By Albert Wai (albertwai@mediacorp.com.sg)
SINGAPORE — Haiyang Shiyou 981.

To get a clearer understanding of the remarkable events that took place in Hanoi early this week, casual observers must acquaint themselves with that name.
Vietnam tried to dislodge the deep-water drilling rig, sending a flotilla of ships its way, but was beaten back by a more forceful response from the Chinese ships that escorted the China National Offshore Oil Corporation rig. The ensuing chaos sparked an international crisis, and a violent nationalistic response within Vietnam.

But it was the silence on one end that quickly moved things onto a different plane — when Vietnam’s communist party leader Nguyen Phu Trong tried to reach Beijing to protest, his calls were not returned. Hanoi wasted no time in turning to the United States, lobbying its former enemy to lift an arms embargo so that Vietnam could buy American lethal weapons to protect itself.
The US partly relaxed the ban, allowing the purchase of non-lethal equipment for maritime defence, and last year, warmly received Mr Trong at the White House.
That visit arguably set in firm motion the full lifting of the arms embargo this week, announced during the first official visit by President Barack Obama to Vietnam.
The move not only ends one of the last vestiges of the Vietnam War, but, more importantly, marks a recalibration of US-Vietnam ties as well as Hanoi’s relationship with Beijing.

“In a sense, you can consider this Vietnam’s version of ‘rebalance’ after the estrangement of the Vietnam War,” said Singapore’s Ambassador-at-Large Bilahari Kausikan, noting that Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh himself had made overtures to the US after World War II and only decisively turned to the communist bloc after he was rebuffed.
“The Vietnamese are first and foremost nationalists,” added Mr Kausikan. The S R Nathan Fellow has this year given a series of public lectures about how the South China Sea issue has become one where the parameters of Sino-American competition and their interests are most clearly defined and from which South-east Asia nations will draw conclusions about American resolve and Chinese intentions in the region.
While Mr Obama said the decision to lift the arms ban had nothing to do with China, most experts and analysts believe it was partly in response to Beijing’s assertiveness in staking Chinese claims in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.
Analysts have suggested that, in return, Hanoi may allow the US access to Cam Ranh Bay — a strategic deepwater port in an inlet of the disputed South China Sea. Such a development, if it comes to pass, will upset China and raise further questions on how the diplomatic and military dance around the waterway will play out.

The picture is further complicated by disputes involving China and several countries in the region over fishing rights in the South China Sea. Malaysia this week detained three Filipino fishermen for fishing in its territorial waters. Indonesia has launched an aggressive crackdown on illegal fishing vessels — including those owned by Chinese, Filipino, Malaysian, Thai and Vietnamese fishermen — in its waters, sinking more than 60 of them so far. The fishermen have insisted they were plying their trade in traditional fishing waters.

Against this background of tension and rivalry, some South-east Asian countries are already changing positions with regard to their relations with the major powers. Thailand, a long-time ally of the US, has been alienated from Washington since Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha launched a military coup in 2014. Mr Prayuth’s government has been strengthening ties with Beijing.
There are also indications that the Philippines, which has overlapping claims with China in the South China Sea and is another treaty ally of the US, may recalibrate its ties with Washington. President-elect Rodrigo Duterte has openly questioned the US’ commitment to the Philippines in the event of a conflict with China. He has also indicated that he is open to talks with Beijing.
Only time will tell how these changing geopolitical alliances will affect regional peace and stability, especially given the uncertainty in the US’ foreign policy towards Asia as Mr Obama nears the end of his term in the White House.

A NEW DAWN IN US-VIETNAM TIES?

