Xi Jinping's "True Maritime Power" and ESCS Issues

Xi Jinping's conception of “true maritime power” is intertwined with a set of complex issues: internal factors concerning the legitimacy of Xi's regime and external factors such as territorial disputes in the East China Sea and the South China Sea (ESCSs) which concern sovereignty. The nations of the region must consider the implications of China's approach and its impact on the region: Is it possible to influence China by standing together? 2. Xi Jinping's remarks suggest that he is more committed to a long-term maritime strategy than his predecessors. He is basically attempting to restore the Middle-Kingdom regional order through four thrusts: firstly, establishing new high-profile organizations dealing with maritime policy and strategy, especially the States Security Committee; secondly, upgrading naval capabilities to counter the US pivot to Asia and back up its civil maritime law enforcement; thirdly, reframing ESCS issues away from prevailing international law and toward China's rights as derived from historical precedence; and fourthly, demonstrating China's ostensible goodwill through participation in international forums and multilateral exercises in the region. 3. Xi Jinping can afford to be patient. Certainly, the maritime policies currently pursued by China are intended as a warning, especially to the USA, deterring it from intervening in Chinese affairs in any part of the ESCSs, and Xi expects US influence in the region to continue to weaken. Current Chinese policy is readily understood as a Chinese version of the Monroe Doctrine, which the USA declared in 1823 to deter the great European powers from interfering in the seas construed by the USA as its natural sphere of influence. China is implicitly challenging the collective defense posture encouraged by Washington, the self-appointed guardian of the Indo-Pacific region, and it is easy to sympathize with the concerns of China's weak and vulnerable neighbours, who have bitter memories of living as nations tributary to the Middle Kingdom, when all of the surrounding seas served as a medium for China to exercise its overwhelming power and influence, and spread its attitudes and values. Xi will not be satisfied until this system has been recreated around modern-day China. Despite being very vocal in defense of China's core national interests, however, he has yet to issue any detailed doctrine concerning how China's maritime forces should interact with, and, by implication, ultimately protect, its neighbours. 4. Xi Jinping seems determined to establish China as a true maritime power through an incremental strategy. Following the lessons learned from the historical advances of Western colonial powers, China will gradually become more and more assertive across a wider and wider maritime area, while, crucially, avoiding any serious reaction from the USA, until the Chinese position in the ESCSs is beyond challenge. Those nations, which cherish above all their ability to act independently, will feel the greatest impact, and any nation that should attempt to obstruct Xi's salami-slicing tactics will quickly feel the consequences of China's displeasure. The nations of the region must understand the real purpose underlying Xi's maritime power policy, which is nothing less than the restoration of China's traditional maritime order. 5. Recent examples of China's incremental approach include: declaring an Air Defense Identification Zone over the East China Sea in November 2013; enforcing new fishing regulations, in January 2014, which oblige all foreign fishing vessels to apply for permission before entering a vast swath of the South China Sea (SCS), including areas contested by Vietnam and the Philippines; and unilaterally moving an oil rig into Vietnam's Exclusive Economic Zone in the SCS on 1 May 2014. 6. Time and circumstances are on Xi Jinping's side. The war-weary USA is unwilling to chance any serious maritime confrontation with China. Although the US military is attempting to re-balance its naval powers to the Asia-Pacific, after financial sequestration, it lacks the resources to do this quickly or effectively. Moreover, US forces are still engaged in other regions such as the chaotic Middle East, and made lately acquired new commitments in Europe to check Russia's westward advance through Ukraine. China, meanwhile, can take the long view and lean on its rivals in the ESCS disputes as opportunity allows, slicing the maritime salami whenever it becomes possible. In this situation, where the struggle between the two great powers of the region is becoming ever more open and obvious, other regional powers, especially those that can be characterized as middle powers, i.e. the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), India, Australia, Canada, Japan and South Korea, are therefore seeking to establish strategic co-operative partnerships and networks with one another, though such efforts have not so far been very coherent, nor is it clear how effectively they could co-operate to resist China. In fact, all the countries in the region are disturbed and fearful about Xi's commitment to China becoming a true maritime power, since none has any forces on a scale to match China's, and they have very little military leverage to resist the expression of China's will. 7. So where does this leave us? Throughout the region, there is an earnest desire to believe that Xi Jinping really does want China to be a responsible player in maintaining maritime peace and stability, and we can only hope for greater restraint in the use of “reactive assertiveness”, “tailored coercion” and “forceful persuasion” to pursue China's claims in the ESCSs. Xi's control of several high-profile maritime committees can be seen as a strategy of crisis management, and at least there is now a policy to avoid the use of naval warships for law enforcement in the disputed waters. Although none of China's neighbours in the Asia-Pacific region can match its maritime capabilities on an individual basis, they should work together to respond to China's long-term policy, which is a Chinese version of the Monroe Doctrine, and to do everything possible to deter Xi's salami-slicing tactics without escalating maritime tensions, to prevent China from establishing a fait accompli whereby the Middle Kingdom regional order is restored. Ultimately, however, this may prove futile, and the accommodation of China's aspirations, unpalatable as it seems, may be the lesser evil.