.png)
.jpg)
The just concluded visit by India’s External Affairs Minister Mrs. Sushma Swaraj to Vietnam and, with it, the renewed attention to ONGC Videsh's agreement with the Vietnamese for exploration in certain of their offshore oil blocks, brings into focus India's stake in the ongoing confrontation between China and the littoral countries around the South China Sea.
The smaller littoral countries around the South China Sea.....Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philipines..... have, for some years now, been embroiled in disputes with a resurgent China, over island territories within the South China Sea. Furthermore, China appears to give no cognizance to the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) that each of the littoral countries claims in the disputed seas. China has similar problems with Japan.
The South China Sea contains the world's most important shipping lanes and sits astride supply routes essential to South Korea and Japan, as well as China. More than half of the world's merchant shipping tonnage passes through the Straits of Malacca, Sunda and Lombok each year, with nearly all of it continuing on through the South China Sea. Almost a third of the world's crude oil trade, and around half of its liquefied natural gas pass through the sea en route to China, Japan and South Korea.
The South China Sea contains rich fishing grounds that have been customarily exploited by all the coastal states. The area is also thought to contain oil and gas deposits. There are several large sedimentary basins, though estimates of the amount of recoverable oil and gas vary widely.
China, however, claims sovereignty over all the islands, rocks and reefs in the four main groups that lie within the South China Sea, while Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei each claim some of them. Much of the dispute revolves around the U-shaped "Nine Dash Line", which appears on China's official maps and encompasses almost the entire South China Sea.
The Nine Dash Line made its first appearance in official atlases issued in 1948, though the territorial claims on which it rests go back much further. It has been subject to only minor modifications since then. China has included the Nine Dash Line on illustrative maps used in disputes with the other coastal states, and it is now used in passports issued by the People's Republic.
But the exact status of the line remains ambiguous. According to Wu Shicun, President, China Institute of South China Sea Studies, … “The nine-dash line in the South China Sea is a symbol that crystallizes thousands of years of sovereign acts of the Chinese people in the development, management and effective administration of the area, including efforts to defend it against aggression and colonial domination by outside powers. It reflects and represents the common interests of the entire Chinese nation. The entire regime of international law, which is duty bound to regulate and adjust state-to-state relations, should protect rather than undermine this irrefutable historic right of the Chinese people. Asking China to give up its nine-dash line is an obvious violation of the will of the Chinese people. And expecting China to redefine the legal meaning of the line is equally unrealistic.”
The latest edition of the Chinese government’s official atlas designates the line as a national boundary and uses identical shading to the lines on China's land borders. According to one leading Chinese maritime expert, the line indicates the island groups over which China claims sovereignty, rather than laying claim to the sea area itself.
Gao Zhiguo, China's judge on the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, explains that the Nine Dash Line "has become synonymous with a claim of sovereignty over the island groups that always belonged to China and with an additional Chinese claim of historical rights of fishing, navigation, and other maritime activities (including the exploration and exploitation of resources, mineral or otherwise) on the islands and in the adjacent waters".
China and all the states around the shores of the South China Sea have signed the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and are bound by its provisions. The convention, which was opened for signature in 1982 and entered into force in 1994, sets out detailed rules defining territorial seas, navigation rights, exclusive economic zones, the extent of the continental shelf and delimiting maritime boundaries. It also contains a range of binding procedures for settling disputes.
In 2009, Vietnam and Malaysia submitted a joint claim to the continental shelf under UNCLOS. In 2013, the Philippines requested binding arbitration in its territorial dispute with China at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. China has refused to accept arbitration. And maritime confrontations have continued to occur frequently in all the past few years with sometimes alarming regularity, as military and maritime forces of the littorals have vied with each other to wrest physical control over one reef / island or the other.
There are several problems with trying to rely on UNCLOS. First, the dispute settlement provisions of UNCLOS may not apply in this case. On signing the convention, as well as on ratification, and afterwards, countries can opt out of the binding dispute settlement processes relating to certain sea boundary disputes (Article 298). China exercised that opt-out in relation to maritime boundaries in 2006.
More controversially, on ratifying the UNCLOS treaty in 1996, China declared that it "reaffirms its sovereignty over all its archipelagos and islands as listed in article 2 of the Law of the People's Republic of China on the territorial sea and the contiguous zone". UNCLOS deals with issues of maritime law and rights in the seas around the islands. It cannot settle disputes about who owns the islands themselves. Furthermore, unlike the World Trade Organization (WTO) which was established later in 1992, UNCLOS lacks an effective enforcement mechanism.
Under the present geo-strategic realities, it would appear to an observer that China is practicing a nuanced and sophisticated strategy in pushing its maritime and regional aspirations. Given the economic stakes involved, it is unlikely to allow any local situation to spread into widespread conflagration. The present muscle-flexing and the occasionally dramatic naval confrontations are unlikely therefore to lead to any solutions. All parties to the disputes, and also those affected, whether geo-strategically or by way of maritime and economic interests, such as the US and India, need to tone down their rhetoric and reduce their truculence. The only real solution is diplomatic. The coastal states around the South China Sea will have to agree to divide, share or pool their sovereignty in the interests of security and to permit the peaceful exploitation of the resources. There are plenty of examples of such shared resource development, ranging from the Spitsbergen Archipelago in the Arctic to the Neutral Zone between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Indeed, in a parallel but related context, China and Japan have recently agreed to jointly develop the Chunxiao gas field in the East China Sea, which straddles their maritime boundary.
Rear Admiral (retd) Sampath Pillai is a Strategic Affairs Analyst.