safe and good order in relevant waters and is not beneficial to regional peace and stability,” said Yang. This week’s action is not the first time in recent months the Pentagon has flexed its muscles in the area. In October, Chinese officials described as “dangerous and provocative” a U.S. decision to send a warship within 12 nautical miles of an artificial island developed by China.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico U.S. officials are particularly worried by the growing territorial claims from China, which has launched an aggressive campaign to claim and build up islands in the South China Sea and is also scrambling to augment its military power at sea. A recent study warned the South China Sea could become “virtually a Chinese lake” by 2030 if China continues its rush to acquire new naval assets.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Defense Sec. Ashton Carter has signaled his intent to defy Chinese attempts to project expanding influence in the South China Sea, and to ensure that sea lanes remain open for international military and commercial use.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The Obama administration is facing pressure from critics to more actively defy Chinese claims and to reassure smaller Asian allies that the biggest Asian power won’t be permitted to expand unabated. But there are fears such patrols could lead to a dangerous escalation in military tensions between Beijing and Washington.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico China has characterized such actions as an attempt to militarize the South China Sea, and has said U.S. shows of force may prompt it to accelerate construction on man-made islands.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Davis said were no Chinese ships in the area at the time of the destroyer’s transit, and the Pentagon did not notify any of the three countries of its plans to transit the area. “This operation demonstrated … that we will fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows,” Davis said. _Simon Denyer and Gu Jinglu contributed to this report from Beijing._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

China testing Obama as it expands its influence in Southeast Asia

The Obama administration has been forcefully trying for nearly six years to prod China to abide by the usual international rules and to curb Beijing’s controversial claims of Chinese sovereignty over a maritime corridor in Southeast Asia. But new evidence is emerging that China has been playing a familiar game of ignoring U.S. warnings or concerns, this time by installing radar, missiles and jet fighters on a series of reefs and atolls over which it has asserted control in the South China Sea. The long-simmering dispute in this far-flung spot on the globe represents yet another test for President Obama’s foreign policy in this final year of his presidency. The disclosure of China’s maneuvers — coming a week after Obama declared that the United States “will continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows” — prompted the top U.S. military commander in the Pacific to warn Congress that China’s ultimate goal is to achieve “hegemony” in Asia. Foreign policy analysts in Washington cautioned that Beijing is on the verge of tilting the security and economic dynamics along the South China Sea in its favor. Obama’s strategy abroad has been to focus on building partnerships in hopes of slowly turning the global order to U.S. advantage, but China favors a more confrontational approach and is pursuing tactical victories that are adding up to a competitive edge. Some U.S. military planners fear that edge is coming into clearer view. Over the past year, China’s military operations have expanded in size, complexity, duration and geographic location, Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Appropriations Committee on Thursday. He testified that China has specifically developed capabilities that counter U.S. strengths, including ballistic and cruise missiles that would help protect against U.S. aircraft. “China’s rapid military modernization is quickly closing the gap with U.S. military capabilities and is eroding the joint force’s competitive military advantages,” Dunford said. “China’s military forces can constrain U.S. military operations in the Western Pacific and hold key U.S. infrastructure and facilities at risk. Its strategic capabilities are improving and present an increasing risk to the U.S. homeland and our allies.” White House officials played down the severity of Beijing’s latest moves and emphasized that the administration will continue to pursue a diplomatic resolution to the dispute, which has embroiled China’s neighbors, including Vietnam, the Philippines and Taiwan. Obama met with 10 Southeast Asian leaders during a summit in California two weeks ago, and he said they discussed “the need for tangible steps in the South China Sea to lower tensions, including a halt to further reclamation, new construction and militarization of disputed areas.” But a joint statement on the freedom of navigation signed by all the participants did not specifically mention China or the South China Sea, a sign that the nations fear being caught in a geopolitical struggle between two major powers. During a visit to Washington last week, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi made the rounds of the White House, Capitol Hill and the State Department. Obama dropped in unannounced on Wang’s meeting with national security adviser Susan Rice. Wang, during an appearance at a think tank, dismissed the notion that China was pursuing an unlawful expansion of power and suggested