China's SCS Strategy Thread

weig2000

Captain
Here's an article from China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) that discuss many issues related to the ECS and SCS. There's one passage that shows the importance of understanding history and sequence of events without which acceptable resolutions are much harder to achieve. Those that say history isn't important to resolve sovereignty disputes need to rethink their views, because is is paramount in many cases. The moral of the story is Realpolitik was and is practiced by everyone, and nations that can break international laws to pursue their interests will do so. Condemning China for doing what everyone (that can) has done is irrational and/or hypocritical.

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The Regional Maritime Law Enforcement Comparison, from 2015 ONI report on Chinese navy.

qgfTyA1
 

advill

Junior Member
Interesting Chinese Maritime History. I have read Zheng He's 7 interesting Voyages (13th Century: 1404-1433). However, in the historical context, the Indian Sri Vijaya Empire (7-13 Century) spread throughout South & South East Asian Regions thru' sea trade & maritime domination. So history could support that India should have the right & power to rule over these territorial waters, based on 7-13th Century domination of the Sri Vijaya Empire. The pertinent question is: Who should claim the lawful right of "owning these territorial waters" based on history - China or India? My answer is NOT History but as a Major power like China who now use Economic & Military Might, to control 90% of the South China Sea. That is why China did not favour arbitration, as historical claims are not often recognised by UNCLOS - International Law of the Sea rulings. BTW, this is a debate not intended to insulting.
 

Blitzo

Lieutenant General
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That is why China did not favour arbitration, as historical claims are not often recognised by UNCLOS - International Law of the Sea rulings.

Hasn't this been well known for like... years?
 

advill

Junior Member
Blitzo, you are correct & frank. But do you agree with the rest of my post - re: Indian Historical Sri Vijaya Empire before Chinese Adm Zeng He's Voyages? Pl enlighten us on China's historical claims prior to Cheng Kai Shek's govt 9-Dotted lines? Thanks.
 

Yvrch

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Unresolved border problems in East Asia started long time ago in 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty.

