China’s New Asia Policy: emerging contours

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China’s ‘rise’ coincides with the profound transformation underway in the global geo-political environment and the shift in the centres of power. This is especially noticeable in Asia where, though the US continues to currently be the pre-eminent power, China is fast rivalling it in terms of military might and economic influence. The ‘rise’ of India, China and Japan, simultaneously for the first time in history and each with its aspirations, also generates its own dynamics and latent potential tensions. Beijing is aware that China’s effort to modernize and reach the level of an advanced developed nation will be shaped by all these factors.

The strategic thinking of successive leadership generations of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has facilitated China’s remarkable growth. Worrying, though, is the firm belief of the Chinese communist leadership that power flows from the barrel of a gun and their steady focus, over the past three decades, on military modernization. After China discarded Deng Xiaoping’s advice of ‘taoguang yanghui’, or ‘lie low, bide your time’, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has acquired greater salience in Chinese diplomacy. Many more senior PLA officers are increasingly making public comments on strategic and foreign policy issues and are not contradicted. For example, PLA Senior Colonel Liu Migfu, in a recent book, declared that ‘China’s big goal in the twenty first century is to become world number one’, while PLA Air Force (PLAAF) Colonel Dai Xu was pessimistic about China’s ability to avoid involvement in a conflict in the near future. The development has far reaching implications and given rise to serious apprehension in many world capitals, particularly in the region. The ambition of the Chinese leadership, which perceives the present time as ideal for China to establish itself as the dominant power in the entire Asian region, reinforces these apprehensions.

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Countries in the Asia-Pacific region are particularly vulnerable to a superior sea power, especially one intent on asserting its sovereignty over disputed offshore territories. The fast-paced modernization of China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has sounded alarm bells in the region. PLAN has quietly been playing an increasing role in China’s security and been used to reinforce China’s stand where the legality of off-shore oil exploration concessions granted to foreign companies by other countries has been contested. It has helped assert China’s claims on the disputed Spratly and Paracels archipelagos and in the off-shore territorial disputes with Japan. Chinese Navy ships have fought silent battles separately with naval vessels of the Philippines and Vietnam, resulting in casualties in the clashes with Vietnam. Beijing has publicly asserted that it will protect its claimed territories by force if necessary and has enacted a maritime law to that effect.

The South China Sea territorial dispute especially has the potential to erupt into a major dispute between China and other countries in the region. The dispute encompasses the Paracels Islands, Macclesfield Bank and the Spratly Islands archipelago, but the Spratly Islands have attracted the most attention. Disputes exist additionally between China and Japan over the Senkaku-Diaoyutai Islands and between Korea and Japan over the Tokdo/Takeshima Islands. The Spratly Islands have additional strategic importance as they lie between Vietnam and the Philippines and could potentially block ships transiting through the South China Sea. Aircraft and helicopters based in the Spratlys would have the range to block the Malacca and Sunda Straits, both vital choke points for shipping going from the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean.

As part of its new assertive foreign policy, China recently raised the profile of the dispute centering on the resource-rich Spratly and Paracels archipelagos which sit atop an estimated 130 million barrels of oil and gas. A ‘Draft Law on the Environment Protection of Sea Islands’, which stipulates that ‘ownership of the uninhabited islands shall revert to the state’ and that ‘the State Council of the People’s Republic of China shall exercise control’ over them, is now before the National People’s Congress, China’s version of a parliament, for approval. The Draft appears to include the Senkaku (Diaoyutai) Islands disputed between China and Japan in the East China Sea and Nansha (Spratly) Islands disputed between China and a number of countries including Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam. Tension has predictably escalated. Then Malaysian Prime Minister Badawi, during a visit to inspect the Spratlys last March revived and reiterated Malaysia’s claim to sovereignty. That month the Philippines acted similarly and promulgated the ‘Philippines Baselines Law’ asserting sovereignty over some of the Spratlys. China reacted by dispatching fishing, survey and monitoring ships to the waters near these islands. Once it enacts the Draft Law, Beijing is likely to get more aggressive.

