A successful PR still requires a sizeable amount of carrier-borne fixed wing assets to make it "got teeth", as just for show won't pass muster, and PR disaster as a result. In that sense, a non-full strength training wing of assets ain't gonna cut it, a full-strength, combat-worthy carrier air wing with a full CBG surface and underwater assets on training exercises in international waters, now that'd be what I call pass muster.Not regular combat rotation, but demonstration for PR purposes.
... they've already met... CNO Richardson Heading to China
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source:The head of the People’s Liberation Army Navy told his U.S. counterpart that China has no intention of stopping its island building campaign in the South China Sea Spratly Islands, .
In the meeting between Adm. Wu Shengli and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson, state-controlled media reported Wu told Richardson China would complete its push to outfit several artificial islands off the coast of the Philippines despite an international arbitration tribunal ruling last week that invalidated China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea.
“We will never stop our construction on the Nansha Islands [Spratly] halfway… the Nansha Islands are China’s inherent territory, and our necessary construction on the islands is reasonable, justified and lawful,” PLAN’s Wu Shengli told Richardson, as quoted by the Xinhua News Agency on Monday.
“Any attempt to force China to give in through flexing military muscles will only have the opposite effect.”
Wu also said that Beijing would reserve the right to increase defenses in the location, according to state media.
Separate to the meeting, the deputy chief if the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission warned continued freedom of navigation operation by foreign navies in the South China Sea near Chinese holdings could be dangerous.
“This kind of military freedom of navigation is damaging to freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, and it could even play out in a disastrous way,” Adm. Sun Jianguo .
The U.S. has conducted three freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, each time drawing the ire of Beijing.
Aside from the declaration of Beijing’s position on the ongoing island campaign, Wu said continued South China Sea security cooperation between the U.S. and China is, “the only correct option.”
Wu and Richardson discussed maritime issues for about three and a half hours.
“I thought the discussions were very open and broad in scope and very honest. We really covered the entire spectrum of our relationship – from those areas where our cooperation and collaboration is doing very well, such as participation in RIMPAC, areas such as port visits, areas such as use of the CUES arrangement to regulate our encounters at sea and keep them safe and professional,” Richardson said in an audio statement distributed by the Navy.
“We highlighted how useful and beneficial those areas but on the other hand we didn’t dodge the more contentious issues, the more solemn issues as the Chinese would say regarding disposition in the South China Sea, the recent court of arbitration ruling and those issues as well, recognizing that it’s only through being completely frank and honest that we’re going to make any kind of progress on these areas. Both of us recognize it’s an extremely important relationship and the that the navy to navy part of that relationship bears a great responsibility to make sure that we get to our mutual benefit.”
Following his visit in Beijing, Richardson is scheduled to visit China’s North Sea Fleet for a visit the Chinese Navy’s submarine academy and tour the aircraft carrier Liaoning (CV-16).
Last week the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled overwhelmingly in favor of the Philippines in its case against China’s South China Sea (SCS) claims. The nearly 500 page ruling undercut Beijing’s claims to control all the land features and water inside China’s nine-dash line and concluded that the disputed land features are either rocks that generate small (12 nautical miles) territorial seas or low-tide elevations that convey no exclusive rights to exploit resources. Although the ruling—and much of the surrounding analysis—has necessarily placed considerable emphasis on sovereignty disputes in the SCS, less attention has been given to the underlying incentives that drive claimant positions and behaviors.
Given its power and recent assertiveness in the South China Sea, China’s interests deserve special attention. Aside from enlarging China’s security perimeter, China’s regional interests can be roughly lumped into three “P”s—politics, petroleum, and proteins (fish). The last of these interests, competition over dwindling SCS fisheries, may be most consequential in driving competition, but has not received sufficient analytic attention.
Although the SCS covers only 2.5 percent of the Earth’s surface, it is home to some of the world’s richest reef systems and over 3,000 indigenous and migratory fish species, comprising some 12 percent of the total global fish catch. Unfortunately, the region’s fisheries are in serious jeopardy. As of 2008, virtually all are collapsed (roughly 25 percent), over-exploited (roughly 25 percent), or fully-exploited (roughly 50 percent). The situation is only worsening.
The most important aspect of the Spratly Island disputes is not oil or sovereignty—it is whether or not SCS fish continue to appear on Asia’s menus. Four trends in particular are important: sustainability, economic importance, rising demand, and declining access.
The First Trend: Sustainability
Three indicators reveal the extent of SCS fishery degradation. First, catches have remained an unsustainable 10-12 million tons per year for decades— when Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing is incorporated. Steady catches mask a serious problem: catches increasingly consist of smaller species whose populations have boomed as natural predators have been overfished—a phenomenon commonly referred to as “fishing down the food web.”
