China is demonstrating “growing aggressiveness” through repeated close encounters with US military aircraft and vessels, the White House said on Monday.
A Chinese warship crossed 137m in front of a US destroyer in the Taiwan Strait on Saturday, and a Chinese jet crossed the path of a US reconnaissance plane as it was flying through international airspace on May 26.
“The concern with these unsafe and unprofessional intercepts ... [is that] they can lead to misunderstandings, they can lead to miscalculations,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.
Although China appeared to be expressing its displeasure with the US for sailing through the Indo-Pacific region, the US has “real needs there and we’re going to stay there,” Kirby said.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Wang Wenbin (汪文斌) confirmed Kirby’s assumption at a news conference in Beijing on Tuesday when he accused the US of “sending warships halfway around the world to China’s doorstep in a provocative way.”
While China’s discontent over having US warships sail so close to its shores might be understandable, there are a few important points that Beijing must bear in mind:
First, the US is not sailing “halfway around the world” to conduct these passages. It has military installations in Japan and South Korea as part of commitments that date back to the immediate post-World War II period and the Korean War. The US also has bases in Guam, and a defense cooperation agreement with Manila that allows it access to Philippine bases. Those commitments mean the US military already has a significant presence in the Indo-Pacific region and China cannot unilaterally change that, no matter how much of a fit it throws.
Second, the US is understandably concerned about the free passage of cargo vessels through international waters in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. That free passage is crucial to the normal functioning of the global economy and is a concern of all nations around the world. Given the outsized role that it plays in the global economy, China should work with other countries to protect freedom of navigation, instead of obstructing it. It should not harbor any illusions about controlling sea and air traffic in the Indo-Pacific, as any attempts to do so would put it at odds with a growing alliance of nations that would cooperate to defend their interests against Chinese hegemony.
Third, the close intercepts by China occurred in international waters — more than 12 nautical miles (22km) from a country’s shore — and regardless of whether Bejing recognizes those international waters, every other country with interests in the region does.
Perhaps China has forgotten the lessons of World War II: Things did not end well for the aggressors, and they would not end well for China either if it attempts to impose itself on other countries. The US and other like-minded nations are trying to avoid a large-scale conflict with China, but the way to do that cannot, and will not, be to simply accept Chinese aggression and suppression of others’ interests.
Beijing’s approach has been to engage others through “gray-zone” tactics and to continuously push the envelope to see how much more it can get away with. The response to this must be to establish clear boundaries and to strictly enforce them. For example, countries navigating the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait should make it clear that any encroachment to within an unsafe distance of another country’s aircraft or vessel by a Chinese aircraft, vessel or other object would be interpreted as an act of war, and that the encroaching object would be fired upon.
Only through a coordinated and unambiguous response from the international community would China get the message that its aggressions will not be tolerated.
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