China’s Defection in the South China Sea

Raditio, Klaus Heinrich

doi:10.1007/978-981-13-1283-0_5

China’s Defection in the South China Sea

Klaus Heinrich Raditio²

Chapter
First Online: 26 August 2018

1444 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter contends that the litmus test of being a genuine defensive realist state is China’s South China Sea (SCS) behaviour, in which China has so much at stake. A defensive realist state sends costly signal bearing the political cost. In the context of the SCS, the costly signals are (1) openness to non-military solutions, (2) self-restraint, and (3) reassurance policies.

To answer the above-mentioned questions, China’s behaviour is examined during the history of conflict in the SCS, namely the 1974 Paracel incident, the 1988 Johnson Reef incident, the 1995 Mischief Reef incident, and the 2012 Scarborough Shoal incident. This chapter contends that China defected in the 2012 Scarborough Shoal incident and the massive construction of artificial islands in 2014–2015.

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Notes

1.
Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 126.
2.
Glaser, “The Security Dilemma Revisited,” 171–201.
3.
Robert Jervis, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” Ibid. 30, no. 2 (1978): 167–214.
4.
The most notable scholar in promoting China as a defensive realist state is Tang Shiping. Alongside him are also some scholars, that is, Zhang Yunling and Yves-Heng Lim.
5.
Tang, “From Offensive to Defensive Realism: A Social Evolutionary Interpretation of China’s Security Strategy,” 141–62.
6.
Kydd, Trust and Mistrust in International Relations, 183.
7.
Tang, “From Offensive to Defensive Realism: A Social Evolutionary Interpretation of China’s Security Strategy,” 141–62.
8.
Ibid., 156.
9.
Ibid., 141.
10.
Mearsheimer, “Can China Rise Peacefully?” The National Interest, 25 October 2014.
11.
Kydd, Trust and Mistrust in International Relations, 187.
12.
Ibid., 188.
13.
M. Taylor Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conflict in China’s Territorial Disputes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 314.
14.
For China, resolving disputes through legal mechanism is unfavourable. First, China avoids the situation where it has to comply with external demands against its will. Second, before international law, all countries are seen equal. As a country with a big power mindset, China aspires to be treated as such. Giving concession to the smaller countries demonstrates its “magnanimity.” See Eric Hyer, “The South China Sea Disputes: Implications of China’s Earlier Territorial Settlements,” Pacific Affairs, 68, no. 1 (1995): 34–54.
15.
Austin, China’s Ocean Frontier: International Law, Military Force and National Development, 17, 309–10; Storey, “China’s Bilateral and Multilateral Diplomacy in the South China Sea.”
16.
Andrew Chubb, “The South China Sea: Defining the ‘Status Quo’,” The Diplomat, 11 June 2015, http://thediplomat.com/2015/06/the-south-china-sea-defining-the-status-quo/ (accessed 2 March 2016).
17.
Linda Jakobson, “China’s Unpredictable Maritime Security Actors,” (Lowy Institute for International Policy, 2014), 26–27.
18.
Lijun Sheng, China’s Policy Towards the Spratly Islands in the 1990s (Canberra: Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, 1995), 287, 8–9, 21.
19.
Ibid., 21–22.
20.
Tang, A Theory of Security Strategies for Our Time: Defensive Realism, 31.
21.
Zhang, “China’s Growing Assertiveness in the South China Sea: A Strategic Shift?,” 20–21.
22.
Some of the Paracel Islands were seized by China in 1956, see Mark J. Valencia, China and the South China Sea Disputes (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1995), vol. 298, 32.
23.
King C. Chen, China’s War with Vietnam, 1979: Issues, Decisions, and Implications (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University, 1987), 22–23.
24.
Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conflict in China’s Territorial Disputes, 287.