Secondly, fishermen Catch Per Unit Effort (CPUE) over the last several decades as fishermen are forced to spend more time and fuel to bring in the same amount of fish from shrinking fisheries. Destructive practices, including the use of coral-damaging bottom trawlers, muro-ami nets, or even dynamite and cyanide are often employed to squeeze more from dwindling fisheries.
Third, critical habitats are disappearing. A of maritime studies found that in just the last 10-15 years, SCS coral coverage rates in disputed regions have declined from over 60 percent to just 20 percent. Reefs along China’s coastline are in even worse shape, and have declined over 80 percent in the last several decades.
The Second Trend: Economic Importance
The fishing industry continues to be critical to China’s economy. Fishing revenues make up about 3 percent of China’s GDP and (1.732 trillion RMB) annually. Perhaps more importantly, China employs between 7 and 9 million fishermen (over 14 million industry-wide) who operate (nearly 200,000 are ocean-going vessels) comprising the largest fleet on Earth. Many of these workers have little option for alternative employment.
The Third Trend: Rising Demand
Fish is increasingly important to the Chinese diet. China’s fish consumption grew annually at 6 percent between 1990 and 2010, and China consumes 34 percent of the global fish food supply, nearly triple that of Europe and Central Asia combined, and over five times the amount of North America. Furthermore, estimates China’s fish consumption will increase 30 percent to over 41 kilograms per capita by 2030, more than double the projected global average. Although aquaculture accounts for the majority of China’s fish production (73.6 percent), growing demand threatens to outstrip supply, necessitating ongoing expansion of maritime fishing operations—the vast majority of which (78 percent) occur in Chinese-claimed waters, including the South China Sea.
The Fourth Trend: Declining Access
China perceives its access to disputed fisheries as declining. Three categories of grievances are commonly cited. First, China’s fishing bans and sustainability efforts are commonly ignored by foreigners, leading to complaints that Chinese restrictions allow foreigners free access to fish without Chinese competition. In , Vietnamese fishermen reportedly caught 110,000 tons of SCS tuna compared to China’s 300 tons; a data point that seemingly confirmed fears that regulations undercut China’s potential profits.
Second, foreign fishermen are “killing the chicken to harvest its eggs” (杀鸡取卵) through overfishing or using destructive practices. Some of this is understandable—while China has made gains in domestic regulation, the millions of “small-boat” fishermen employed by the region’s developing economies pose a serious challenge to governance and sustainability.
Third, Chinese fishermen widely complain of foreign harassment. that between 1989 and 2011 there were over 360 cases of attacks, robberies, detainments, or shootings, with 25 Chinese fishermen killed or missing. Fear of interference has reportedly deterred Chinese fishermen from venturing into some disputed fisheries—although China historically issues around 500 Spratly Island fishing permits, far less fishermen reportedly travel to the region (prior to 2013) due to concerns over interference.
Actions and Reactions in the “South Sea”
Endangered fisheries pose a serious dilemma as claimants seek to promote sustainable governance that would maintain fish stocks over the long term without incurring economic loss or conceding ground on sovereignty disputes. The efforts of different Chinese actors to lay claim to political narratives within conflicting policy objectives (sustainability versus exclusive-access, in this case) produce policy outcomes that are often erratic, contradictory, or even self-defeating.
At the regional level, decentralized and often contradictory policies driven by domestic interest groups can undermine potential international solutions to shared problems. The lack of effective international governance is at the heart of SCS sustainability problems. The SCS lacks the multilateral Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMO) that successfully manage fisheries elsewhere. And unlike the East China Sea and Yellow Sea, there are no bilateral or multilateral fishing agreements in the SCS. Furthermore, because the region’s EEZs remain hotly contested, UNCLOS fails to provide adequate governance. China has already dismissed the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s ruling on SCS EEZ disputes as invalid, and absent Beijing’s cooperation, disagreements over regional boundaries will likely persist well into the future.
One of two courses of action seems necessary: claimants must either agree to binding, multilateral action to govern contested areas or one country must provide undisputed oversight over fishery stocks.
Few regional states possess the power necessary to attempt the latter course of action. China is the exception. China’s numerous efforts at regional governance include ongoing seasonal SCS fishing bans (1999); the administrative upgrade of Sansha city from a county to a prefecture-level city (2012); the complete overhaul of China’s maritime bureaucracies into a new China State Oceanic Administration (2013); Hainan province’s law requiring foreign fishermen to seek State Council approval prior to entering Chinese-claimed SCS waters (2013); and most recently, China’s massive island-building projects in the Spratly Islands (2013-2015).
