With US and Chinese warships increasingly playing chicken, and China transforming atolls and outcroppings into militarized artificial islands, the South China Sea presents a striking picture of Sino-US strategic competition.
However, China’s expansive assertion of offshore sovereignty is not only challenging others’ territorial rights and free navigation of international sea lanes. It also is threatening a central feature of the Southeast Asian ecosystem, and thus, the region’s economic future.
China has refused to submit its territorial claims for international review, even though six of the 10 countries surrounding the South China Sea have claims to various rocks, shoals, reefs and resources within its 3,6 million square kilometers. China has also ignored the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s (PCA) 2016 ruling affirming the Philippines’ historic rights to the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) and dismissing China’s outsized claim to about 90 percent of the South China Sea based on the so-called “nine-dash line.”
Illustration: Yusha
For Southeast Asia’s 600 million people, the territorial crisis in the South China Sea is not some distant future concern. China’s actions are already harming the region’s maritime ecosystems and livelihoods.
That is the key lesson of the book Dispatches from the South China Sea: Navigating to Common Ground by James Borton, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute based at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.
Putting aside geopolitics considerations, Borton focuses on the ground truth: Chinese exploitation of the South China Sea is threatening the region’s future through the ecological, environmental and economic damage that it is causing.
Fishing is at the heart of Borton’s tale.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has said 15 to 56 percent (depending on the country) of all animal protein consumed in Southeast Asia comes from neighboring seas, and that the global market reflects this bounty.
Although it accounts for only 2.5 percent of the planet’s ocean surface area, the South China Sea produces 12 percent of the world’s fish catch.
Half of the world’s 3.2 million registered fishing boats operate there, Borton says.
While overfishing is a growing global problem, China clearly contributes to it disproportionately with its long-distance fishing fleet of 2,500 ships — a number that rises to 17,000 if unregistered and illegal vessels are counted.
Borton marshals first-hand accounts from fishers, officials and researchers to show how the South China Sea’s vital resources are being degraded.
About 2,500 species of fish inhabit its waters, but since 2000, catch rates have declined 70 percent and large fish stocks have shrunk 90 percent.
For years, China has unilaterally declared fishing bans, supposedly to protect fish stocks.
Last year, it adopted a new law empowering its coast guard to use force against alleged perpetrators from neighboring countries.
Yet while China’s maritime militia has driven other countries’ boats elsewhere, Chinese fishing operations in the world’s proscribed zones have continued, such that China alone hauls in 20 percent of the world’s annual catch.
The ecological effects of China’s island-building are no less troubling. The South China Sea was once home to one-third of the world’s coral reefs, and Borton says that about half have already been lost.
Coral reefs around the world are also being degraded by the effects of climate change.
However, as the PCA said in its 2016 ruling, China has accelerated this destruction in the South China Sea by dredging up more than 259km2 of healthy coral reefs to create artificial islands.
Borton sees the failure to resolve the South China Sea crisis as a harbinger of ecological disaster. Highlighting the work of scientists, researchers and concerned officials, he explains the nature of the challenge and its possible solutions.
“Just as the current pandemic requires a collaborative approach, the South China Sea requires scientific cooperation ... and open access to data,” he writes. “Science diplomacy can establish ... a starting point for regional cooperation” and “a much-needed pause in rising tension.”
Unfortunately, the Chinese government’s failure to do any of these things during the global COVID-19 crisis is a harbinger as well.
It has refused to provide basic information about the ecological impact of its island building, even as it expands its territorial claims elsewhere in Asia. Its strong-arm tactics and steady militarization of its newly created offshore real estate hardly suggest that it intends to share data, much less play a constructive role in preserving the region’s ecosystems.
Borton is certainly correct that citizens and scientists ought to collaborate to find ways to bridge the political divide in the South China Sea, but given China’s intransigence, businesses might be better positioned than governments to take the steps he proposes.
From start-ups to technology giants, the private sector is creating new tools to shed more light on the situation. Satellite systems and artificial intelligence are already being used to collect and analyze massive amounts of climate data for clients and researchers.
Microsoft, Google and Amazon are gathering and publishing more climate data, and business leaders such as BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink are pushing companies to align their operations with the global climate agenda.
However, while Borton offers a clear overview of the crisis in the South China Sea, comprehending the problem is no guarantee that those with the means to address it will take up the challenge.
Kent Harrington, a former senior CIA analyst, served as national intelligence officer for East Asia, chief of station in Asia, and the CIA’s director of public affairs
Copyright: Project Syndicate
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