The US Indo-Pacific Command said that a Chinese warship cut across the path of a US destroyer and a Canadian Navy frigate doing a routine transit in the Taiwan Strait on June 3.
China’s ship, a guided-missile destroyer, crossed the bow of the USS Chung-Hoon at 137m, forcing the US vessel to slow its course to “avoid collision.”
The incident came on the heels of a Chinese fighter jet on May 26 flying in front of the nose of a US Air Force RC-135 aircraft conducting routine operations over the hotly contested South China Sea, which the US Indo-Pacific Command condemned as an “unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” in the air. Details regarding the two close encounters by the US and Canada were revealed to warn the international community of China’s “unsafe and unprofessional” maneuvers.
However, the two partners would continue with their routine patrols in the Indo-Pacific in accordance with the freedom of navigation as international law stipulates. As defense ministers and military officials around the globe convened in Singapore for the Shangri-La Dialogue, it is worth investigating the reasons behind China’s escalating provocations.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chinese Minister of National Defense Li Shangfu (李尚福) were at the annual defense conference. Li’s words at the forum suggested that the US and its allies had created the danger with their patrols, and the intention was to provoke China.
“The best way is for the countries, especially the naval vessels and fighter jets of countries, not to do closing actions around other countries’ territories,” he said. In other words, China is calling on other nations to “mind their own business.”
“We must prevent attempts that try to use those freedom of navigation [patrols], that innocent passage, to exercise hegemony of navigation,” he said.
Li had ample reasons to be on edge, because naval vessels and fighter jets of major players in the international community are showing up in the Indo-Pacific. Germany also threw in its hat by saying it would send two warships to the Indo-Pacific next year.
For the first time ever, and thanks to US President Joe Biden’s promotion of multilateralism since taking office, the idea of uniting global powers to counter China’s ambitions seems to be gaining traction.
Beijing has nobody to blame but itself for international powers deploying a military presence around China. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) pursuit of the Chinese dream — which is to make China the world’s dominant power — through coercion and nationalism. Even after the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 20th National Congress, there are no signs of a slowdown in this trajectory.
As Beijing fully demonstrates the hardline “my way or the highway” approach, other nations have resorted to pressuring actions of close monitoring under the US’ leadership. This is what Li has been calling not “innocent passage,” but “hegemony of navigation” in reality. Thus, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s provocative close encounters can be read as a form of “protest.”
As China, for the moment, does not have the military prowess to follow through with its threats, it can only resort to affronting “acts” and “displays.”
This is most apparent when Li made placating remarks at the forum, such as “working together, both [the US and China] will come out as winners; fighting each other, both will lose, and the world will be hurt as well,” or any conflict between the two nations would bring “unbearable disaster for the world.”
Perhaps we would be annoying the CCP again if we say that they are “appeasing” the US, but it is safe to assume that China, which once proposed a “new type of great power relations” concept in the hope of controlling Taiwan and the world, is now nervous when it provoked the US into rallying up its democratic allies into a coalition to counter China.
With the support of China’s neighbors, and those in Southeast Asia and the South China Sea, Biden has the capacity to unite disparate nations to reign in China, enough to form a coalition to take on a “group conflict” scenario.
As for China, what country has stepped up for it? Russia, which is still trapped in a quagmire of its own making? No nation would forfeit its own interests and welfare so that another invading nation can fulfill its own expansionist ambitions. After two unsafe close encounters, it remains to be seen how China would deal with the invitation to a dialogue between the US and Chinese defense leaders. If it is betting on Washington to extend the olive branch first, it might be in for a long, long wait.
Tzou Jiing-wen is editor-in-chief of the Liberty Times, the sister newspaper of the Taipei Times.
Translated by Rita Wang
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