China’s sustainability efforts are undermined by overriding incentives to retain full, if not necessarily exclusive, access to disputed fisheries to provide employment and food security. Since 2007, China has paid out billions in fuel subsidies to compensate for the industry’s unprofitability (as reflected by declining CPUE values). Although subsidies keep the industry afloat—and some 14 million industry workers employed— of undermining sustainability efforts by skewing market forces to allow fishermen to keep squeezing over-exploited fisheries.
Additionally, China’s domestic sovereignty narratives further complicate efforts. Decades of commitment to the nine-dash line as a sovereignty demarcation has produced a great deal of political inertia that can be leveraged by Chinese groups for their own interest. Supporters of the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), for example, that government-subsidized oil exploration in disputed SCS regions should be used to demonstrate sovereignty—an argument oft-recycled along the spectrum of would-be SCS actors.
Separating Sovereignty From Sustainability
Fishing is equally important to other SCS claimants. The Philippines employ some 1.5 million traditional fishermen and the industry accounts for 2.7 percent of national GDP, with three-fourths of the total fishing production from the SCS. Fish comprises some 35.3 percent of all animal proteins consumed in Vietnam and in the Philippines and Indonesia that number is even higher—42.6 percent and 57.3 percent respectively. As one, retaining access to fisheries in the face of Chinese advances is not just a matter of economics, but of “starvation.”
Given the importance of fish to the region, unilateral Chinese actions are unlikely to produce a stable andsustainable status quo, especially given increasingly negative reactions to Chinese assertive SCS policies by claimant states and major regional powers. Multilateral governance is needed. Whereas RFMOs typically provide such governance, a new SCS Fishery Management Organization (SCSFMO) may be problematic for several reasons. For one, RFMO’s are founded on UNCLOS provisions, which have become a proxy battleground for sovereignty issues. China’s rejection of the UNCLOS tribunal’s arbitration ruling makes an UNCLOS-based solution harder for Beijing to accept. Moreover, RFMOs that manage fish stocks—as opposed to migratory species—only operate in waters outside of countries’ 200 nautical mile EEZs. Were The Hague’s ruling universally accepted, organizing a SCSFMO would be fairly straightforward; countries would individually manage their own EEZs and jointly manage the remaining international seas. Because some 65 percent of the SCS Large Marine Ecosystem (LME) is disputed however, an effective SCSFMO would need to transcend disputed maritime boundaries to provide effective governance.
A Way Forward
If dwindling fisheries are significant drivers of regional competition, there may be a silver lining that gives some grounds for optimism. Fish are much more tangible objects of negotiation than sovereignty or historical ownership claims. Claimant states, and China in particular, must work to resolve the tensions between pursuing maritime sustainability and retaining unlimited access. Durable regional solutions must begin with domestic approaches that work to sustainably supply China’s fish food demand and provide employment alternatives to millions of over-subsidized Chinese fishermen. Allowing domestic groups to leverage sovereignty narratives to advance their individual interest impedes constructive regional solutions and works against China’s broader national interests.
Sovereignty and sustainability need to be separated in the South China Sea. Claimants might explore multilateral options under UNCLOS Section 197, which mandates that regions “shall” cooperate as required to formulate and elaborate “international rules, standards, and recommended practices and procedures… for the protection and preservation of the marine environment, taking into account characteristic regional features.” Such regional cooperation is urgent and necessary, even when the “characteristic regional features” include intractable sovereignty disputes. Deng Xiaoping’s 1979 proposal to shelve sovereignty disputes and pursue joint development of resources might provide a political basis for Beijing to pursue this approach—especially if it is framed as the necessary condition for continued Chinese access to sustainable fisheries in the SCS that can help meet future demand.
Ultimately, the region’s current free-for-all approach to resource management is ineffective at best and disastrous at worst. The latter scenario appears more likely. If, however, claimants can set aside intractable border disputes to negotiate inclusive fishery management, SCS fish will remain on menus for generations to come. Just as importantly, the intensity of sovereignty disputes may ease if claimants can disarm some of the underlying tension stemming from fishery mismanagement. An important part of Asia’s dinner plate—not to mention regional harmony—is at stake.