25.
Robert S. Ross, The Indochina Tangle: China’s Vietnam Policy, 1975–1979 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 8.
26.
Chi-Kin Lo, China’s Policy Towards Territorial Disputes: The Case of the South China Sea Islands, vol. 10, 64 (Routledge, 1989).
27.
刘华清, 刘华清回忆录 (北京: 解放军出版社, 2004) [Liu Huaqing, Liu Huaqings’s Memoir (Beijing: Jiefangjun Chubanshe, 2004)], 341–42.
28.
Garver, “China’s Push Through the South China Sea: The Interaction of Bureaucratic and National Interests,” 999–1028; Lo, China’s Policy Towards Territorial Disputes: The Case of the South China Sea Islands, 10, 68.
29.
Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conflict in China’s Territorial Disputes, 287.
30.
Lo, China’s Policy Towards Territorial Disputes: The Case of the South China Sea Islands, 10, 111.
31.
Ibid., 109.
32.
Austin, China’s Ocean Frontier: International Law, Military Force and National Development, 17, 154–55.
33.
Sheng, China’s Policy Towards the Spratly Islands in the 1990s, no. 287, 8–9.
34.
刘华清, 刘华清回忆录,[Liu Huaqing, Liu Huaqings’s Memoir (Beijing: Jiefangjun Chubanshe, 2004)], 543–35.
35.
Ibid., 494–96.
36.
Xu, Tiemao in Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conflict in China’s Territorial Disputes, 293.
37.
Ibid., 287–88.
38.
Sheng, China’s Policy Towards the Spratly Islands in the 1990s, no. 287, 10.
39.
Ibid.
40.
Ibid., 10–11.
41.
Austin, China’s Ocean Frontier: International Law, Military Force and National Development, 17, 83.
42.
Sheng, China’s Policy Towards the Spratly Islands in the 1990s, no. 287, 26.
43.
Daojiong Zha and Mark J. Valencia, “Mischief Reef: Geopolitics and Implications,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, 31, no. 1 (2001): 86–103.
44.
Emmers, “The De-escalation of the Spratly Dispute in Sino-Southeast Asian Relations.”
45.
Beukel, China and the South China Sea: Two Faces of Power in the Rising China’s Neighborhood Policy, 13.
46.
Ibid., 14.
47.
“NIDS China Security Report 2011.”
48.
Ian Storey, “Can the South China Sea Dispute Be Resolved or Better Managed?” (Strategizing Change in Asia: The 27th Asia-Pacific Roundtable, 2013), 9.
49.
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50.
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51.
Erica Downs, “Business and Politics in the South China Sea: Explaining HYSY 981’s Foray into Disputed Waters,” China Brief, XIV, no. 12 (2014): 6–8.
52.
Andrew S. Erickson, “The South China Sea’s Third Force: Understanding and Countering China’s Maritime Militia,” Testimony Before the House Armed Service Committee Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, 21 September 2016, http://docs.house.gov/meetings/AS/AS28/20160921/105309/HHRG-114-AS28-Wstate-EricksonPhDA-20160921.pdf (accessed 21 November 2016).
53.
Hyer, “The South China Sea Disputes: Implications of China’s Earlier Territorial Settlements,” 34–54.
54.
Carlyle A. Thayer, “No, China Is Not Reclaiming Land in the South China Sea,” The Diplomat, 7 June 2015, http://thediplomat.com/2015/06/no-china-is-not-reclaiming-land-in-the-south-china-sea/ (accessed 10 July 2016).
55.
Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conflict in China’s Territorial Disputes, 316; Bonnie S. Glaser, “Beijing as an Emerging Power in the South China Sea: Statement before the House Foreign Affairs Committee,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, (2012).
56.
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57.
Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conflict in China’s Territorial Disputes, 300; Hyer, “The South China Sea Disputes: Implications of China’s Earlier Territorial Settlements,” 34–54.
58.
“The South China Sea Disputes: Implications of China’s Earlier Territorial Settlements,” 34–54.
59.