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China and the SFPT
On August 16, 1951, the People's Republic of China (PRC) published a statement by Zhou Enlai, Minister of Foreign Affairs, regarding the proposed treaty and conference. The treaty, he stated, violated the United Nations Declaration of January 1, 1942, the Cairo Declaration, the Yalta Agreements, the Potsdam Declaration and Agreement, and the Basic Post-Surrender Policy of the Far Eastern Commission. According to Zhou, "The United Nations Declaration provides that no separate Peace should be made. The Potsdam Agreement states that the Ôpreparatory work of the Peace Settlements' should be undertaken by those States which were signatories to the terms of surrender imposed upon the Enemy State concerned" (Documents on New Zealand External Relations [DNZER], Vol. III, 1985, p. 1092). The PRC, he said, supported the Soviet proposal that all states that participated with their armed forces against Japan should prepare the treaty. Instead, the U.S. had monopolized the task and was now proposing to exclude China when in "the war of resisting and defeating Japanese imperialism, the Chinese people, after a bitter struggle of the longest duration, sustained the heaviest losses and made the greatest contribution" (DNZER, p. 1095).
On the specifics of the proposed treaty, the PRC (1) took particular exception to the clause on reparations for Allied property because it rendered Japan liable for damages only after December 7, 1941, ignoring that China was at war with Japan much earlier; (2) refuted the territorial clauses that gave the U.S. control over Pacific islands and neglected to assign sovereignty for Taiwan and the Pescadores as well as the Kuriles to China and the Soviet Union respectively; (3) underscored the absence of safeguards to limit Japan's armed forces, to prevent the resurgence of militaristic organizations, and to ensure democratic rights; and (4) rejected U.S. predominance over Japan's economy and the exclusion of normal trade relations with the PRC. China, Zhou declared, reserved its right to demand reparations from Japan and would refuse to recognize the treaty.
Three specific points of Zhou's critique deserve close scrutiny. Did the SFPT violate World War II agreements? Did the U.S. monopolize and effectively abuse the treaty process? And did the SFPT not assign sovereignty over Taiwan and other territories? Regarding the SFPT's relationship to World War II agreements, there is substantial evidence to support the PRC claim that the treaty violated them. For example, the Allied Declaration signed in Washington on January 1, 1942, was quite clear: "Each Government pledges itself to cooperate with the Governments signatory hereto and not to make a separate armistice or peace with the enemies." The United States, the Soviet Union and China, although then ruled by the Guomindang (the Nationalist Party that later went into exile on Taiwan), signed this declaration and, furthermore, the United States continued to use the Allied Declaration as its own rationale for inviting, or not, specific countries to the peace conference. The U.S. exclusion of China clearly violated not only the spirit but also the letter of that agreement. There is also further evidence that the U.S. and Britain considered the World War II treaties no longer valid. Regarding the Potsdam agreement, as early as September 1949, Secretary of State Acheson and Foreign Minister Bevin had agreed that "for practical purposes the Potsdam provisions were no longer valid having outlived their usefulness, and that a peace settlement should be concluded at the earliest possible date" (DNZER, p. 291). The U.S. and Britain thus turned their backs on these agreements without consulting the other parties, giving substance to the PRC claim that the SFPT violated World War II agreements.
As to whether the U.S. monopolized and abused the treaty preparations the evidence is also unequivocal. Most historical accounts point to Soviet objections to a 1947 U.S. proposal to initiate peace treaty negotiations within the eleven-member Far Eastern Commission established to supervise the U.S. occupation of Japan as the major stumbling block to an early peace. This account, however, can be misleading, as any review of the materials will show. The Soviets objected to the U.S. proposal that the treaty be drawn up by FEC members with a two-thirds majority necessary to resolve disputes. The Soviet counter-proposal was that the Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) should handle the treaty. The Unites States recognized that "the CFM was constituted on a basis which would have permitted its use for the preparation of a Treaty of Peace with Japan, provided the members of the Council subsequently agreed," but the U.S. did not and instead counter-proposed that the FEC was the most appropriate body (DNZER, p. 206). On November 17, 1947, the Chinese government (still the Guomindang) endorsed the U.S. proposal that a special session of the FEC be convened on a date to be decided by the four Big Powers, but it also suggested that those same powers be accorded a veto in the deliberations. In other words, the Chinese government had come partway in meeting the concerns of the Soviet Union that it retain a veto and that the Big Powers retain some role in the process (DNZER, p. 219). This attempt at compromise reflected the fact that China had signed a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union (the Sino-Soviet Agreement of August 14, 1945) that expressly prohibited the signing of a peace treaty with Japan that excluded either of the signatories. The Soviet Union, unwisely as it turns out, rejected this proposal but so too did the U.S. and, more particularly, the Commonwealth countries (New Zealand, Australia, Canada), which took umbrage at their relegation to middle power status.
But that is not the end of the story. According to New Zealand deputy secretary of external affairs Foss Shanahan, by the fall of 1949 the U.S. State Department had decided that even the FEC was no longer the appropriate body for drawing up a peace treaty. The U.S., he stated, was unwilling to "promote a peace conference in which the United States would have no veto and the British Commonwealth would have the dominant vote, unless the outlines of a settlement had been agreed in advance" (DNZER, p. 292). Indeed, writing to MacArthur in March 1951, Dulles told the General he had been disturbed to read a Reuters news report stating the peace treaty would be considered by the Far Eastern Commission. "Nothing, of course, is farther from my thoughts" (Foreign Relations of the United States [FRUS], 1951, Vol. VI, Part 1, p. 902).
As a result, the U.S. appropriated for itself the preparation of the peace treaty and then cajoled and coerced the others into accepting its proposals with, on a number of minor points, only limited amendments. The denouement came at the peace conference itself, where the U.S. proposed rules of procedure that allowed only for statements by governments and no amendments to the U.S.-British draft treaty. As Dean Acheson himself reflected later, "These were severe rules." Despite objections from Canada and Australia, "we were determined to obtain a result and . . . the only rules the Russians would approve would be of a type that might prevent our doing so" (Acheson, Present at the Creation, [Norton, 1969], p. 543).
 
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Yvrch

Junior Member
Registered Member

Another key question, however, is why the United States wanted to exclude China. On the surface of course the answer is self-evident-- the Communist Party was now in power and U.S. and Chinese troops were fighting each other in Korea. But Britain also had troops in Korea and yet was prepared to invite the PRC to the conference. According to the U.S. administration at the time, it was actually the Soviet Union that was behind the North Korean attack on the south; yet the U.S. permitted the Soviet Union actively to participate in the conference. What was really behind the exclusion of the PRC was that the U.S. military and Republican Party lobby in the United States had embraced the Guomindang as their cause and accused the Truman administration of having abandoned the struggle against communism, thus losing China as a U.S. ally.

Appointed to bring bipartisan support to the peace treaty effort, Dulles was acutely aware of, and supported the pro-Guomindang lobby in the U.S., although he at times distanced himself from some of its more shrill partisans. At the conference itself, Dulles would disingenuously assert that China's absence from the conference was a matter of deep regret. "China suffered the longest and the deepest from Japanese aggression," he stated, but civil war in China and the "attitudes of the Allied governments" prevented China's participation (U.S. Department of State, Conference for the Conclusion and Signature of the Treaty of Peace with Japan, Record of Proceedings, 1951, p. 85). Yet it was Dulles himself who strong-armed the British into dropping their insistence that the PRC be invited (FRUS, 1951, Vol. VI, Part 1, p. 1110). It was not the "Allies" but the U.S. that refused to recognize the PRC (until Nixon and Kissinger opened relations in 1972) and that insisted on signing a separate peace.