that it was Washington, not Beijing, that was overstepping its bounds. The South China Sea represents a legitimate national interest for China, he said, and claimants in the region should work out any conflicts among themselves without input from “outside countries.” “China will not become another United States,” Wang said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). “In the blood and veins of China, there are no veins of expansionism. There is no mentality or urge to be saviors of the world. Starting 2,000 years ago, we built the Great Wall for self-defense. That is the special characteristic . . . of Chinese culture.” One-third of the world’s shipped goods pass through the South China Sea each year, and the area is thought to contain abundant reservoirs of oil and natural gas. U.S. military planners consider free passage a strategic imperative to defend the United States’ treaty allies in Asia. The Obama administration entered the fray in 2010 after China sparked a row with Vietnam by forcing Exxon Mobil to stop oil exploration efforts in offshore areas claimed by Hanoi. During a regional conference in Hanoi that summer, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the resolution of the territorial disputes in the South China Sea was “a leading diplomatic priority” for the Obama administration. The statement was widely considered a shift of the administration’s China policy toward a harder line and a signal that the United States would seek to deepen ties in Southeast Asia as a hedge to China’s growing clout. In the ensuing years, Obama deployed of a small contingent of Marines to Darwin, Australia; announced new security partnerships with the Philippines; declared that the United States would defend Japan in a separate clash with China over disputed islands in the East China Sea; and met annually with the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Instead of backing down, however, China embarked on a massive land reclamation project to build up tiny reefs and atolls in the Spratly Islands by dredging sand from the ocean floor. Beijing said the costly project was benign, but U.S. officials charged that the construction of jet-plane landing strips on the virtually deserted islands meant that China was readying the parcels for military use. China’s declaration of sovereignty over the Spratlys outraged the Philippine government, which took the case to an international tribunal at the Hague. Obama administration officials view that ruling, expected later this year, as a potential turning point, even though Beijing does not recognize the Hague’s authority on the matter. In the meantime, the U.S. Navy has conducted two “freedom of navigation” maneuvers, sending warships within 12 nautical miles of several disputed islands. “The administration is waiting for the Hague’s legal decision in the Philippines challenge before taking another strong step,” said retired Navy Capt. Jerry Hendrix, a defense analyst at the Center for a New American Security. “There’s a strong emphasis on the legal mechanisms to constrain China, and a desire not to muddy the water before the Hague’s decision.” But Hendrix cautioned that “every day that goes by without a really significant challenge on China’s claims on the island is a lost opportunity. They are building a precedent that this is the new status quo, and then reversing it is difficult.” In the White House, China is considered a major rival to the United States — but also a crucial global partner. Obama has enlisted Beijing’s support on issues such as the Iran nuclear deal and a major pact to reduce carbon emissions. Last week, China joined the United States in support of a U.N. Security Council resolution to enact new economic sanctions against North Korea because of its nuclear test in January. Inside the West Wing, aides have been divided over how hard to push Beijing on areas of disagreement, including cybersecurity, human rights and the South China Sea, for fear of damaging the cooperation on other matters. Last fall, during a state visit to the White House, Chinese President Xi Jinping stood next to Obama in the Rose Garden and vowed that China would not militarize the Spratly Islands. But last week, the CSIS think tank published satellite images that analysts said showed that China was installing a powerful radar system in the Spratlys. Separately, U.S. officials said China had deployed surface-to-air missiles and jet fighters on Woody Island, which is closer to China and has been under its control for decades. Foreign policy analysts in Washington said the Chinese have mastered the ability to take incremental steps that fall just short of provoking a major international incident — a process known as “salami-slicing,” or taking territory piece by piece until everything is gone. Administration officials point out that China’s intimidation has pushed several neighbors into greater partnerships with the United States. Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei are members of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact led by the Obama administration. In 2012, Obama restored formal U.S. diplomatic relations with Burma, also known as Myanmar, after 50 years of estrangement, and he will become the first U.S. president to visit Laos in the fall. Whether any of it matters is still unknown. “People in the Obama administration will tell you that China is creating its own enemies and that they are unpopular,” said Michael Green, who served as senior Asia director in the George W. Bush administration. “That may be true, but that’s not doing anything to slow them down. They do not care as much about reputation as we do.”