After much anticipation and speculation from the chattering classes, the Hague Permanent Court of Arbitration has issued its award in the South China Sea arbitration case Philippines v. the PRC. The Tribunal’s decision concurred with Philippines on virtually every question that it considered within its jurisdiction, systematically rejecting China’s claims and censuring its behavior. The Tribunal’s decision will be analyzed without end, but its five principal rulings are clear. First, the so-called “nine-dash line” does not grant China any historic rights to resources in the South China Sea. Second, according to the Tribunal, none of the land features in the Spratly Islands are in fact islands: a handful are rocks, which generate twelve-mile territorial seas, but no feature generates an exclusive economic zone. Third, China has violated the Philippines’ rights in its exclusive economic zone by constructing artificial islands and allowing Chinese fishermen to fish in the Philippines’ waters. Fourth, China has unlawfully harmed the region’s reefs and ecosystem. And finally, China’s land-reclamation during the course of the dispute constituted tampering with evidence.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry, which has never acknowledged the Tribunal’s jurisdiction in the matter, responded simply: “The award is null and void and has no binding force.” Other commentators have observed, “No permanent member of the UN Security Council has ever complied with a ruling by the PCA on an issue involving the Law of the Sea.” China’s rejection of the decision is not something uniquely Chinese but standard great-power behavior. Still others point out that America’s position—which enjoins Chinese acceptance of the decision—is contradictory not simply because the U.S. has not signed UNCLOS, nor even because it has never submitted itself to the jurisdiction of an international court in a matter it deems a vital interest, but because its defense of the “rules-based order” is selective: the U.S. challenges “excessive maritime claims,” except when it doesn’t.
It is true that in refusing to recognize the Tribunal’s jurisdiction China has acted no differently than other great powers. It is also true that the U.S. is in no position to criticize China’s decision as it is itself unwilling to submit to the authority of the Hague Tribunal in maritime matters. And it is furthermore true that the U.S. has politicized the issue by opposing, with the garb of legality, Chinese actions that are in fact perfectly legal—e.g., declaring a ADIZ in the East China Sea or reclaiming land in the South China Sea.
But this does not matter.
What matters is the belief that there is something called a “rules-based order” and that the U.S. is the Sheriff that enforces this order, while its allies are the posse that back its enforcement activities. Since the 1990s, the U.S. has been wary of China’s rise and eager to maintain the military primacy that protects its order. Since 2010, when Hillary Clinton injected the U.S. into the South China Sea dispute, and thereafter as the “pivot to Asia” was implemented, America’s opposition to China’s rise has intensified as China was increasingly seen as violating “Asia’s widely-supported and time-tested, rules-based operating system.” The decision of the Hague Tribunal codifies this perception and confirms the belief of the U.S. elite that a newly powerful China is unashamedly violating international law and norms.
China’s rejection of the Tribunal’s decision, and presumably its continuation of land-reclamation and other activities in the South China Sea, will now become evidence that China is rejecting Asia’s “operating system” and seeking to overturn the region’s order, which “elevates principle over strength, consent over coercion, and the global commons over protected spheres.” China will increasingly be seen by America and its allies as a “rogue” state that needs to be put in its place. American foreign policy gurus have already been outlining how the U.S. should respond: reduce economic cooperation, strengthen China’s neighbors, and boost American military spending and deployments in the region. Advocates of this grand strategic paradigm (“balancing”) do not yet entirely control U.S. foreign policy. But herein lays the danger of the Hague ruling: it may becomes a cause célèbre that is used as a sort of “red line” for the U.S. as it works to enforce the Tribunal’s decision through propaganda, pressure on China, and revived regional alliances.
What does this mean practically? How the Philippines will respond under its new President Rodrigo Duterte is admittedly an open question. He has shown signs of being a pragmatic leader willing to make a mutually beneficial deal with China and does not seem to have the anti-China persona of his predecessor. Let us then suggest two scenarios.
If Duterte does make a deal with China—perhaps along lines he has previously suggested—then the decision of the Tribunal will have become irrelevant: the maritime dispute will have been solved through diplomacy rather than law, and the new de facto arrangement will have replaced the de jure ruling of the Tribunal. A China eager to sweep the Tribunal’s findings under the rug would also be eager to negotiate and would therefore ensure any agreement was sweet for the Philippines. Duterte, meanwhile, can plausibly claim that the Hague arbitration wasn’t his idea and commit, going forward, to working with the PRC to resolve differences.
In contrast, if the Philippines insists on the substitution of law for diplomacy, that is to say the full implementation of the Tribunal’s award, then China will be forced to react assertively to demonstrate its great power status. No rising great power—certainly not the U.S. in its day—could meekly accept such condemnation. To do so would engage domestic nationalists, yes, but more importantly would signify impotence in the face of international pressure. Meek acceptance would also permit the establishment of a precedent whereby any neighboring state could litigate against China to assert its own interests. Chinese power would hence come to mean nothing, for in the law all states are equal. This notion of sovereign equality is accepted by no great power: that is why, for instance, the U.S. historically “intervened” frequently in Central America and continues to meddle at its pleasure—e.g., Libya—today.
