Source:
https://scmp.com/article/1008213/birth-sansha-city-signals-death-diplomacy-south-china-sea-dispute

Birth of Sansha city signals death of diplomacy in South China Sea dispute

Was it Deng Xiaoping who said that possession is nine-tenths of the law? No matter. China is actively applying this simple precept in the South China Sea, a disputed region where it knows that boots on the ground count for a lot more than expressions of ownership voiced at some meeting in a faraway capital.

The establishment by China of Sansha city on Yongxing Island - one of many disputed territories in the South China Sea - drives a bulldozer through the diplomatic and legal niceties about who owns what in one of Asia's most hotly contested areas.

The island is now officially home to a bona fide Chinese prefectural city - albeit an unusually small and isolated one - as well as two military bases. About 1,000 Chinese citizens were already on Yongxing, also known as Woody Island, even before it was granted its new status.

The Vietnamese, who also claim Yongxing, will continue to object vociferously. But common sense suggests that the island is at least nine-tenths China's. Even from the Vietnamese perspective, it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that China has exercised squatter's rights. And we all know that squatters can be very hard to dislodge, especially the ones who genuinely believe they have a right to be there.

Perhaps more provocatively, Beijing has also elevated Sansha as the centre of a new administrative region encompassing the Xisha and Nansha islands and the Zhongsha undersea atoll, also known as the Paracel, Spratly and Macclesfield Bank. That means that Yongxing Island, a speck of land little more than one kilometre across, oversees an expanse of ocean territory the size of Sichuan province - and all the riches it contains.

Materially, these administrative changes will make very little difference, except to the lives of the Chinese troops and officials unlucky enough to be dispatched to this brackish backwater of the Chinese cosmos. Yongxing is just too small and too dependent on outside supplies to become anything more than a symbolic outpost.

But Sansha city is important as a message that proclaims Beijing's lordship over most of the South China Sea. It demonstrates China's determination to extend unilateral control over zones whose ownership is supposedly, according to one of Deng's more famous dictums, a matter that still awaits resolution at the hands of a smarter future generation. It also leaves diplomacy wallowing helplessly among the South China Sea's shallow reefs.

China has exercised commendable restraint in its recent confrontations with the Philippines and Vietnam, sending in unarmed or only lightly armed law enforcement ships, rather than its navy, to assert its claims. But Beijing is signalling now that it doesn't respect the counterclaims of Hanoi or Manila or anyone else. If it did, it wouldn't be setting up cities in these highly sensitive flashpoints.

An amicable solution was supposed to come from Asean, which has been drafting a new code of conduct designed to establish some rules of the road for those contentious parts of the ocean.

In the end, some Association of Southeast Asian Nations members felt greater loyalty towards China than to their Asean associates. It is above all Cambodia, the current Asean chair - and a major recipient of Chinese aid - that has been portrayed as Beijing's Trojan horse in the Southeast Asian castle, obstructing Asean initiatives in order to protect China's interests.

Whether Cambodia really has sabotaged Asean's negotiations at Beijing's behest, something it denies, the situation has certainly developed very much to China's liking. Rather than having to deal with an emboldened, unified Asean under the terms of a robust new code, Beijing is now able to deal one-on-one with the smaller and weaker individual member states, with no effective new code to limit its behaviour.

A robust code might have prohibited the establishment of Sansha, on the grounds that it was a provocative measure on a disputed island. Now, China and the other South China Sea claimants will continue to take measures in the bits of the sea which they control irrespective of the outrage they will undoubtedly cause elsewhere.

Through its actions, China has sacrificed good relations with the Philippines and Vietnam in order to achieve certain domestic goals. It wants the fisheries and the mineral resources the sea has to offer; it also wants to show the general public that it's standing up for Chinese rights abroad.

Hanoi and Manila are, of course, driven by much the same considerations, though they at least were keen on finding a collaborative solution under the auspices of Asean - which, incidentally, is the main casualty in this whole sorry picture. The group, now split into pro- and anti-China camps, may not recover.

Sansha city represents the end of the diplomatic road so far as the South China Sea is concerned. Expect more maritime confrontations, such as this year's lengthy stand-off between China and the Philippines at the Scarborough Shoal. Expect more angry fishermen, more maritime surveillance patrols, more unilateral declarations, and more naval build-ups. Expect, sooner or later, a small war or two.

The establishment of Sansha city was a good day for Chinese nationalism. It was a bad day for the stability of the Asia-Pacific region.

Trefor Moss is an independent journalist based in Hong Kong and former Asia-Pacific editor for Jane's Defence Weekly. Follow him on Twitter @Trefor1