Our Navy, our destiny

The Navy’s operations, on which the sun never sets, are the nation’s nerve endings, connecting it with the turbulent world. Although the next president may be elected without addressing the Navy’s proper size and configuration, for four years he or she will be acutely aware of where the carriers are. Today they are at the center of a debate about their continuing centrality, even viability, in the Navy’s projection of force. Far out into the South China Sea, China is manufacturing mini-islands out of reefs, many of which used to be underwater at high tide. China is asserting sovereignty above and around these militarized specks in the congested cauldron of this sea. Through it and adjoining straits pass half the world’s seaborne tonnage; five of the United States’ 15 most important trading partners are in this region. Until President Trump launches his many trade wars, those partners include China, which is America’s third-largest export market and largest source of imports. The Obama administration has rejected challenging China’s audacity by not sailing through its claimed territorial waters — within 12 miles — around the new reef-islands. Henry J. Hendrix of the Center for a New American Security argues that, like the battleships that carriers were originally designed to support, carriers may now be too expensive and vulnerable. China has developed land-based anti- ship missiles to force carriers to operate so far from targets that manned aircraft might become less useful than unmanned combat aerial vehicles operating from smaller, less expensive carriers. The newest carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, to be commissioned next year, costs $12.8 billion. Add the costs of the air wing, the support of five surface combat ships and one attack submarine, and 6,700 sailors. The bill for operating a carrier group: $2.5 million a day. China, says Hendrix, could build more than 1,200 of its premier anti-ship missiles for the cost of one Ford carrier, and one of the 1,200 could achieve “mission-kill,” removing the carrier from the fight for months. The bad news is that the U.S. entitlement state is devouring the federal budget. The good news might be this axiom: As money gets scarcer, people get smarter. It might be smart to reduce spending on the astonishingly expensive and operationally dubious F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and redirect the money to unmanned combat aircraft that could extend, for a while, the carriers’ viability. For $3 billion the Navy could have 10 more nimble littoral combat ships providing increased day-to-day presence. Furthermore, of the 14 Ohio- class ballistic missile submarines that were built for 30-year lives, the youngest is 17 and all might be kept in service until they are 40. Buying conventional guided-missile variants of these stealthy arsenals would bring many precision-strike missiles close to land targets, obviating anti-surface- ship missiles. The undersea component of the Navy is the most survivable, but it is not inexpensive: The first replacement of the Ohio-class submarines, due in 2021, will cost $9 billion, with subsequent ones costing about $5 billion in 2010 dollars. War-fighting calculations are not, however, the only pertinent considerations. The Navy remains the primary manifestation of America’s military presence in the world, and carriers are, beyond their versatility, an especially emphatic presence. The Navy believes it does not need more than 11 carriers (counting the Ford), but that it cannot perform its myriad missions, from preserving the free flow of world commerce to bringing airpower within range of the Islamic State, with fewer. Day by day, hour by hour, there is no more complicated government job than that of the chief of naval operations (CNO). Beyond the management of moving pieces in every time zone, the CNO must attend to the maintenance of an industrial base capable of sustaining technological advantages with weapons systems that take decades moving from conception to deployment. Adm. Jonathan Greenert, who stepped down as CNO last month, says Chinese carriers are “rudimentary” but their pace of improvement is “extraordinary.” Also extraordinary, given the United States’ current political climate, is the bipartisan agreement that the Navy must grow. The Obama administration’s budget calls for the active-duty fleet, which today has 273 ships, to reach more than 300 by 2020. The United States was blown into world affairs by the 1898 explosion — an accident mistakenly blamed on Spain — that sank the USS Maine in Havana Harbor. The Navy that America chooses to maintain always indicates the nation’s current sense of its character and destiny. So, presidential aspirants — parsimonious Republicans and militarily ambivalent Democrats — should talk about the Navy they want to wield. _Read more fromGeorge F. Will’s archive or follow him on Facebook._ **Read more on this topic:** George F. Will: Navy with a mission in mind David Ignatius: China’s assertiveness leaves its neighbors anxious George F. Will: America’s Navy and the rise of China

7 simple questions and answers to understand China and the U.S.

