The waters and airspace around Taiwan are becoming increasingly popular these days — not as a result of the government’s tourism promotion efforts, but due to China’s bully tactics to assert its territorial ambitions.
It is not just Taiwan that is being affected, but Japan as well, as seen by recent flights by Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) warplanes over the Bashi Channel and the Miyako Strait.
PLAAF spokesman Shen Jinke (申進科) on Thursday said that such long-range training was “normal, systemic and practical,” that “no matter who shadows us we will fly often and frequently” and that such drills were not targeted at any specific nation or region.
The trouble is that if your nation is one of the ones being passed by so frequently by Chinese military planes, it is hard not to feel nervous — or targeted.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday said that the nation’s military has monitored the flights from beginning to end and is prepared with contingency plans, backing up the Ministry of National Defense statement that Taiwan is prepared to defend itself.
Like Taiwan, Japan has responded by scrambling warplanes to monitor the Chinese airplanes. Both nations know very well that China’s actions are anything but friendly.
However, since China has said such drills are “normal” and that it is not targeting anyone, Beijing has no grounds to complain when other nations conduct their own training drills and exercises in the region, as the US has done for decades, or as Britain yesterday announced that it plans to do.
British Secretary of State for Defence Michael Fallon yesterday said that the UK plans to increase its presence in the South China Sea, and would be sending a warship on exercises next year as a follow-up to joint air force drills with Japan last year.
He said the UK has “the right of freedom of navigation and we will exercise it.”
His comments came one day after British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Boris Johnson said the UK’s new aircraft carriers would be sent to the Asia-Pacific region as one of their first assignments after they enter service.
Australia has not been as proactive as its two major allies, but Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop has said her nation “will continue occasional routine freedom of navigation and overflight exercises around the broader South China Sea.”
She has defended the rights to unimpeded passage in international waters even when closer to home, as she did when a Chinese navy ship hung out in the Coral Sea off the northeast coast of Australia earlier this month, when the US and Australia were conducting the Exercise Talisman Saber war games.
Of course, Beijing complains that outside actors are just seeking to play up tensions in the South China Sea.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Lu Kang (陸慷) gave a classic example of Beijing’s obfuscation yesterday, saying: “Countries in the region are working together to safeguard and promote regional peace and prosperity, yet we see other countries who insist on stirring up trouble while the situation is trending toward calm in the South China Sea.”
Calm is not exactly the adjective one would use to describe the reactions of Vietnam or Indonesia, to name just two victims of China’s naval bullying.
The only reason ASEAN has not spoken out more truthfully — and forcefully — of its members’ feelings on the issue is that Beijing has been able to get Cambodia and Laos to block any such move.
If Beijing wants to insist on the right of its airplanes to fly over international waters near other nations, then it has no grounds to complain when other countries do the same near China.
That they must do so is crucial, unless the world’s trading nations are willing to see the South China Sea turned into yet another polluted Chinese lake.
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