Sheldon W. Simon, “ASEAN Regional Forum,” in William M. Carpenter and David G Wiencek (eds.), Asian Security Handbook: An Assessment of Political Security Issues in the Asia Pacific Region (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1996), p. 47 quoted in Emmers, “The De-escalation of the Spratly Dispute in Sino-Southeast Asian Relations,” 131.
60.
Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conflict in China’s Territorial Disputes, 287.
61.
Austin, China’s Ocean Frontier: International Law, Military Force and National Development, 17, 77.
62.
Sheng, China’s Policy Towards the Spratly Islands in the 1990s, no. 287, 15.
63.
Ibid., 11.
64.
Ibid., 12.
65.
Shee Poon Kim, “The South China Sea in China’s Strategic Thinking,” Contemporary Southeast Asia, 19, no. 4 (1998): 369–87.
66.
Ibid.
67.
Ibid., 371.
68.
Ibid., 378–79.
69.
Mearsheimer, “Can China Rise Peacefully?” The National Interest, 25 October 2014.
70.
Glaser, “Beijing as an Emerging Power in the South China Sea: Statement before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.”
71.
John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (W. W. Norton, 2014), 37.
72.
Ibid., 169–233.
73.
Tang, “Fear in International Politics: Two Positions,” 451–71.
74.
Mearsheimer, “Can China Rise Peacefully?” The National Interest, 25 October 2014.
75.
Glaser, “Tensions Flare in the South China Sea.”
76.
Robert Sutter and Chin-hao Huang, “China-Southeast Asia Relations: China’s Toughness on the South China Sea,” Comparative Connections, 15, no. 1 (2013).
77.
Beukel, China and the South China Sea: Two Faces of Power in the Rising China’s Neighborhood Policy, 14.
78.
“NIDS China Security Report 2011.”
79.
Emmers, “The De-escalation of the Spratly Dispute in Sino-Southeast Asian Relations.”
80.
Zhang, “China’s Growing Assertiveness in the South China Sea: A Strategic Shift?,” 19.
81.
Schofield and Storey, The South China Sea Dispute: Increasing Stakes and Rising Tensions, 24.
82.
Emmers, “The De-escalation of the Spratly Dispute in Sino-Southeast Asian Relations,” 135.
83.
Dutton, “Three Disputes and Three Objectives: China and the South China Sea,” 42.
84.
Beukel, China and the South China Sea: Two Faces of Power in the Rising China’s Neighborhood Policy, 13.
85.
Emmers, “The De-escalation of the Spratly Dispute in Sino-Southeast Asian Relations,” 131.
86.
Beukel, China and the South China Sea: Two Faces of Power in the Rising China’s Neighborhood Policy, 13.
87.
Ibid.
88.
Emmers, “The De-escalation of the Spratly Dispute in Sino-Southeast Asian Relations,” 135.
89.
Ibid.
90.
Dutton, “Three Disputes and Three Objectives: China and the South China Sea,” 42.
91.
Ian Storey, “The South China Sea Dispute: How Geopolitics Impedes Dispute Resolution and Conflict Management,” in Global and Regional Powers in a Changing World (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2014), 6.
92.
Kydd, Trust and Mistrust in International Relations, 30.
93.
Ron Huisken, “What’s Really Behind China’s Island Building?” The National Interest, 14 January 2016, http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/whats-really-behind-chinas-island-building-14900 (accessed 2 January 2017).
94.
Katie Hunt, “Showdown in the South China Sea: How Did We Get Here?” CNN, 2 August 2016, http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/28/asia/china-south-china-sea-disputes-explainer/ (accessed 1 January 2017).
95.
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96.
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97.
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University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Klaus Heinrich Raditio

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Raditio, K.H. (2019). China’s Defection in the South China Sea. In: Understanding China’s Behaviour in the South China Sea. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1283-0_5

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1283-0_5
Published: 26 August 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-13-1282-3
Online ISBN: 978-981-13-1283-0
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