A forceful Chinese response could include a declaration of an ADIZ in the South China Sea or the occupation of Scarborough Shoal, and even building on it. The U.S. Defense Department is widely speculated to have come up with planned responses to such a Chinese reaction. Likely this would involve lots of anti-Chinese rhetoric, more naval patrols, “freedom of navigation operations,” and perhaps new defense cooperation with the Philippines. In the long run, a much more disturbing outcome is probable: a new agreement between the Philippines and the U.S. to permanently station U.S. naval forces—perhaps a whole aircraft carrier fleet—at the old U.S. base at Subic Bay. Already 6000 U.S. Navy personnel are rotating through annually and aircraft carriers are docking there. Intense U.S. positioning and use of Subic Bay would indicate that America is committed to challenging China in the South China Sea. This challenge would become the propeller of the U.S.-China relationship, and the direction of propulsion would be towards conflict. Crises would follow, as would trade restrictions and the end of global cooperation. If we were unlucky, a naval spat could turn into a war.
All this because of some Hague Arbitral decision? Not precisely. All this because of a paradigm shift towards containment, a shift facilitated by the legalism of American foreign policy elites—the same legalism decried by E.H. Carr and George Kennan half a century ago. Contemporary historical consciousness has been blind to America’s own past, and, regardless, judges all Chinese actions by a presentist standard that would make the most Whiggish historian blush. When the U.S. was at China’s stage of development, it was busy conquering Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines and enforcing its own mare nostrum in the Caribbean. It had long already stolen half of Mexico. Why the territorial acquisitions of 1898, asked Kennan? “The American people of that day, or at least many of their more influential spokesmen, simply liked the smell of empire and felt an urge to range themselves among the colonial powers of the time, to see our flag flying on distant tropical isles, to feel the thrill of foreign adventure and authority, to bask in the sunshine of recognition as one of the great imperial powers of the world.”
China, in contrast, is pursuing a set of territorial claims that originated not with the PRC but the ROC. The claims are not new, and by and large China has pursued them peacefully. Nor is China looking for a colonial empire. Nonetheless, China is condemned because it is tried by a standard—indeed, a standard of civilization—that requires new great powers to act in precisely the same manner as small powers. This is utopian and dangerous, but it is just this that is codified in the Tribunal’s decision. International politics is not and should not be conducted according to the diktat of the mighty—this is one of the great lessons of Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War. But neither can the realities of power be wished away, replaced by legal rulings, or stricken by a principle of equality. Any such attempt is likely to actually break the international community that the law intended to sustain. Carr put it this way: “There must be a clear recognition of that play of political forces which is antecedent to all law. Only when these forces are in stable equilibrium can the law perform its social function without becoming a tool in the hands of the defenders of the status quo. The achievement of this equilibrium is not a legal, but a political task.”
The Hague Tribunal this week issued a decision that will most likely become a tool in the hands of the defenders of the status quo. How events will develop will depend on Duterte’s disposition, China’s diplomatic sagacity, and America’s response. If the China and the Philippines are unable to meet somewhere in the middle, it is the “law” that China will reject. Already there is talk of China withdrawing from UNCLOS. This “law,” admittedly, has not been followed by any previous rising power. But because it today represents the whole package of contemporary norms, it is likely to serve as a test case for American elites in determining whether China is a revisionist power. By substituting law for politics, the U.S. and its posse have forced China into a position where it must choose between its national prestige and status as a great power and its commitment to act according to accepted norms. It’s no mystery China will act as all great powers act and choose the former. The tragedy of the situation is that this will be interpreted as a general rejection of the status quo and will lead to intensified conflict. But the truth of the matter is not that China will have been tested and found wanting; it is that China will not have been tested fairly at all.
Continued from last past-
But the truth of the matter is not that China will have been tested and found wanting; it is that China will not have been tested fairly at all.
Correct, and it's because the so-called "rules-based order" has nothing to do with right-wrong, justice, or fairness, and everything to do with great power geopolitics and naked national interests. But, lest we forget, all nations place their interests above others, so there's nothing special, unusual, or unique about it, and it'd be a mistake to blame US any more or less than blaming China, or any other country, for doing the same things.The 'rule based order' sheriff and posse doesn't care about fairness.
Friday at 6:04 PM
... they've already met
and PLAN’s Wu to CNO Richardson: Beijing Won’t Stop South China Sea Island Building
