China's reclamation work in South China Sea unacceptable

Beijing is reclaiming land in at least seven of the eight partially submerged reefs it now controls in the contested area, because it can. There are, of course, official or strategic objectives for reclamation, which has created at least five new “islands”, but these all flow from the primary reason: China has the means to do it.

Beijing’s official reason at first sounds positively benign. “We are building shelters, aids for navigation, search and rescue as well as marine meteorological forecasting services, fishery services and other administrative services,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said.

But the reclamation and construction work would, in the words of a Reuters report, “also meet the demands for China’s military defence, Hua said without elaborating”. And then came China’s familiar argument by mere assertion. “The relevant construction is a matter that is entirely within the scope of China’s sovereignty. It is fair, reasonable, lawful, it does not affect and is not targeted against any country. It is beyond reproach,” Hua said.

Nonsense. It is unfair, unreasonable, unlawful – and targeted against smaller countries with competing claims like Vietnam and the Philippines. 

First, the reclamation and construction work goes directly against the letter and spirit of the Declaration of the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea negotiated in 2002 between China and Asean. The declaration, especially provisions such as No 5, where the parties pledged to “exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities that would complicate or escalate disputes and affect peace and stability including, refraining from action of inhabiting on the presently uninhabited islands, reefs, shoals, cays, and other features”, was designed to create conditions for a binding Code of Conduct.

Second, the reclamation and construction work is Beijing’s answer to the Philippines’ case pending before a United Nations arbitration tribunal. Last February, a leading Philippine expert on conflicting claims in the South China Sea directly linked the reclamation projects to the lawsuit. Jay Batongbacal, director of the UP Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea, wrote: “While the legal status of the contested features as described and presented in the arbitration case are not affected, their physical alteration effectively ‘tampers with the evidence’.”

Third, the reclamation and construction work is a direct and final repudiation of Beijing’s former policy of a “peaceful rise”. That policy was meant to reassure China’s neighbours that its continuing transformation, first begun by Deng Xiaoping, posed no security threat. Under Xi Jinping, however, its most authoritarian leader since Mao Zedong, China has embraced a policy of expansionist nationalism – a new and powerful source of ruling ideology for a communist party running a massive capitalist economy. In widely reported remarks, US President Barack Obama criticised China for using “sheer size and muscle” to get its way. “Where we get concerned with China is where it is not necessarily abiding by international norms and rules, and is using its sheer size and muscle to force countries into subordinate positions,” Obama said. “We think this can be solved diplomatically, but just because the Philippines or Vietnam are not as large as China doesn’t mean that they can just be elbowed aside.”

Beijing’s response was a non-answer. “The US leader talked about China’s ‘sheer size and muscle’, but one can also see clearly who has the biggest size and muscle in the world,” Hua said. The subtext was unmistakable: If the US can elbow other countries aside, so can we. Because we can.