Losing friends

That weekend exchange of comments between US and Chinese security officials tells us that Beijing is not about to let anyone or anything stand in the way of doing whatever it wants to do in any place that it claims as its territory.

The comments from Chinese military officials also show that Beijing now considers itself on equal footing with the United States, even if it is still a long way from matching the defense and technological capabilities of the world’s lone superpower.

Treating every country as a co-equal is in fact reasonable for any self-respecting sovereign state; it underpins the existence of the United Nations.

But Beijing’s angry reaction to US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s criticism of China’s “destabilizing, unilateral actions” in the South China Sea must also stem from the fact that so far, Washington has done little beyond words to stop such actions.

If a superpower is not prepared to use that superior military might and is unable to impose economic sanctions, a nation such as China, which in its emergence thinks might makes right, smells weakness that it can exploit to promote its own strategic interests.

Those interests, for the world’s second largest economy, include securing as much energy and other natural resources to sustain its rapid industrialization.

The South China Sea is believed to be rich in those resources. When China was still impoverished and preoccupied with internal social and political upheavals, it had no interest – much less the means – to venture way beyond its shores to claim resource-rich areas.

But with its prosperity allowing it to build up its external defense capability, China is flexing its muscles and throwing its newfound weight around in the neighborhood.

The principal spoiler is Uncle Sam, which is now “rebalancing” its forces back to its Pacific backyard after its long military engagement in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia.

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A clever Chinese strategy is to avoid any overt military presence in staking its maritime claims. Instead fisheries and environment police and coast guard personnel – or at least that’s how they are described by Chinese authorities – accompany fishermen as they venture into disputed waters a long way from Chinese shores.

With this strategy, a military reaction from any protesting country can be described by Beijing as uncalled for and provocative.

And if other countries’ armed forces are unwilling or unable to stop the Chinese, they will continue aggressively staking their claim. Once a solid structure is built on a reef, even if it is submerged during high tide, Chinese occupation becomes a fait accompli. And like squatters, such structures are difficult to dismantle without risking armed conflict, even if the reef can be seen without binoculars from Philippine shores.

To avoid military confrontation, the same Chinese strategy can be applied. A regional maritime patrol, consisting of non-military personnel, can be organized to preserve the status quo and prevent further provocative activities.

China, of course, is doing everything to ensure that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations will not unite on such issues. Beijing’s divide-and-rule strategy has achieved a measure of success within ASEAN.

That success is one of the reasons behind the decision of the Philippines to seek international arbitration to define its maritime entitlements under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

The US has signed but not ratified UNCLOS. Both the Philippines and China, however, have ratified the convention. If the UN arbitral tribunal rules against Beijing, its commitment to becoming a responsible player on the world stage will be tested.

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When China made its hugely successful international debut as host of the 2008 Olympics, followed by its 2010 hosting of the World Expo in Shanghai, the world generally believed China’s reassurance of its peaceful rise, that it had no intention of challenging America’s military preeminence, and that in fact it considered the superpower concept as so Cold War, so yesterday, and they are not interested in establishing Chinese hegemony, unlike… never mind.

That goodwill has been eroded by Beijing’s muscle-flexing in the East and South China Seas.

Some Chinese officials have wondered aloud to me why the Philippines does not mind US military presence dominating the Pacific but resents the growing military might of an emerging Asian power.

The answer is that Uncle Sam, while still undertaking unilateral actions that infuriate certain sovereign states, is not claiming maritime territory almost up to our shoreline.

American fishermen don’t poach our endangered sea turtles, seahorses and even scaly anteaters, and if their businessmen ever dig for oil in Philippine-claimed waters, they will know enough to either ask first for permission or seek Pinoy partners.

Uncle Sam, like the other empire builders of an earlier age, have learned the ugly lessons of imperialism (OK, not entirely). China, on the other hand, is behaving like the imperialists of old that imposed their might on weaker states to extract resources.

Chinese activities in disputed waters escalated when Xi Jinping assumed power. If his objective for the next nine years is to increase China’s global influence, he’s not going to achieve it through force, or by pushing his neighbors toward a closer alliance with China’s principal rival, the United States.

If Xi wants to win friends and influence people, his policies are doing the opposite.