Will PRC ever live up to its promises in the South China Sea?

FORUM Staff

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has made numerous assurances and commitments to many nations over the decades about its intentions and conduct in the South China Sea, only to renege on them and repeatedly do the opposite of what it pledged.

Axe-wielding coast guard personnel, reckless blasting of water cannons, continuing artificial island building and increasing militarization of outposts are recent examples of Beijing’s noncompliant and escalatory activities that harm other countries.

In 2002, the PRC agreed to the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, but it has habitually violated many tenets of the pact, which provides a foundation for cooperation and stability in the region.

The declaration contains a commitment not to inhabit “presently uninhabited islands, reefs, shoals, cays and other features.” In the ensuing years, however, the PRC has expanded its outposts on several features of the Spratly Islands and seized the contested Scarborough Shoal in 2012.

Under the declaration, the PRC also promised to “exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities that would complicate or escalate disputes,” and to peacefully resolve disputes with nations that have competing claims to the sea, including Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, in accordance with international law. However, the PRC has intentionally escalated tensions in the South China Sea and flouted international law.

Since Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, the PRC’s false promises and breached commitments have intensified.

In September 2015, Xi pledged that the CCP would not militarize the South China Sea. “China does not intend to pursue militarization” of the Spratly Islands and its outposts would not “target or impact any country,” he said during a visit to the White House in Washington, D.C.

Since then, the CCP has aggressively militarized many of the disputed outposts. The CCP has deployed anti-ship cruise missiles, expanded military radar and signal intelligence capabilities, constructed dozens of fighter jet hangars and built runways suitable for combat aircraft, among other actions, according to United States officials.

The PRC has disparaged an international tribunal’s 2016 ruling under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) that Beijing’s claims to the vital waterway have no legal basis. The PRC’s construction of maritime features, including military outposts, violates the ruling.

The PRC continues to use the militarized outposts to assert control over territorial waters to which it has no lawful claim. It uses them for staging hundreds of maritime militia vessels and coast guard ships that routinely harass civilian craft and block other states’ legitimate law enforcement activities, offshore fishing and hydrocarbon development.

“China wants to change the status quo by force — exhaust the countries to give in to their claims,” Sari Arho Havrén, an associate fellow and expert in China’s foreign relations at the Royal United Services Institute, told Business Insider magazine in June 2024. She said PRC activities such as the June 2024 incident during which Chinese coast guard personnel wielded knives, machetes and a pickax at Philippine Sailors also seek to stoke “the Philippines’ fear of provoking a war if it responds.”

In the 2002 declaration, the PRC also committed to preserving “freedom of navigation in and overflight above the South China Sea as provided for by the universally recognized principles of international law,” including UNCLOS.

Yet Chinese fighter jets have repeatedly, and as recently as mid-August 2024, engaged in what Manila considers provocative actions and dangerous maneuvers over Scarborough Shoal, where the Philippines routinely patrols.

Also that month, the Chinese coast guard intercepted two Philippine Coast Guard cutters near the Spratly feature known as Sabina Shoal, which is within Manila’s internationally recognized exclusive economic zone and about 135 kilometers from the Philippine province of Palawan. The ensuing collision damaged the Philippine vessels and jeopardized their crews’ safety, the U.S. State Department said.

The incident was so egregious that the U.S. immediately reminded Beijing of its defense treaty with the Philippines. “The United States reaffirms that Article IV of the 1951 U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty extends to armed attacks on Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft — including those of its Coast Guard — anywhere in the South China Sea,” the U.S. State Department said.

Moreover, the PRC repeatedly has tried to block the Philippines from resupplying and rotating military personnel stationed aboard the Philippine Navy ship BRP Sierra Madre at Second Thomas Shoal, despite promising not to do so. The shoal is on the Philippines’ continental shelf as clarified under the 2016 tribunal ruling.

To honor the declaration and reduce tensions at Second Thomas Shoal, the PRC should commit not to take possession of the shoal if the Philippines were to withdraw because the intentionally grounded Sierra Madre is degrading, Dr. Christian Schultheiss, a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, wrote in an August 2024 article in The Diplomat magazine.

Under the declaration, the PRC also pledged to adopt a South China Sea code of conduct but has used delay tactics to thwart implementation of an agreement, according to analysts.

The PRC has repeatedly demonstrated in the South China Sea and elsewhere that it is insincere about reaching compromises or abiding by agreements, analysts contend. Beijing feigns negotiation to stall and breaks agreements when it suits its purposes and ambitions, and its recent aggression against the Philippines follows that pattern, analysts assert.