Finally, on the issue of territorial sovereignty, Zhou accurately described the U.S. intention of having Japan relinquish sovereignty over Taiwan but not incorporating any new sovereign into the treaty. With the outbreak of the Korean War, the U.S. had sent the Seventh Fleet into the strait between Taiwan and the mainland in order to threaten the PRC. Dulles was in touch with Wellington Koo, the Guomindang's ambassador in Washington, who told him in no uncertain terms that China anticipated reparations from Japan in any peace treaty and, to the astonishment of Dulles, insisted that Formosa should be ceded back to China in the treaty and not be dealt with by the United Nations (FRUS, 1950, Vol. VI, p. 1325). Dulles stated that the U.S. could not agree to this and that the only basis upon which the U.S. had dispatched the Seventh Fleet to Taiwan at the beginning of the Korean War was because it believed the status of Formosa was an international problem to be resolved by the U.N. "Were we to accept the [Nationalist] Chinese point of view our use of the Seventh Fleet would constitute an interference in China's internal problems" (Ibid.). Koo stated that the Chinese government could not change its position but assured Dulles that it would not attempt to embarrass the United States.

Thus both the Guomindang and the PRC insisted that for the purposes of the treaty with Japan, Taiwan should be defined as part and parcel of the rest of China, a position both still maintain to this day. In agreeing not to embarrass the U.S., the Guomindang of course demonstrated its dependency on the U.S. and its willingness to subordinate national interests to its quest to remain in power. The SFPT left in its wake not only a divided China, but also numerous other territorial disputes that the U.S. military is only too pleased to use in justifying its continuing presence in the region.
 

Yvrch

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The San Francisco Peace Treaty and Frontier Problems in the Regional Order in East Asia: A Sixty Year Perspective  サンフランシスコ平和条約と東アジアの地域秩序における境界問題−−60年を経て
Kimie Hara


The San Francisco Peace Treaty and Frontier Problems in the Regional Order in East Asia: A Sixty Year Perspective*


Kimie Hara

Sixty years have passed since the signing and enactment of the San Francisco Peace Treaty.1 This post-World War II settlement with Japan, prepared and signed against the background of the intensifying Cold War, sowed seeds of frontier problems that continue to challenge regional security in East Asia. Taking the “San Francisco System” as its conceptual grounding, this article examines these problems in the context of the post-World War II regional international order and its transformation. In light of their multilateral origins, particularly the unresolved territorial problems involving Japan and its neighbors, the article explores ideas for multilateral settlements that could lead East Asia toward greater regional cooperation and community building.

The San Francisco System and the Cold War Frontiers in East Asia

The emergence of the Cold War was a process in which the character of Soviet-US relations was transformed from cooperation to confrontation. With respect to the international order in East Asia, the Yalta blueprint was transformed into the “San Francisco System.” The US-UK-USSR Yalta Agreement of February 1945 became the basis for the post-World War II order in Europe. Following a series of East-West tensions, notably the communization of Eastern Europe and the division of Germany, the Yalta System was consolidated in Europe, and the status quo received international recognition in the 1975 Helsinki agreement. By the early 1990s, however, the Yalta System had collapsed, accompanied by significant changes such as the democratization of Eastern Europe, the independence of the Baltic states, the reunification of Germany, and the demise of the Soviet Union. Since then, many have viewed “collapse of the Yalta System” as synonymous with the “end of the Cold War.”

The Yalta System, however, was never established as an international order in East Asia. The postwar international order was discussed, and some secret agreements affecting Japan were concluded at Yalta. The terms “Yalta System” and “East Asian Yalta System” are sometimes used to refer to a regional postwar order based on those agreements,2 but it was a “blueprint” that would have taken effect only if such agreements had been implemented. By 1951, when the peace treaty with Japan was signed, the premises of the Yalta agreement in East Asia were in shambles. Under the new circumstances of escalating East-West confrontation that had begun in Europe, postwar East Asia took a profoundly different path from that originally planned.

The San Francisco Peace Treaty is an international agreement that in significant ways shaped the post-World War II international order in East Asia With its associated security arrangements, it laid the foundation for the regional structure of Cold War confrontation: the “San Francisco System,” fully reflected the policy priorities of the peace conference’s host nation, the United States (Hara 1999, 517-518).

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The Signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty

Along with political and military conflicts, significant elements within the Cold War structure in East Asia are regional conflicts among its major players. Confrontation over national boundaries and territorial sovereignty emerged from the disposition of the defeated Axis countries. Whereas Germany was the only divided nation in Europe, several Cold War frontiers emerged to divide nations and peoples in East Asia. The San Francisco Peace Treaty played a critical role in creating or mounting many of these frontier problems. Vast territories, extending from the Kurile Islands to Antarctica and from Micronesia to the Spratlys, were disposed of in the treaty. The treaty, however, specified neither their final devolution nor their precise limits (see the Appendix at the end of this article), thereby sowing the seeds of various “unresolved problems” in the region.

