China has warned the US not to turn the South Pacific into a sparring contest between the two superpowers. The South Pacific should not become “a boxing ring” for the US-China rivalry, Xie Feng, vice foreign minister in charge of North American and Oceanian affairs, said on Friday, 10 June 2022.
In fact, China is increasingly disquieted by the prospect of its sphere of influence being whittled down in the entire Indo-Pacific, following an aggressive Indo-Pacific strategy by the US to propitiate the region.
Last month (May 2022), US President Joe Biden hosted leaders of the Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN) in Washington, which was followed by his visit to Tokyo, Japan for the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) meet, and also to Seoul, Korea, and the launch of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), a grouping of 12 Indo-Pacific nations including India, Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand, and a handful of ASEAN nations.
China excoriated the new US strategy by calling it “a new political posturing against China, by establishing an alliance around Washington in the Asia-Pacific region.” China said the US strategy was “concocted by the United States under the banner of ‘freedom and openness’” and Washington was “keen to gang up with ‘small circles’ and change China’s neighbourhood environment.”
About the IPEF, China asked if the framework was “a political tool for the US to maintain regional economic hegemony and deliberately exclude specific countries”. “Is the U.S. politicising, weaponising, and ideologising economic issues and using economic means to coerce regional countries to choose sides between China and the US?” it said, adding that “attempts to create camps, a NATO or Cold War in the Asia-Pacific will not succeed.”
The US has already, in place, two alliances in the Indo-Pacific region – the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) and AUKUS – to counter China’s growing belligerence in the region. The Quad was set up as a strategic dialogue between the United States, India, Japan and Australia, with a shared vision for a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” and a “rules-based maritime order in the East and South China Seas,” which the Quad members state are needed to counter Chinese maritime claims.
On 15 September 2021, AUKUS was launched, as a new three-way strategic defence alliance, between the US, the UK and Australia, initially to build a class of nuclear-propelled submarines, but also to work together in the Indo-Pacific region, where the rise of China is seen as an increasing threat what with its belligerence in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait; and develop wider technologies. The deal marks the first time the US has shared nuclear propulsion technology with an ally apart from the UK.
China claims 90 percent of the South China Sea, territory that is disputed by a few ASEAN nations and Taiwan.
To add to China’s discomposure, Quad members, last month (May 2022), committed $50 billion for sustainable and demand-driven infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific and announced an Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) surveillance initiative to combat illegal fishing by the Chinese.
The IPMDA initiative is a new dimension to the state of vigilance in the Indo-Pacific. The IPMDA will share commercially available satellite data and alert smaller Southeast Asian states if there are territorial intrusions or if ships carry out illicit activity such as illegal fishing, smuggling or piracy in waters within their maritime boundaries.
“This initiative will transform the ability of partners in the Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia, and the Indian Ocean region to fully monitor the waters on their shores and, in turn, to uphold a free and open Indo-Pacific,” a White House statement said.
The Indo-Pacific region has already been seeing “freedom of navigation” patrols by US, Australian, German, French and British naval ships in waters and maritime areas claimed by China.
China has maritime territorial disputes with Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Japan. Chinese vessels frequently stray into contested waters in the East and South China Seas.
Not to be outdone, China organised a whirlwind tour of South Pacific countries to lobby for its influence in the region. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi made a trip to seven South Pacific nations early this month (June 2022), to enlist the support for a broad security and trade deal from 10 South Pacific nations. The region has come into prominence since Beijing signed a controversial security agreement with Solomon Islands in April 2022. China has, so far, exerted its influence in the South Pacific mainly to choke Taiwan’s diplomatic standing in the region. Now, it is aggressively trying to check-mate the US in a contest to be the nonpareil power in the region. And with an eye to counterbalance the US military base in Guam, a US overseas territory in the Pacific.
Now reports have it that the US is planning another military base in the Pacific territory of Tinian, alongside Guam. China is known to be working on several Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles, including the DF-21D and the DF-26. The DF-26 is mainly known as the ‘Guam killer” due to its 3,000-mile (5,000-kilometre) range, sufficient to reach Guam.
This month (June 2022), Chinese and Cambodian officials signed a secret deal for China to set up a naval base at the Ream base in Cambodia, which was earlier an area where the US operated military facilities.
China is increasingly eyeing new military bases in Asia and Africa, while adding to its pre-existing facility in Djibouti. It is reportedly seeking military footholds in Thailand, Myanmar, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Seychelles, Tanzania, and Angola, apart from Cambodia. Beijing has also opened a military outpost in Tajikistan, near the border with Afghanistan, and is reportedly building a port facility with possible military uses in the United Arab Emirates. These bases would facilitate an enormous variety of military capabilities, including naval, air, ground, cyber and space power projection. Such a situation would establish China’s superiority over the US in the new global power struggle. The fact is, China is not only looking for parity, in its neighbourhood, with Western forces; but is stridently looking for global ascendancy.
In March 2022, US Indo-Pacific commander Admiral John C Aquilino voiced concern that China has fully militarised at least three of several islands it built in the disputed South China Sea, arming them with anti-ship and anti-aircraft missile systems, laser and jamming equipment and fighter jets in an increasingly aggressive move that threatens all nations operating nearby.
“Over the past 20 years we’ve witnessed the largest military build-up since World War Two by the PRC,” Aquilino told the Associated Press in an interview. “They have advanced all their capabilities and that build-up of weaponisation is destabilising to the region.”
China has maintained that its actions are purely defensive, aimed at protecting its sovereign rights to its own territory. China has been building military bases on artificial islands in a region also claimed by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.
Chinese obsession with territoriality in the region is evident by the recent (in June 2022) standoff between Chinese warplanes and a Canadian reconnaissance plane monitoring North Korea, that forced the crew of the Canadian plane to alter course quickly to avoid a collision.
Also this month (June 2022), a Chinese fighter plane fired metallic chaff across the course of an Australian surveillance aircraft.
The US Air Force, in turn, deployed its most tech-savvy aircraft, the RC-135U reconnaissance aircraft, to scan China’s southern coastline, just days after Australia and Canada accused PLA fighter jets of conducting dangerous interceptions.
All this is pointing to the heightening militarisation of the Indo-Pacific. For China, that deems itself as a rival to the US in dominating world order, the leverage of its growing military, diplomatic, and economic might, it hopes, will enable it to offset US military influence. The US has around 800 military bases in total across the globe; and China has much catching-up to do in this context. For the US and its Quad and AUKUS allies, containment of China’s growing belligerence and military might in the Indo-Pacific region is a prerogative. Most other nations have a different lens, different priorities…For instance, ASEAN nations would like to maintain a dynamic equipoise in the wake of the US-China rivalry, their territorial disputes with China notwithstanding. And for Pacific island nations, climate change is much too all-encompassing an issue, to be disconcerted about taking sides.
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