Despite the tension, China remains one of the most important countries in the world for Americans. China is so big and fast-changing that its actions ripple around the world and influence life for average Americans — determining the price of things we buy, influencing what we make at our jobs, even changing the quality of the air we breathe. But maybe because of its size, or its distance, or its complexity, it can be hard to grasp exactly why China matters. Here are seven questions — and answers — that will bring you up to speed on the state of China, and America's relationship with it.   For America, China is arguably the most important country in the world.  China is also important because its incredible pace of growth in recent years is transforming not just the lives of its own people, but also of people all around the world. One of the main ways China influences other countries is through trade and business ties. China has long been known as the factory to the world, pumping out a disproportionate share of the world's iPhones, clothing, shrimp and Christmas decorations.    No matter what kind of business you look at, China probably affects it, says Scott Kennedy, deputy director of the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. “Even if you’re not doing business in China, you’re most likely facing some kind of Chinese competition, or China’s effect on the global economy affects your sector.”   China is important to the U.S. for security reasons, too. China is now the dominant power in East Asia, a region with close U.S. allies and vital shipping lanes. China and the U.S. have some serious conflicts, for example over cyber attacks on government and business secrets, and China’s clashes with its neighbors over territory in the East China Sea and South China Sea. But the U.S. and China cooperate on issues like climate change and counter-terrorism, and China has supported U.S. led efforts to contain North Korea's and Iran's nuclear programs.    Those income levels might seem low for an American, but for the Chinese they are actually a huge improvement. Back in 2000, an average American was earning 13 times as much as the average Chinese; in 1980, the difference was 42 times. // <![CDATA[ // ]]>    Here's a map that shows how that wealth is concentrated. The darker blue areas along the coast are the cities of Beijing and Tianjin in the north, and the city of Shanghai in the middle, where average incomes are more than three times as much as the interior: Looking at China from the U.S., what we see most is China’s impressive economic growth and expanding international influence. We rarely see the reality on the ground — that internally, China faces many challenges and quite a bit of disorder. China faces a whole host of problems that go along with being a rapidly developing and a relatively poor country. For example, China struggles to provide the public services that Americans take for granted, like public education for all, safe drinking water, and decent medical care. And while the Chinese government may seem all-powerful, its influence only goes so far. Many people still evade income or real estate taxes with impunity, while many businesses shirk government regulations.  The simple answer is “a lot of different things,” because there isn’t just one China. China can often seem monolithic from the outside, but internally it’s a diverse country where people have lots of different opinions, even if they can’t act on them politically. When it comes to China’s leaders, it’s safe to say they want what any government around the world wants: to stay in power.   Americans tend to think of China’s rise as happening in the past few decades, but many Chinese have a longer memory. China has one of the world’s oldest civilizations. To those with a long view of history, China's position as a relatively poor country in the early 20th century is the aberration, following thousands of years when the country was without question one of the world's great powers. The chart below shows just how dominant China's economy has been for the last 2,000 years:  So restoring China's international luster is a priority of the government and regular people alike. However, most Chinese are still far more concerned with everyday challenges, like housing prices and job opportunities.   For a country that nominally follows communism, China has a lot of Ferraris. That's because the Chinese economic system has changed dramatically since communism — the philosophy spawned by Karl Marx which argues that workers should collectively own the means of production, like factories, property and machines — first took over the country. The People's Republic of China was founded in 1949 after several decades of bloody conflict between the Communist Party of China and a group called the Nationalists. After the communists finally won, the Nationalists fled to Taiwan and founded the Republic of China, which the U.S. supported as the legitimate Chinese government for decades. Under its new leader, Mao Zedong, China closed itself off to the West and dramatically reorganized its society. Workers initially lived in communes organized around farms or factories. People didn't use money to buy things, but were given rations of food and other small necessities. The state determined what jobs people did, what they ate, even what songs they sang:  In the late 1970s, Mao died. A man named Deng Xiaoping (“xiao” is pronounced like the first syllable in “shower”) took over and began opening up China to the outside world. Deng believed strongly in the communist party, but he was also a pragmatist who wanted to lift China out of poverty. He famously said, “It doesn't matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice” – in other words, that China could adopt any system that worked, be it communist or capitalist. He also coined the phrase that has basically become China’s mission statement: “To get rich is glorious!” To help people get rich, Deng began allowing foreign investment in China’s coastal areas, and loosened restrictions on the kinds of things people could buy and sell, and the types of jobs they could do. Chinese agriculture boomed as farmers were rewarded for their sales, village collectives began manufacturing TVs and other appliances, and foreign-funded factories cropped along China's coast. China changed and opened up a lot, but the old rules were altered piece by piece, rather than being fully abandoned. That’s why the country today is still a bewildering mix of capitalist free markets in some parts of the economy and tight state control in others.  