In the wake of China’s ongoing attempts to claim maritime rights over practically the whole of the South China Sea, its increased incursions into territorial waters claimed by Japan in the East China Sea, and outright rejection of a Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) ruling against its expansive claims, there is now little doubt among a number of governments that the Chinese Communist Party is pursuing a revisionist agenda in the region.
In Washington, Tokyo, Manila, Hanoi, and increasingly in Canberra, thoughts are now turning to the question of how to manage Beijing’s increasingly aggressive behaviour and bellicose warnings without tipping an already volatile environment closer towards conflict. The first step, given China’s continued refusal to negotiate on the basis of the PCA ruling, is to provide a unified front of political and diplomatic opposition to China’s island building and incursions within maritime areas controlled or claimed by other states.
Doing so would reinforce and reassert the commitment among regional states to the international principles and laws regulating maritime disputes and consequently deny the Chinese leadership the ability to legitimise its rejection of the PCA findings. Appearing as a responsible, consensus driven player in international politics is a key theme in the Chinese Communist Party domestic narrative, aimed primarily at generating legitimacy for the Party. Building China’s identity in this way also helps the Party sustain its rhetoric against the injustices and inequalities of the US led order it highlights as evidence of the need for change. Legitimacy, both domestically and internationally, is something the government cares about deeply.
Even more importantly, the creation of a unified diplomatic front among the ASEAN states in dispute with China also would help prevent the US and its allies, in particular Japan and Australia, from coming into more direct confrontation with China over its claims, which has already begun to occur in the wake of ASEAN’s most recent failure to clearly condemn Beijing’s behaviour.
ASEAN’s consensus principle increasingly has exposed the ten member group’s inability to speak with one voice on China over recent years, providing China’s government with the leverage it needs to exploit differences within ASEAN and prevent any meaningful, collective statement in support of its own members’ rights. What this means for states like the US, Australia, and Japan, whose governments have consistently supported a rules based negotiation of the disputes, is that they are increasingly unable to couch their position as supporting only a shared ASEAN commitment to the rule of international maritime law, and are instead placed in direct confrontation with China on ASEAN’s behalf.
This is a dangerous trend since it not only threatens to make both ASEAN and International Law irrelevant in helping manage regional tensions, but also risks further heightening those tensions as the US and its allies are left to step into the political vacuum created by ASEAN’s internal divisions.
Article by Griffith Asia Institute Associate Professor Michael Heazle.
