The meeting between US and Chinese naval commanders on board the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning on Monday represents a gradual shift in Washington’s strategy from tolerating to engaging Beijing’s offshore power projection.
After coming to office, US President Barack Obama has been determined to break from former US president George W. Bush’s unilateral policy, which used the rhetoric of democratization to justify two costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Obama was severely criticized by the US House of Representatives and the world media for being too cautious to step in and resolve political crises in Ukraine and Syria.
As years of anti-terrorism efforts come to an end in Central Asia and the Middle East, Obama has reactivated his pivot toward the Pacific.
Not only does he make the South China Sea an important bargaining chip in negotiations with China, but he also seeks to exploit the ongoing maritime sovereignty disputes to reset the US agenda in East Asia.
Since the 2008 global financial crisis, China has adopted a proactive diplomatic policy that departs from former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s (鄧小平) vision of lying low and biding time, aimed at normalizing relationships with the West and diffusing global concerns about China’s rise to power. Having declared maritime Southeast Asia an open frontier and modernized a blue-ocean navy to compete with the US in the western Pacific, Beijing set out claim more islands and waterways in its oceanic peripheries.
As China’s economy expands, it is bound to use its newfound capabilities to strengthen its zones of influence and to protect its interests whenever and wherever it deems necessary.
The confidence of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is derived from the nation’s unprecedented strength as the second-largest economy in the world and its position as the largest holder of US Treasury bonds, which is also the nation that is apparently least affected from the 2008 financial crisis.
The latest US-Chinese naval entanglement originates from a larger pre-existing territorial dispute in which China claims historical rights over the South China Sea and sets out to exercise the rights of sovereignty over its presumed maritime borders.
To the US, the freedom of the seas is fundamental to the global system because it defines the South China Sea as an open transportation corridor and guarantees the freedom of navigation for vessels of all nations. The principle of freedom of the seas contradicts China’s assertion of its maritime sovereignty.
Without an institutional mechanism under international law to address the overlapping claims to maritime territories in East Asia, the South China Sea dispute has highlighted the unbridgeable disagreements between China and neighboring nations over control of maritime space — such as islands and waterways — and over maritime jurisdiction related to disputes taking place in international waters.
Unless a multilateral framework capable of mediating conflicts among the claimant states is established, the South China Sea is destined to become a new front line for US-Chinese rivalry and the escalating tensions could cause serious diplomatic rifts.
Joseph Tse-hei Lee is a professor of history and co-director of the bachelors’ program in Global Asia Studies at Pace University in New York.
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