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The South China Sea is important also as a strategically vital passageway through which sea lanes critical for many countries transit. More than 200 ships pass through it daily. The majority of oil, natural gas, other resources and commercial cargo flow through it to China, Korea and Japan from the Middle East and South East Asian countries. Japan receives seventy five percent of its energy supplies from the Middle East through sea lanes passing through the South China Sea. The area is strategically important for the US which uses the freedom of the Sea Lanes of Communication and the safety of navigation and overflight in the area and is intent on maintaining these. The US Navy and US Air Force use the South China Sea passageway for transit between military bases in Asia and the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf areas. Additionally, US interests are guided by their commitment to the security interests of Japan and South Korea.

Chinese assertiveness has, therefore, anticipatedly triggered quiet alarm in the region. In Taiwan the popularity of KMT President Ma Ying-jeou, who was increasingly being viewed as pro-Beijing, has begun to ebb. Strategic analysts in Japan are privately increasingly vocal in criticism of new DPJ Prime Minister Hatoyama’s announced policies towards China and the US. Earlier last November, Vietnam convened a conference to discuss the Spratly and Paracels Islands territorial issue.

Military strength has been a key ingredient in China’s foreign and strategic policy. In 2009, after China adopted a more assertive policy, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducted over 23 military exercises. Unlike in previous years, however, almost none contained an amphibian element. It also held its largest-ever exercise, the ‘Kuaye-2009’, a two month long ‘integrated joint operation’ involving four of China’s seven Military Regions to test its ‘rapid reaction’ capability. The exercise involved over 50,000 troops who covered an area of over 50,000 km. The terrain for another artillery ‘live firing’ exercise resembled that across Vietnam. The exercises, which were publicized in the official Chinese media, reinforce indications that Beijing envisages a possible conflagration along China’s periphery, on land or at sea.

The recently concluded (Jan 29–31, 2010) Fourth Working Conference on National Frontier and Coastal Defence held in Beijing confirmed that China was rapidly enhancing and improving its military infrastructure along the borders and coastline. The conference proceedings revealed that since 1994, the year from which Jiang Zemin and his successor Hu Jintao ensured successive double-digit increases in the defence budget, China spent over RMB 4.7 billion (approx
US$ 790 million) on developing border and coastal infrastructure. This included installation of
30,000 km of fibre optic cables linking frontier posts and key sentry points, more than 12,000 km of frontier highways and 25,000 km of roads for patrolling and guarding the border and for coastal defence. China also constructed 7000 km of frontier fences, bridges, helipads and docks.

Separately, a Chinese military commentator observed that China’s successful test of its ground-based mid-course missile interception system in January 2010, would help showcase its missile interception capabilities, particularly to Taiwan, India and Japan. Japan and India both figure in China’s ‘Asia strategy’. Interestingly, a recent article in the Beijing-owned Hong Kong-based ‘Ta Kung Pao’, implicitly outlined the limits of any relationship with both these countries by bluntly asserting that China’s ‘relations with Japan and India is primarily based on whether there is an understanding of historical issues. Unlike the ROK, it can hardly go beyond its historic disputes with the other country to develop real friendly ties’.

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The South Asian subcontinent and specifically India has been feeling the pressure of a newly assertive and ‘rising’ China. The incidence of intrusions, which have at times been fairly aggressive, has been high along the entire border including in areas hitherto accepted as settled. Notably, intrusions occurred in Arunachal Pradesh during the general elections there and in the Western sector in the aftermath of the 26/11 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, both sensitive times for India. There has been no forward movement in the border negotiations. Chinese troops have also been building defences, forward posts and a network of roads. They are ‘reconstructing’ 59 airfields in and around Tibet. The recent two month long Kuaye–2009 (Stride–2009) air-land military exercise was an undisguised display of power projection capability.

Beijing has additionally adopted an unfriendly stance on a number of issues. These include China’s biased response after the 26/11 terrorist attacks; refusal to give any assurance regarding diversion of the Brahmaputra river or share data regarding its water flows; its consistent opposition to expansion of the UNSC in close collusion with Pakistan; continuing reluctance to accept the Indo–US Civilian Nuclear Agreement; denial of visas to Indian government officials serving in Arunachal Pradesh; and objection to disbursement of aid by any international agency for any project in Arunachal Pradesh, including the US$ 2.9 billion loan for an energy development project in Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims and describes as ‘southern Tibet’.

