By declaring Tuesday that it would soon complete its contentious
program of building artificial islands in the South China Sea, Beijing hopes to
diminish tensions with the United States while reassuring its home audience
that it has delivered on its pledge to resist American military pressure,
experts said.
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Viewed from a plane,
China's construction of an island near Mischief Reef, part of the Spratly
Islands in the South China Sea. CreditPool photo by Ritchie B. Tongo
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Leaders from the United States and China are set to meet
next week in Washington at a major annual conference, the Strategic and
Economic Dialogue. A topic of the talks there is expected to be the Obama
administration’s opposition to China’s building in the
disputed waters, including the construction of a runway capable of handling
military aircraft.
After those talks, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, is scheduled to make
his first visit to Washington as president in September.
“We need to find some way
to let this topic not become so prominent, and China wants to head off the
activity,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin
University and an adviser to the Chinese government. “We have a lot of other
things to do.”
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| A satellite image from March 16 shows work on an emerging artificial island at Mischief Reef, part of the Spratly Islands, in the South China Sea.CreditCenter for Strategic and International Studies, via Digital Globe |
Professor Shi said China wanted the Washington conference to go
smoothly ahead of Mr. Xi’s visit, during which he may be confronted aboutSouth
China Sea expansion,
cybertheft and trade.
In an announcement Tuesday on the
website of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Lu Kang, a spokesman, said that
“relevant” departments in China had decided to go forward as planned with land
reclamation work on some reefs and islands in the Spratly archipelago in the
“coming days.”
He added that the sites in the Spratlys, which the Chinese call
the Nansha Islands, would be used for “military defense needs” as well as
“civilian demands,” including maritime search and rescue efforts, disaster
prevention and mitigation, scientific research, meteorological observation,
navigational safety measures and fishery services.
“After the land reclamation, we will start the building of
facilities to meet relevant functional requirements,” Mr. Lu said. Foreign
analysts say the land reclamation efforts have been taking place at seven sites
in the South China Sea.
“The dredging is almost
finished, but construction of military facilities is not, and I would guess
that the Chinese will accelerate those after the September summit,” said Bonnie
S. Glaser, a senior adviser at the Center for Security and International
Studies in Washington.The United States accuses China of building 2,000 acres
of land on the outcroppings in the last 18 months and of creating a runway at
Fiery Cross Reef long enough to accommodate fighter jets.
At a security forum in Singapore last month, Defense Secretary
Ashton B. Carter called on China to stop construction and warned that
the United States would “fly, sail and operate” in the South China Sea to
ensure freedom of navigation and flight as permitted by international law.
Mr. Carter’s pointed remarks, as well as flights by American
surveillance planes close to Fiery Cross Reef, may have forced the Chinese to
at least slow the pace of military installations on the new islands, a senior
Asian diplomat said. One of the flights carried a CNN crew that recorded and
broadcast the Chinese Navy repeatedly warning the plane to go away.
“The works underway will not stop — too politically damaging to do
this — but whatever other things they may have in mind must now be rethought
very carefully,” said the diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in
order not to offend the Chinese.
The Chinese have rushed to finish the military installations
before the 2016 presidential election in the United States in order to remove
them as a potential issue in the campaign, the diplomat said. The Pentagon’s
reaction forced the Chinese to pause sooner than they had planned, he said.
The Chinese did not want to risk an air or sea confrontation with
the United States in the South China Sea that could potentially rattle the grip
of the Communist Party at home, the diplomat added.
Still, the risks of military clashes between China and the United
States in the South China Sea are unacceptably high, Ms. Glaser said. “There is
a pressing need for a dialogue between the U.S. and China on the application of
the Law of the Sea to the artificial islands and associated maritime rights,”
she added.
The Chinese are sending a specialist maritime lawyer from the
State Oceanic Administration, the state body that has a large voice in China’s
policies in the South China Sea, to the conference in Washington next week, a
sign that the Chinese are prepared for tough discussions, Ms. Glaser said.
One of China’s most outspoken officials on the South China Sea, Wu
Sichun, who heads the influential South
China Sea Institute,
said China had been “forced” to create the artificial islands as a way of
defending itself. That view is popular among the Chinese public.
“China is forced to do the
reclamation,” Mr. Wu said in a recent interview in Beijing. “Because we feel
insecure. If you look into the security situation, the United States enhanced
the defense cooperation with the Philippines, and that could last for 10
years.”
The United States was also involved in strengthening Japan’s new
military rules that allow more robust joint patrols with Japan in the South
China Sea, presenting another challenge to China, he said.
But Mr. Wu also expressed concern about the impact building the
islands could have on relations between China and the United States. It is very
unlikely, he said, that China will declare an air defense “identification zone”
over the South China Sea as it did over the East China Sea in 2013. Such a zone
provides an early warning system to assist a country in detecting incursions
into its sovereign airspace.
Some United States military analysts, however, have said they
believe that China’s militarization of Fiery Cross Reef was aimed at
establishing an air defense zone as soon as possible.
Source: nytimes
