Map via IDSA

The CPTPP is the result of negotiations involving 11 countries: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. President Donald Trump issued an order in January 2017 to withdraw the US from the original 12-member TPP. The revised agreement eliminates provisions the US had pushed for, such as intellectual property protection for pharmaceutical companies.

Signing of the CPTPP in Santiago came the same day Trump announced plans to impose tariffs on aluminum and steel imports. Some are asserting Trump's move violates norms established by NAFTA and the World Trade Organizaiton, but the White House is invoking a "national security exemption" to these rules. (EFE, EFE, Jurist, CFR)

Photo: Chile Mejor Sin TPP

The ruling further found that China had violated the Philippines’ sovereign rights in the disputed zone by interfering with fishing and oil exploration, building artificial islands, and failing to prevent Chinese fleets from fishing in the zone. It particularly accused China of improperly restricting Philippine fishing rights at Scarborough Shoal, adding that China had seriously risked collision when its patrol boats physically obstructed Philippine fishing vessels. (The Guardian, Jurist)

The ruling also implicitly dealt a blow to Taiwan’s similar claim to territory within an “11-dash line.” Among the “high-tide features” in the Spratly Islands deemed to be “rocks” and not islands (and therefore not entitled to 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zones) is Taiwan-controlled Taiping Island. Taiwan has also rejected the ruling and said it is not legally binding on the Tapei government.

Taiwan maintains a small military presence on Taiping Island, as well as the nearby Pratas (Dongsha) Islands. Taiwan’s new President Tsai Ing-wen responded to the PCA ruling by dispatching a frigate into the South China Sea, personally reviewing the sailors onboard before it embarked.

The “nine-dash line” runs some 2,000 kilometers from the Chinese mainland to within a few hundred kilometers of the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam. It first appeared on a Chinese map as an “11-dash line” in 1947, as the then-Republic of China (RoC) navy took control of several islands that had been occupied by Japan during World War II.

After the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949 and RoC forces fled to Taiwan, Beijing declared itself the sole ­legitimate sovereign over China and inherited all RoC maritime claims. But two “dashes” were removed in the 1950’s to bypass the Gulf of Tonkin in deference to communist North Vietnam.

Beijing tightened its grip in the northern part of the claimed waters in the 1970’s after it expelled the South Vietnamese navy from the Paracel Islands in a brief but deadly clash. Seven out of about 200 reefs in the Spratly Islands came under Chinese control in the 1980’s and ’90’s, and Scarborough Shoal in 2012. Vietnam continues to control the largest number of islands (or “rocks”) and reefs in the Spratlys, totallng 29.

Other claimants to areas of the disputed waters include Malaysia and Brunei, which have not (yet) voiced objections to the ruling.

Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), a nation has sovereignty over waters ­extending 12 nautical miles from its coast and exclusive control over economic activities 200 nautical miles out. But Beijing maintains it has historical claims to the maritime territory dating well before the 1982 UNCLOS. (The Star, Malaysia, Channel NewsAsia, Singapore, Focus Taiwan)

Editorials in China’s Global Times ahead of the ruling pointed to a US hand behind the case: “Washington has deployed two carrier battle groups around the South China Sea, and it wants to send a signal by flexing its muscles: As the biggest powerhouse in the region, it awaits China’s obedience.” The editorial openly called for China to be prepared for a military confrontation with the US, saying: “it should be able to let the US pay a cost it cannot stand if it intervenes in the South China Sea dispute by force.”

In an unsubtle message, China also conducted military exercises around the Paracel Islands in the days leading up to the ruling. (Reuters, SCMP)

A commentary in China Daily by Zhu Feng, director of the China Center for Collaborative Studies of the South China Sea at Nanjing University, charged that “the Beijing-Manila dispute is being used as a bargaining chip in a strategic contest between the major powers in the Asia-Pacific region.”

We have noted contradictory centrifugal and a centripetal tendencies at work in the Asia-Pacific region (as in the world generally). In the prior, a contest between Washington and Beijing for primacy; in the latter, an interdependency in which the US needs access to cheap Chinese labor, and China needs access to the US market, in order for both to stave off economic collapse—a slightly more civilized version of the Mutually Assured Destruction of the last Cold War. The PCA case, and the alarming sabre-rattling in the South China Sea, are manifestations of the centrifugal tendency.