But while China is, in practice, mostly capitalist, the Communist Party still rules all.   China has promised to open up more of its markets to foreign competition, but don’t expect it to adopt a Western system anytime soon. In the nearly three years that Xi Jinping has been in power, he has strengthened his and the party’s control over Chinese politics, business and the law.  You may have heard recently that the Chinese economy has some problems. That's true, but it also still has a lot of potential. China’s growth is slowing down. Following decades of double-digit growth, China’s economic growth slowed to 7.7 percent last year, and shows signs of decelerating further. This has countries around the world worried, especially countries that export a lot of resources to China, like Australia or Brazil. But for China, the growth slowdown is not, in itself, necessarily a bad thing.  As China’s economy has developed, the wages its workers earn have risen, too. This is great for average Chinese — it means they can afford better food, houses, cars and health care — but it also means that low-cost manufacturing jobs are tending to leave China for lower-cost countries like Vietnam, Bangladesh, even Mexico. China has also exhausted most of what economists call “catch-up” growth from acquiring the technologies of more advanced markets. As countries catch up and get richer, their growth just tends to slow. The problem is where China chooses to go from here. The country needs to develop new sources of growth that are consistent with being a wealthier country, with a more skilled and higher paid workforce. But China's progress toward this goal is uneven and uncertain. China wants to keep its population fully employed. But instead of putting energy into finding new sources of growth for the economy, the government has often turned to wasteful and heavy-handed methods for propping up growth. For example, as China’s exports to the world slowed with the global financial crisis, the country shifted to pumping a lot of money into investment in infrastructure, housing and manufacturing capacity to prop up growth. Many of those investments were useful and profitable, but others were not, and as time went on, they became less so. China built bridges to nowhere, stadiums that stand empty, and its infamous "ghost cities" — newly built cities with no one living in them. In a country where many people are still relatively poor, many of these investments were a tragic waste of money.  Instead of continuing to pump money into infrastructure, China needs to find new sources of growth that are consistent with being a wealthier country. That entails opening up new parts of the economy to private companies to create jobs that require more skills and offer higher pay, like those involving the service sector, entrepreneurship and innovation. There are certain changes that China could make to jump-start growth. It could, for example, allow rural farmers to buy and sell their own land, or open up sectors dominated by one or a few state owned companies, like telecom, to new competitors.      The U.S. is still, by almost every measure, the world’s superpower, wielding much more military might, economic power, and influence over other countries than China has. We may be gradually moving toward a bipolar world where the U.S. and China share that distinction equally, but we’re not quite there yet. "I think the reality is that China is not nearly as strong as it wants to be perceived and as many U.S. analysts like to play them up," says Rodger Baker, the vice president of analysis at Stratfor, a geopolitical intelligence and advisory firm. What is clear is that China has become a strong regional power, able to hold its own against the U.S. in East Asia. This continues to be an area of conflict. The U.S. wants to remain centrally involved in Asia, but China wants to control its own region and prevent the U.S. from being able to contain it, says Baker. In the South China Sea and East China Sea, where China claims as its own territory waters that are also claimed by U.S. allies, including South Korea, Japan and the Philippines, China is trying to keep the U.S. from intervening so close to its territory, says Baker. "It’s not on the global scale that China would be a challenge to the U.S., but certainly in the waters around the South China Sea and East China Sea," he said.      The idea that the political system in China, the second-largest economy in the world and the most populous country in the world, "is moving in a direction that is so antithetical to American values is a scary thought," says Kenneth Lieberthal, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Overall, the countries have basic conflict over the how much a government should interfere in a society, says Kennedy of CSIS. "China gives the state an enormous degree of latitude and discretion and a right to intervene on any question in any time. For the U.S., that right of intervention is constrained with rights that members of society have and external sources of accountability against the state."  And the U.S.-China relationship also brings substantial benefits to the U.S., both economically and strategically. China has supported the U.S. efforts on nuclear non-proliferation in Iran and North Korea. The countries have cooperated on counter-terrorism efforts in the Middle East and Central Asia, and fighting pirates off the coast of Africa. China assisted the U.S. with the Ebola outbreak in Africa.  The economies are so tied through investment, debt, business deals and trade that they may very well rise or sink together. On the economic side, China is now investing more money in the U.S. than the U.S. is in China. Given all of these ties, it’s in the U.S. interest to work with China, at least sometimes, as a close partner.

Map: What’s at issue in the South China Sea dispute

An international tribunal in The Hague ruled Tuesday that Beijing has no legal claim to its "historic right" over disputed territory in the South China Sea. The Philippines took Beijing to court in 2013 after the Chinese navy seized the Scarborough Shoal, a cluster of reef and rocks that served as a rich fishing ground for the countries surrounding the South China Sea. In its filing to the international tribunal, the Philippines claimed that none of the island-like features in the sea are actually islands.  The Post's Simon Denyer and Emily Rauhala report: