Tensions areescalating in the South China Sea. On July 12a UNtribunal will deliveralong-awaited verdict on Beijing’s sweeping claims to the vitalwaterway. Each year more than $5 trillion in tradepasses through the sea, which contains rich fishing grounds and large, mostly untapped reserves of oil and natural gas.
China says it has a historical claim to virtually the entire sea.The other countries on the sea’sperimeter argue Chinais violating international treaties, infringing on their fishing and exploration rights, and staking out military positions that could give it the edge in a future conflict.How the tribunal rules, therefore, will influence everything from trade to defense to political relationships—and perhaps wars. “The South China Sea issue is one of the most important global issues right now,” says Anders Corr, founder of Corr Analytics. “It’s a tinder box.”
At the center of China’s claims is a curious, dashed-line map drawn up in the 1940s. Knowing its story isessential to understanding how China and its neighbors will behave in the years to come.
A sweeping claim
The dashed line was first shown in 1947 on a map entitled “Map of South China Sea Islands” published by the government of the Republic of China.With 11 dashes at the time, itencompassed most of the South China Sea.The Chinese communist partyadopted the map in 1949, but removed two dashesto give the Gulf of Tonkin to communist Vietnamas a courtesy(paywall). Within the dashes were key archipelagos—including the disputed Spratly and the Paracel islands—and various other features, including theScarborough Shoal, a set ofcoral reefs near the Philippines.
Over the next six decades, little happened with the map. “The nine-dash line was not controversial between 1949 and 2009 because no one ever spent time talking or thinking about it,” notes Julian Ku,a professor at the law school ofHofstra Universityin New York. “China rarely asserted it publicly.”
But then China submittedthe nine-dash-line map to the United Nations in 2009(pdf), in part to counter a claimby Vietnam overan extended continental shelfand sovereignty over the Paracel and Spratly islands.The Chinese map’s accompanying text included this passage:
China has indisputable sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea and the adjacent waters, and enjoys sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the relevant waters as well as the seabed and subsoil thereof (see attached map).
Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines objected. They asserted that, among other things, China’sclaim was without basis underthe 1982UNConvention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos).Chinasigned Unclos in 1996.Other than Taiwan, the other claimantstothe sea are signatories too.
Under Unclos, coastal nations get an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) 200 nautical miles from their shores.In that zonethey havesole exploitation rights over all natural resources, though other nations have the freedom of navigation and overflight. The waters within12 nautical miles are “territorial waters,” where countries have essentially full sovereignty.
AnEEZ also applies to the area around a country’s islands too—so whoever controls the Spratlys and Paracels, for instance, also gets a large chunk of ocean to go with them. China’snine-dash line not only encompasses those strategic bitsof rock but also overlaps with several countries’ EEZs.
And in the last few yearsChina has been testing how far it can push those countries and get away with it.
A seriesof provocations
China’sprovocations operate at variouslevels. The most basic is sending fishing trawlers to fish inother countries’ EEZs. It backs them up with refueling ships—disguised as fishing boats—and evensends its own coast guardto extricatethem when they get caught. This sort of behavior has prompted Indonesia, for one, to beef up its military presenceandturn to nano-satellitesto better track potential trespassers in its waters.
China has also built artificial islandsislands in the South China Sea by pumping sand onto live coral reefs and then paving them over with concrete. This kind of action—which also does great environmental damage—givesChina a base(paywall) for air and sea patrols.
The next levelis to act as if these artificial islands are real land, with their own EEZs and territorial waters. Under Unclos, such artificial islands don’t havemaritime rights, and nor do submerged reefs. But in a “freedom-of-navigation operation” inMay, theUS sent anavalvessel deliberately within 12 nautical miles of the Spratly archipelago’s Fiery Cross Reef, on top of which China has built an island. (Ithas a runway for fighter jets, a hospital with its own garden, and even a farm with about 500 animals.)In response, Chinascrambled jetsand shadowed the US vessel withthree warships, ordering ittoleave the area.
The search for somehistory
While Beijing can point to the 1947 map, it’s struggled to make aconvincing casefor how it arrived atthe nine-dash line in the first place. In a 2008 US diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks, the US embassy in Beijing reported that Yin Wenqiang, a senior maritime law expert with the Chinese government, had “admitted” he was unaware of the line’s historical basis.
That hasn’t stopped the authorities trying to come up with one. InMaythe state-controlled China Daily reported ona centuries-oldbook, purportedly owned by a local fisherman,describingancient fishing routesaround various parts of the South China Sea. The reportdepicted this as proof of China’s rights to the area. A few weekslater, however, when a BBC team went to visit the fisherman to verify the claim, he saidhe’d thrownthe bookaway because it was too old and broken.
An even moreentertaining example wasananimated video shared by state broadcaster CCTV on social-media site Weibo, whichsays that China has hadjurisdiction over the sea’s islands for more than a thousand years.
Fuzzy boundaries
Part of the problem with the nine-dash line, however, is that Beijing has never madea specifically defined claim about it. What remains ambiguous, says Ku, is whether its assertion of“sovereign rights” refers to all of the waters inside the nine-dash line, or justthe waters within 12 nautical miles of its islands (or what China believes to be its islands).
This calculated ambiguityallows Beijingto strike a balance between antagonizing other countriesand maintaining an appearance ofpatriotic fervor to itsdomestic audience. Ithas also helped China with what’s often called its “salami-slicing” strategy—the slow accumulation ofsmall actions, none of which merits a major reaction from other countries, but which over time add up to a major strategic change.
Finally, this fuzziness allows Beijing to keep its options open. Inits modern mapsChina includesa 10th dash east of Taiwan (pdf, page 5). That puts Taiwan within China’s vaguely defined territory. Beijing insists Taiwan is a renegade province. Taiwanconsiders itself an independent nation, and earlier this year it electedto presidentTsai Ing-wen, a pro-independence candidate who prevailed over a Beijing-friendly predecessor.
The trigger point
China reiterated its nine-dash claim in a submissionto the UN in 2011(pdf). But 2012 was whentensions began to ratchet up, says Ku. That was whenChina effectively annexedthe Scarborough Shoal, which falls withinthe Philippines’ EEZ.
After a standoff between Chinese and Philippine forces,theUS mediated a deal in which both sides were to pull back while the dispute was negotiated. ThePhilippine forces left but the Chinese ones remained, gaining control(paywall) thatthey still have today.
So in 2013 thePhilippinesfiled a case with the UN’s Permanent Court of Arbitration, in The Hague. It asked thetribunal torule on various aspects of China’s sweeping claims—in particular, whether the artificial islands and otherfeatures China occupies in the South China Sea, such as Fiery Cross Reef and the Scarborough Shoal, are entitled to EEZs or territorial watersunder Unclos. This is expected to be addressed in theruling next week.
The moment of truth—or just more uncertainty?
James Kraska, an expert ininternational law at the US Naval War College,has written that the PCA probably won’t rule against the nine-dash line directly.Inpart, that’s because Beijing’s deliberate vagueness about what the line representsmakes ithard to legally challenge.
But, he wrote, the tribunal will most likely saythat the features China occupies don’t haveEEZs under Unclos, and in some casesnot territorial waters either. That makesthem much less strategically valuable to China.Itmight giveother nations the confidence to conduct their own freedom-of-navigation operations or join US ones, to reassert their rights to the sea. It might also,Kusays, encourage other countries bring their own cases against China to the tribunal.
The fear is about how China will respond. Beijing, which has worked strenuouslyto discreditthetribunal and refused to participate in thehearings,has insisted it will ignore the ruling—and indeed, there is no international police entity that can enforce it. But Chinamight also feel compelled to demonstrate that it won’t be constrained by theoutcome.Here are three things itmight do to up the stakes:
- Take control of a shoal in the Spratlys called Second Thomas Shoal, a.k.a.Ren’ai Reef in China and Ayungin Shoal inthe Philippines. The Philippines grounded a rusty old warship there in 1999 and staffed it with a few troops as a way of staking a claim. On July 1 a spokesman for China’s defense ministry said China has the ability tow the ship away.
- Startisland-buildingatop Scarborough Shoal. The reef isabout200 km (125 m) from a US naval base in the Philippines, and not much further from Manila. The US and the Philippines have suggested the reefrepresents a red line, and that any island-building by China there would be prevented with force.
- Set up an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) over the South China Sea, as it’s already done in the East China Sea, where it has competing island claims with Japan. In such a zone,unidentified aircraft wouldbe interrogated and possibly intercepted. The US has indicated it will ignore such a zone.
Any of thesewould be “a real escalation,” notes Corr.
Another possibility, which China has threatened,is tosimplypull out ofUnclos altogether. Kusays he’d be surprised: “China is seeking to gain international recognition for its delimitation of its continental shelf, and future maritime delimitations with Korea and Japan. It would not be able to use the UN processes for that if it withdrew.”
Corr, on the other hand, believesChinacouldeasily withdraw from Unclos. When itsigned the treaty in 1996, he notes, it had a much smaller military and more reason to fear bullying from other nations. Now,leaving the system “actually advantages them because they can bully their way into more territory,” he says. “I think they’re now understanding that.” In that case, there’d be nothing at all to stop China muscling its way into more territory in the sea, other than a full-on military showdown.