Table 1 shows relations between the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the existing regional conflicts in East Asia, indicating the concerned states in these conflicts. The regional conflicts derived from the postwar territorial dispositions of the former Japanese empire can be classified into three kinds: (1) territorial disputes such as those pertaining to the Northern Territories/Southern Kuriles, Dokdo/Takeshima, Senkaku/Diaoyu, Spratly/Nansha and Paracel/Xisha; (2) divided nations as seen in the Cross-Taiwan Strait problem and the Korean Peninsula;3 and (3) status of territory as seen in the “Okinawa problem.”4 These problems did not necessarily originate solely in the San Francisco Peace Treaty. For example, a secret agreement to transfer the Kuriles and Southern Sakhalin from Japan to the USSR was reached at the Yalta Conference in 1945. However, the problem emerged or received formal expression at San Francisco, since the peace treaty specified neither recipients nor boundaries of these territories. These problems tend to be treated separately or as unrelated. For reasons such as limitations on access to government records and the different ways in which the Cold War and the disputes developed in the region, their important common foundation in the early postwar arrangement has long been forgotten.
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Table 1. The San Francisco Peace Treaty and Regional Conflicts in East Asia

Creating “Unresolved Problems”

Close examination of the Allies’ documents, particularly those of the United States, the main drafter of the peace treaty, reveals key links between the regional Cold War and equivocal wording about designation of territory, and suggests the necessity for a multilateral approach that goes beyond the framework of the current disputant states as a key to understanding the origins, and conceptualizing approaches conducive to future resolution of these problems (Hara 2007).

Prior to the final draft of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which was completed in 1951, six years after the Japanese surrender, several treaty drafts were prepared. Early drafts were, on the whole, based on US wartime studies, and were consistent with the Yalta spirit of inter-Allied cooperation. They were long and detailed, providing clear border demarcations and specifying the names of small islands near the borders of post-war Japan, such as Takeshima, Habomai, and Shikotan, specifically to avoid future territorial conflicts. However, against the background of the intensifying Cold War, particularly with the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, the peace terms with Japan changed in such a way as to reflect new strategic interests of the United States, the main drafter of the treaty. Specifically, Japan and the Philippines, soon to be the most important US allies in East Asia, had to be secured for the non-communist West, whereas the communist states were to be contained.

In this context, drafts of the Japanese peace treaty went through various changes and eventually became simplified. Countries that were intended to receive such islands as Formosa (Taiwan), the Kuriles, and other territories disappeared from the text, leaving various “unresolved problems” among the regional neighbors. The equivocal wording of the peace treaty was the result neither of inadvertence nor error; issues were deliberately left unresolved. It is no coincidence that the territorial disputes derived from the San Francisco Peace Treaty – the Northern Territories/Southern Kuriles, Takeshima/Dokdo, Senkaku/Diaoyu (Okinawa5), Spratly/Nansha, and Paracel/Xisha problems – all line up along the “Acheson Line,” the US Cold War defense line of the western Pacific announced in January 1950.
 

advill

Junior Member
Vyrch, tks for some insightful history. I like history especially when it is un-bias and factual. I sincerely hope common sense will prevail & not shouting matches that will only cause animosity among parties concerned & not solve problems. In the past I taught University business students including bright Chinese: Always negotiate wisely like an "owl", and never underestimate the other party. Worse of all never be an antagonistic "hawk" or a "dove" who is usually bullied.
 

Yvrch

Junior Member
Registered Member
This SCS dispute is not going to go away any time soon. So might as well go further back in time and look for how it was conceived in the beginning. Not surprisingly, you can find tons of literature on SCS from different angles going back to several decades ago.
It's an emotionally charged, highly partisan subject. I love heated debate up to a point, but got tired after seeing people looking for trophy points, like in posts a few pages back, can't remember which thread, where it came to a point a poster said something about scraping the bottom of barrel, haha. And I agreed. But all's good, nothing wrong with letting your steam off a bit once in a while. Cheers.
 

Janiz

Senior Member
Here's an article from China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) that discuss many issues related to the ECS and SCS.
Too bad it's full of lies. Japanese government negotiated the terms with the PRC government and there was no such thing as 'consternation among Chinese leaders' lol. What's more Japanese side paid well to do that and conducted the operation as agreed with Chinese side beforehand.

It's just another not worth much piece which justifies someithing that they don't have to justify in the eyes of public. But it doesn't have too much to do with truth. It's distorted image of powerless PRC (just some 10 years ago! - lol). And China was never powerless in it's history.
 
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