Examining Beijing’s aggressive campaign to press illegitimate maritime claims

FORUM Staff

A knife- and axe-wielding attack on Philippine personnel who were resupplying a military outpost marked Beijing’s most aggressive recent power play in the South China Sea. The June 17, 2024, assault in which Chinese personnel injured the resupply crew, slashed its inflatable boats and stole weapons followed a string of increasingly violent confrontations in the region.

The assaults, ubiquitous patrols and creation of artificial islands that support Chinese Communist Party (CCP) military installations are parts of Beijing’s orchestrated plan to control fishing, undersea mining and international shipping lanes in the South China and East China seas and often within other countries’ internationally recognized exclusive economic zones (EEZ). The seas are rich sources of fish, have abundant oil, natural gas and mineral reserves, and provide critical sea lines of communication for commercial and military shipping. The South China Sea alone is a conduit for more than $3 trillion in annual commerce, Reuters reported in July 2024.

In support of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific, like-minded Indo-Pacific nations have responded to Beijing’s aggression with security coalitions. Not only are longtime treaty Allies the Philippines and the United States enhancing cooperation, but groupings such as Australia, Japan and the Philippines are also bolstering defense collaboration.

In 2016, an international tribunal in The Hague rejected the Chinese government’s expansive claim to sovereignty over most of the South China Sea, ruling it has had no legal basis. The ruling also rebuked the CCP’s behavior in the South China Sea, including its construction of artificial islands in the region and in Philippine waters. Beijing, however, has ignored the ruling and persists in its illegal claims.

The CCP’s position is exacerbated by its contention that the self-governed island of Taiwan, which separates the seas, is part of China and must unite with the mainland, by force if necessary. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army repeatedly stages military exercises off Taiwan’s coast while also inundating the island’s citizens with threats and manipulated information.

Meanwhile, Chinese coast guard vessels since early 2023 have harassed Philippine fishermen and rammed, blocked and fired water cannons at vessels delivering food and other supplies to a handful of Soldiers stationed on the Sierra Madre, a Philippine Navy ship intentionally marooned in 1999 on Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly Islands, within the Philippine EEZ. Since an especially violent assault on June 17, 2024, the CCP has reinforced its false claim to the seas’ features with patrols by its maritime militia fleet and its largest coast guard ship, Radio Free Asia reported.

On the Spratly and Paracel archipelagoes in the South China Sea, the CCP has piled dredged sand onto existing features to create islands, built ports, and installed military structures and airstrips. Beijing had 20 outposts in the Paracels and seven in the Spratlys in June 2024, the Council on Foreign Relations, a United States-based think tank, reported. It also claims Scarborough Shoal in the South China and the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.

The CCP’s expansive claims overlap those of Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. When a Chinese oil rig appeared in Vietnam’s EEZ in 2014, it spurred deadly anti-CCP riots in Vietnamese cities, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group reported in 2021. And Beijing reportedly threatened to attack Hanoi outposts in the Spratly Islands in 2017 if Vietnam did not stop drilling on part of its continental shelf that overlaps the CCP’s ill-defined territorial claims, the organization said.

Japanese and Chinese coast guards repeatedly have clashed over the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands, which Beijing calls the Diaoyu Islands. Both nations claim the eight uninhabited islets and rocks.

Indonesia, with a thriving fishery and potentially lucrative oil and gas fields in its EEZ, is monitoring Chinese coast guard vessels that appear in a part of the South China Sea that Indonesians call the North Natuna Sea. Jakarta and Beijing have repeatedly clashed over fishing and mineral rights in Indonesia’s EEZ.

Meanwhile, the long-awaited adoption of a code of conduct for the South China Sea remains on hold. Negotiations began in 2002. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has pushed for such an agreement, but analysts say CCP leaders won’t accept a measure that limits its sweeping territorial claims.