Its protest on October 23 to a visit by the Indian Prime Minister to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh ten days earlier on October 3, ’09, was tougher than similar protests issued on previous occasions and contained a suggestion of a warning. It was preparatory to Beijing increasing pressure on India to cancel the Dalai Lama’s visit to Tawang while simultaneously raising the ante on the dispute over Arunachal Pradesh. Chinese scholars visiting Delhi in October said, echoing Beijing’s view, that the Indian Government had instigated the Dalai Lama’s visit and that there would be a punitive response. The Chinese Embassy in Delhi also began issuing visas on a separate piece of paper to applicants from the state of Jammu and Kashmir, effectively conveying that China has shifted position and regards this entire state of the Indian Union as ‘disputed’.

Meanwhile, on article in the influential Beijing-owned daily ‘Ta Kung Pao’, disclosed that Beijing had begun reviewing its ‘Asia strategy’, prompted by what it assessed as the ‘changing strategic equations in Asia’. These were identified as USA’s ‘undisguised interest’ in Asia and its recent initiatives in Myanmar and North Korea, which have attracted particular concern. PLA Air Force (PLAAF) Colonel, Dai Xu separately criticized the sale of arms by the US to Taiwan as being done at this juncture to ‘disrupt’ PRC-Taiwan relations. Beijing feels that Japan is preparing to play a larger role in Asia and Japanese Premier Hatoyama’s visit to India would have been interpreted as part of the effort.

A recent signed article in the Liberation Army Daily discussed ‘Two Major Trends in Japan’s Defence’, which it identified as ‘external orientation’ and ‘keeping the initiative’. It elaborated that ‘external orientation’ is mainly the ‘increasingly active deployment overseas and the space capability of the Self-Defence Forces and construction of the ballistic missile defence system’. ‘Keeping the initiative’, meant ‘adjustment of Japan’s defence system’ which puts ‘increasingly greater stress on defence of the southwestern islands’.

PLAAF Colonel Dai Xu separately alleged that ‘China is in a crescent shaped ring of encirclement. The ring begins in Japan, stretches through nations in the South China Sea to India and ends in Afghanistan. Washington’s deployment of anti-missile systems around China’s periphery forms a crescent shaped encirclement’. The ‘Ta Kung Pao’ article observed that China is concerned that Asia is ‘undergoing big changes’ and ‘a major restructuring’. In this context it took note of Japanese Premier Hatoyama’s proposal for an East Asian Community, Seoul’s suggestion for ‘new diplomatic thinking on Asia’ and Singapore’s recommendation that ‘America get closely involved in East Asian affairs’.

China has initiated steps to safeguard its interests. The visits in December 2009 to Japan, South Korea, Myanmar and Cambodia by Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, widely tipped to succeed Chinese President Hu Jintao, significantly underscored Beijing’s interest in the region. The Chinese authorities took care to ensure that in addition to economic agreements each of Xi Jinping’s visits was punctuated with a significant gesture. For example, in Tokyo he was granted audience by the Emperor despite improbably short notice. In Yangon he was received by the normally reclusive Senior General Than Shwe and Cambodia sent some Uyghurs back to China, just a day prior to Xi Jinping’s arrival. While these hints at Xi Jinping’s rising stature in the Chinese Communist Party hierarchy, they particularly display China’s clout. China has also energized its relationship with North Korea by sending high level visitors at this sensitive time for Pyongyang. These are, however, interim measures prior to formulation of a new ‘Asia policy’.

The Chinese leadership is presently pre-occupied with settling ‘core issues’ which have the potential to create serious internal disturbances. The ‘Shanghai Expo-2010’, China’s last prestigious national event, is its other major preoccupation. Meanwhile its military preparations continue. Once ‘Shanghai Expo-2010’ concludes this October, then China’s central leadership will focus on finalising its new ‘Asia policy’ and evaluate the advantages of enforcing its territorial and perceived strategic goals. That will be a period of test for its neighbours and could well presage a period of heightened tension in the region.

 Jayadeva Ranade, former Additional Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat.

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