As a manifestation of the centripetal, not two weeks before the ruling, a Chinese fleet arrived in Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor to participate in the multilateral RIMPAC 2016 naval exercises.  It was the second time China participated in the RIMPAC exercises since their debut in 2014. (China Daily)

It is likely that nobody actually intends to go to war in the South China Sea. But brinkmanship is a dangerous game, and events have a habit of taking on a life of their own. The stakes for world peace (such as it is) are frighteningly high. The imperative of controlling the likely oil resources of the contested waters makes a neither/nor position even more incumbent upon global anti-war forces. We continue to say that the real progressive demand is that all sides stop their dangerous brinkmanship, and that China, the Philippines and all other regional powers leave the Spratly Islands oil-fields alone. Risking world war for the privilege of spewing more carbon into the atmosphere? Really?

Not at all coincidentally, Trong's visit comes as tensions are again rising in the South China Sea. Just as Trong arrived in Washington, China's ambassador to the Philippines, Zhao Jianhua, announced that Beijing will not participate in Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) hearings over disputed islands and shoals that Manila says China has annexed illegally under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. China holds that the PCA lacks jurisdiction, while saying it would be open to bilateral negotiations on the issue. When it convenes this week, the PCA will first consider whether it does have jurisdiction to consider the case. (Jurist) (Note that Manila calls the South China Sea the "West Philippine Sea.")

Tensions have mounted since the Philippines, Vietnam and other claimant nations discovered that China has undertaken massive "island-building" projects in seven reefs and atolls in the disputed archipelago called the Spratlys. Vietnam claims the Spratlys had been under its control since the 17th century, but they were seized by China in World War II when Vietnam was under Vichy-Japanese occupation. After the war, the colonial French drove off the Chinese and re-established control. But Vietnam apparently did little to hold the archipelago subsequently, and China has been in effective control of most of the islands for some 20 years. The situation is further complicated by Manila's claims, yet other claimants (Malaysia, Brunei)—and the de facto "two Chinas" situation. Itu Aba, the biggest island in the Spratlys, is held by Taiwan. (Philippines Inquirer)

Then there's the nearby and also disputed Paracel Islands. China announced last month it has brought the deepwater oil rig Haiyang Shiyou-981 back to waters near this archipelago, which Vietnam calls the Hoang Sa Islands. When the rig was first put in place last year, it sparked a crisis. In May, China withdrew the rig from disputed waters, and things de-escalated. Now it is back. (Thanh Niem, June 26)

Also last month, a Vietnamese fishing crew said they were attacked by a Chinese vessel using water cannon in disputed waters near the Paracel Islands. In a separate incident,  another Vietnamese fishing boat in the same area was surrounded by four Chinese vessels and had its equipment and catch seized, according to Vietnam's state media. (AFP, June 15)

The month before that, the Chinese navy issued warnings eight times as a US surveillance plane swooped over the Spratly Islands. It all seems a little scripted. A CNN crew was conveniently aboard the US P8-A Poseidon spyplane, and (now famously) heard the radio message: "This is the Chinese navy… This is the Chinese navy… Please go away…to avoid misunderstanding." China lodged a diplomatic complaint over the incident, and CNN notes that Beijing's new "White Paper" on military policy calls for taking naval operations to the open seas. CNN also quotes Chinese military spokesman Col. Yang Yujun charging that the overflight was done to "dramatize regional tensions" and to "find an excuse for a certain country to take actions in the future." Very subtle. (CNN, May 27)

Ahead of a June meeting of the Shangri-La Dialogue, aimed at easing US-China tensions, US Defense Secretary Ash Carter singled out Beijing as a source of instability in the region and called for "an immediate and lasting halt" to the island-building. "The United States is deeply concerned about the pace and scope of land reclamation in the South China Sea, the prospect of further militarization as well as the potential for these activities to increase the risk of miscalculation or conflict among claimant states," Carter said. (CNN, June 1) The US has also accused China of moving two large artillery vehicles into one of the artificial islands. (The Guardian, May 29)

Vietnam's current tilt to Washington is certainly an historical irony, but it is a reaction to a resurgent China treating Southeast Asia as a "backyard"—just as Nicaragua tilted to the Soviets in the 1980s in response to the US treating Central America as a backyard. The sabre-rattling on both sides is pathological, and to be opposed. If the CNN report is to be believed, social media users in China are waxing bellicose in support of their government, much as commenters on Fox News are spewing the predictable Sinophobic, jingoistic swill. It would be nice to find some anti-war dssidents in China who oppose their government's expansionism, and loan them some support. Instead, we can trust the stateside Idiot Left to uncritically rally around the Beijing regime, which is utterly unhelpful. We continue to say that the real progressive demand is that all sides stop their dangerous brinkmanship, and that China, Vietnam and the Philippines alike leave the Spratly Islands oilfields alone. Risking world war for the privilege of spewing more carbon into the atmosphere? Really?

