As President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration approached, tensions in the South China Sea have continued to evolve. In mid-December it became apparent that China is militarising its newly built islands in the Spratly group. Soon after this became public, former Indonesian foreign minister Marty Natalegawa warned that the dispute might tear ASEAN apart. A few days later a Chinese Navy ship ‘stole’ (or ‘discovered’, according to China) a US unmanned underwater vessel (UUV) some 450 metres from a US Navy oceanographic ship sailing off the Philippine coast.
The UUV incident occurred outside China’s nine-dash line territorial claim. The incident seemingly disregarded the procedures agreed upon in the US–China Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea, which have previously worked well in avoiding confrontations. Most importantly, it also marked the first direct intervention — in tweet form — by the Trump presidency into the South China Sea imbroglio.
These tweets suggested that the United States’ South China Sea policy under Trump will become more assertive, just as China’s policy did when President Xi Jinping took power.
Trump seems set to focus the US–China relationship on ‘making deals’. He is expected to adopt a transactional approach that aims to gain particular near-term outcomes important to him. This approach appealed to at least some Chinese who saw Trump as ‘a businessman who puts his commercial interests above everything else’.
Please click here to read the full “Trump’s Twitter diplomacy troubles US–China relations” article in East Asia Forum by Griffith Asia Institute Visiting Fellow Peter Layton.
