When the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis and four other US warships sailed into the South China Sea last week for what were described as routine exercises, the message was clear: The US is the dominant military power in the region and plans to keep it that way.
However, numerous Chinese naval ships were operating nearby, the US Navy said, noticeably more than in past years.
A Chinese officer told the state-run news media that the ships were there to “monitor, identify, follow and expel” foreign vessels and aircraft, depending on how close they came “to our islands.”
Photo: AP
The encounter, which passed without incident, was the latest episode in a wary standoff between the US and China over two contested island chains known as the Paracels Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島) and the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島).
Since taking office three years ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has used the isles to expand China’s military footprint in the region, taking one step after another to build and equip outposts far from the Chinese mainland over protests from its neighbors and from Washington.
The scale of the multibillion-dollar effort has raised tensions in the region and strengthened China’s disputed claim to the entirety of the South China Sea, home to some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
The buildup has also challenged the military “status quo” in the Western Pacific since the end of World War II, bringing China closer to its goal of establishing a security buffer extending far from its coast — a dream of Chinese strategists since the Korean War.
“China wants a bathtub,” said Marc Lanteigne, a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs who studies Chinese foreign policy, drawing a comparison with US dominance in the Caribbean. “China wants waters that are theirs, that they can operate military and police vessels in, without having to worry about the presence of the US or the Philippines or Vietnamese or Indian naval forces.”
The buildup has proceeded incrementally, but remarkably swiftly, given that China and its neighbors have been locked in a stalemate over the islands that has simmered for decades. Dredging of sand to build artificial islands atop coral reefs in the Spratlys began as early as 2014, but accelerated last year, and the isles now feature deepwater harbors and long runways suitable for warships and fighter jets.
Then surface-to-air missile batteries appeared last month in the Paracels, more than 483km to the north. Now satellite photos show what seem to be powerful radar facilities, potentially extending the kill zone of missiles on the Chinese mainland that are devised to sink aircraft carriers.
The new fortifications pose little threat to the US military, which could easily destroy them in a conflict.
However, US officials are increasingly worried that the buildup, if unchecked, will give China de facto control of an expanse of sea the size of Mexico and military superiority over neighbors with competing claims to the waters. That, some say, could prompt a regional arms race and increase the risk of conflict.
While officials in Washington said China is nowhere near gaining the capacity to keep US forces out of the South China Sea, analysts said the buildup will make it more difficult for the US Navy to quickly defend allies with weaker militaries, like the Philippines.
The deployment of fighter jets, anti-ship missiles and more powerful radar in particular could embolden the People’s Liberation Army Navy, while giving US commanders pause, they said.
Testifying before the US Senate Armed Services Committee last month, Admiral Harry Harris Jr, commander of the US Pacific Command, warned that China’s actions were “changing the operational landscape in the South China Sea.”
And in written answers submitted to the committee, US President Barack Obama’s administration’s top intelligence official, James Clapper, forecast that China would “have significant capacity to quickly project substantial military power to the region” by early next year.
China’s buildup in the Spratlys has also angered the Philippines. Chinese forces wrested control of Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島) in the Spratlys from the Philippines after an extended standoff four years ago, a move that Philippine President Benigno Aquino III later compared to Nazi Germany’s annexation of Czechoslovakia.
US Senator John McCain, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said recently that China seemed poised to expel Philippine forces from another outpost and urged the Obama administration to clarify how it would respond.
Last month, Chinese vessels drew protests by blocking Philippine fishing boats from reaching a disputed atoll.
At his summit with Obama in September last year, Xi pledged not to “pursue militarization” of the Spratlys, but he did not include the Paracels, and Beijing has since insisted that it is entitled to “limited defensive facilities” across the South China Sea, comparing them to US bases in Hawaii.
Chinese analysts say that the buildup preserves peace by deterring others with territorial claims to the sea, including Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei.
US officials said they expected China to build large fuel storage tanks on the islands next, which would allow its fighter jets to remain in the region longer, and then to declare an “air defense identification zone” over the South China Sea as it did for a contested part of the East China Sea in late 2013.
China claimed the right to require aircraft entering the zone to identify themselves and to take military action against those that did not follow orders. Japan and the US refused to recognize the claim or cooperate.
However, the Obama administration has struggled to come up with a policy to slow or stop what it has called China’s militarization of the South China Sea.
A senior defense official, who requested anonymity to speak more freely about US policy, said that while China might be gaining in the “maritime arena,” its progress had also prompted neighbors like the Philippines and Vietnam to expand military ties with the US.
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