No thanks.

For those of us who were rooting for the Aceh rebels before the 2005 peace deal, this is especially painful news. The local autonomy instated by the deal seems to have been usurped by clerical reactionaries—although Aceh merely appears to be emulating Malaysia. Or Brunei, where the sultan's new implementation of extreme sharia measures has sparked celebrity protests in Hollywood over his ownership of a posh Beverly Hills hotel. Celebrity activists are also calling for Brunei to be iced from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. (Politico, May 7) This should give pause to advocates of a "peace-for-sharia" deal in Pakistan and Afghanistan…
 

An Aug. 9 commentary in China Daily portrayed these claims as a recent invention, especially in the case of Vietnam:

For ages, China has explored and tapped the entire aforementioned areas in the South China Sea and successive Chinese governments have ruled over various parts of the islands and waters for more than 10 centuries. It is on this basis that the Chinese government officially reiterated its sovereignty over the islands and waters, along with Dongsha Islands, in the 20th century.

This met with no international objection until a couple of decades ago. The Philippines had limited its westernmost territory east of Huangyan Island, the easternmost island of China's Zhongsha Islands. Till the 1970s, Hanoi agreed repeatedly and officially, in various written and verbal forms, with China on Chinese sovereignty over Nansha and Xisha islands.

It was only after the 1970s and after Vietnam was united that it started to negate its previous statements. Similarly, it was in the past decade that the Philippines started expanding its territorial claim to the Huangyan Island.

There may be disputes on sovereignty over the overlapping waters off the continental shelf between a country or countries ringing the South China Sea. However, there was no dispute between them and China over the islands and islets in the South China Sea until the 1970s.

And indeed there is an irony here. Of course back in the '60s, when Hanoi needed China's aid in the war against the Americans, it wasn't going to make a big deal over claims to the South China Sea. After the war, fear of being reduced to Chinese suzerainty prompted Hanoi to line up with Moscow in the Sino-Soviet split, and such claims became politically permissible. Today, Hanoi's fear of China remains but the reduced Russians are no longer a significant factor in the region—while the US is beefing up its military presence in the Asia-Pacific sphere. So Vietnam is naturally if paradoxically tilting to the US.

Vietnam's old rivalry with Cambodia—which saw what was then called "Democratic Kampuchea" under the Khmer Rouge lining up with Beijing in the Sino-Soviet split, Vietnam invading to oust the Khmer Rouge in 1978, followed by a Chinese punitive invasion of Vietnam—seems to have survived into the post-communist era. From the International Boundaries Research Unit, July 19:

Discussions over territorial claims in the South China Sea were at the forefront of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia last week. The members of the 10-nation bloc intended to develop a diplomatic statement regarding China's claims and presence in the maritime region, however this did not eventuate. While China is not a member of ASEAN, it was reported that other member nations believed China, which was present at the meeting, had placed pressure on Cambodia to block the issuing of the statement. 

India's Institue for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA, linked to New Delhi's Defense Ministry) sees a resource grab as the agenda behind China's move, exploiting terms of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS):

As per Article 121 of UNCLOS which covers island regimes, an island would have to sustain human habitation or economic life in order to have an exclusive economic zone or continental shelf. While the limited land mass of Yongxing may not be able to sustain any such activity, the proximity of rich fishing grounds and potential oil fields would prompt China to stake a claim for the island’s maritime zones as per article 121. These maritime zones also include a territorial sea and contiguous zone. The mathematics are interesting as the land mass of around 13 square kilometres would accord jurisdiction over 2 million square kilometres of waters. This would push the 200 nautical mile limit of China’s EEZ [Exclusive Economic Zone] outwards.

And, of course, disputed hydrocarbon fields are at issue in the dispute now similarly heating up between China and Japan over the East China Sea…