The Chinese spy ship sitting in international waters off the coast of Queensland to monitor the biennial Talisman Sabre war games, involving Australia and the United States, is yet another example of China wishing to exert its global presence, and its intolerance towards any military cooperation that it sees as threatening its endeavour at global dominion.
The Chinese spy vessel, the Tianwangxing, a high-tech Chinese surveillance ship, which is fitted with advanced communications systems, is sitting within Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone but outside its territorial waters. The Talisman Sabre military drills involve armed forces from the US, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, the UK and Canada, besides Australia.
The arrival of the Chinese spy vessel, is a display of China’s increasing aggressiveness towards any cooperation by nations, even if it is noiseless, that threatens its strategic interests. China feels that its current geopolitical stature has actuated these war games. And feels it is imperative for it to make a statement. The statement is, China has arrived as the next superpower, and that those that are not acquiescent are likely to face grave repercussions.
Australia has a right to feel wary of China’s presence, considering that China is predisposed to pressure countries into behaving with respect to its growing dominance. Australia has also made a veiled reference to Beijing’s activities in the South China Sea, stating that Australia “respects the right of all states to exercise freedom of navigation and overflight in international waters and airspace, just as we expect others to respect our right to do the same”. Last year, Australia risked China’s wrath by officially stating that China’s claims in the South China Sea are unlawful.
China, in fact, has made expansive claims on the South China Sea. It claims 90% of the South China Sea as its sovereign territory, but is opposed by south-east Asian countries including Taiwan. The South China Sea is a region of tremendous economic and geostrategic importance. One-third of the world’s maritime shipping passes through it, carrying over US$3 trillion in trade each year. Huge oil and natural gas reserves are believed to lie beneath its seabed. It also contains lucrative fisheries, which are crucial for the food security of millions in South-east Asia.
On 12 July 2016, The Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague dismissed Beijing’s claim to much of the South China Sea. It stated that there was no evidence that China had exercised exclusive control historically over the key waterway.
China has repeatedly said it does not accept the Court ruling and has continued to expand its South China Sea presence over the past five years.
In July 2021, China’s military said it “drove away” a United States warship that it said illegally entered Chinese waters near the disputed Paracel Islands, on the anniversary of the landmark international court ruling that Beijing has no claim over the South China Sea.
China took control of the Paracels, a chain of barren islands about 250 miles (400 kilometres east of Vietnam) and 220 miles (350 kilometres) southeast of Hainan Island, in the 1970s. They are also claimed by Vietnam as well as Taiwan. All three countries require permission or advance notification before any military vessel sails through the area.
But China’s arrant snub of international norms, its neighbours’ fear of invoking its ire, as well as the helplessness of the US in controlling China’s belligerent agenda, has seen China go untrammelled in the South China Sea and elsewhere.
The world is waking up too late to China’s premeditated, covert and efficacious successes in changing the dynamics of the world. Today, in being the factory of the world, in its huge financial resources to buy up stakes in smaller countries, and in its military power to arm-twist other nations, it has reached a point where it can hold the world to ransom, while the West helplessly looks on.
A New World Order is not unwelcome. But a bully and egocentric entity taking charge of the world, is an increasing worry. Smaller nations are succumbing to China’s blitzkreig of investments, and larger nations do not have the wherewithal to offer them viable alternatives. The US’ resounding defeat in Afghanistan, has offered China yet another playground for its burgeoning forceful diplomacy.
At the recent 100-year anniversary of the CPC, Chinese President Xi Jingping warned countries trying to bully China stating: “The Chinese people will never allow foreign forces to bully, oppress or enslave us. Whoever nurses delusions of doing that will crack their heads and spill blood on a Great Wall of steel built from the flesh and blood of 1.4 billion Chinese.” Seldom did he reckon that it was China who is bullying the world in its current state.
What Xi Jingping actually got across was his emphasis of the combative ethic of the CPC and his adumbration of the fate of the adversarial in China’s endgame of ruling the world…
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