Mr Obama’s visit to Vietnam this week was steeped in significance. Both sides herald a new partnership 40 years after a bitter war that claimed more than 57,000 American lives and killed as many as two million Vietnamese.
The President portrayed the lifting of the arms embargo as part of the process of normalising relations between the two countries. “This change will ensure that Vietnam has access to the equipment that it needs to defend itself,” Mr Obama said in a press conference with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang on Monday.
“It also underscores the commitment of the US to fully normalise the relationship with Vietnam, including strong defence ties,” Mr Obama said.
Everywhere he went, the US President was greeted by cheering locals, all jostling to catch a glimpse of the world’s top leader. In a masterstroke of public diplomacy, Mr Obama sat down for a meal with celebrity television show host Anthony Bourdain in a humble noodle shop in Hanoi, delighting netizens and many Vietnamese.
Mr Obama also held a town hall session in Ho Chi Minh City with young Vietnamese leaders. He urged them to do more to combat climate change and touted the benefits of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

The TPP is a landmark trade pact among 12 Pacific Rim nations, including Vietnam, and is a capstone to Mr Obama’s foreign-policy rebalance towards closer ties with Asia.
For Vietnam, Mr Obama’s visit could not have gone better.
“The messages of friendship and cooperation as well as those of looking forward to the future have been sent and well received in Vietnam,” said Mr Tran Viet Thai, deputy director of the Institute for Foreign Policy and Strategic Studies under Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Assistant Professor Richard Heydarian, who teaches political science at De La Salle University in Manila, noted that the Obama administration has “astutely tapped into Vietnam’s strategic anxieties to build a security partnership that seemed unthinkable just a decade ago”.
“Through the TPP and the growing naval cooperation with America, Vietnam hopes to dampen its deleterious vulnerability with respect to its giant neighbour,” he added, referring to China.
Vietnam’s economy will reportedly get a 10 per cent boost from the TPP in the next decade.
At first glance, ties between Hanoi and Washington appear to have been given a huge boost by the lifting of the arms embargo. Vietnam has hitherto viewed the embargo as a discriminatory practice and a relic of the Cold War, but Washington had held back so that it could continue to use the embargo as a bargaining chip to get Hanoi to improve its human-rights record.
The lifting of the ban is therefore an important diplomatic signal from the US that it wants to move the relationship with Vietnam forward, especially since Vietnam is now the biggest South-east Asian exporter to the US.
“The removal of the embargo indicates a stronger rapprochement and a higher level of trust between the two countries, which makes them more comfortable and more willing to pursue closer cooperation in the future, especially in sensitive areas such as defence and security,” said Dr Le Hong Hiep, a research fellow at the Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.

Vietnam, which lost two short naval wars with China in 1974 and 1988 over disputed islands in the South China Sea, is alarmed by China’s growing assertiveness in the maritime regional domain.

China-Vietnam ties were severely strained in 2014 after the deployment of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation rig sparked massive anti-Chinese protests that left at least 21 dead and dozens injured in Vietnam. Thousands of Chinese citizens had to be extracted from Vietnam for their safety. Although Beijing moved the rig back to its waters after two months, the crisis saw bilateral relations between the two nations tumble to their lowest point in decades.
By cosying up to Washington, Hanoi has sent a clear signal to Beijing that it has powerful friends. At the same time, Vietnam is unlikely to sever itself from the orbit of its largest trading partner and ideological ally.

“Vietnam is acutely conscious it lives next to China and has done so for two thousand years. They have to simultaneously stand up to China and get along with China. That will never change and they are not going to swing all the way one way or another,” said Mr Kausikan.
Military analysts say although there is likely to be greater defence cooperation between the US and Vietnam going forward, this is unlikely to be in the form of major weapons deals.
Since the arms embargo was partially lifted two years ago to allow Hanoi to buy equipment such as radar and boats, Vietnam has not followed up with any major purchases.
“Vietnam is fully in the Russian technological domain, and to break out they will have significant technological problems integrating American weapons into their existing Russian-based armed forces,” said Associate Professor Bernard Loo from the military studies programme of the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, adding that he expects more consultations and exchanges between both sides in future.
Professor Carl Thayer of the Australian Defence Force Academy said he expects the US and Vietnam to step up cooperation in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief as well as training for Vietnam’s involvement in United Nations peacekeeping.
“Vietnam likely will permit the US to preposition supplies and equipment to deal with natural disasters in the region. Vietnam will not, however, join with the US in military exercises that could appear to be aimed at China,” added Prof Thayer, who has studied Vietnam’s military since the 1960s.
Commenting on the outlook for US-Vietnam relations, Dr Denny Roy, a senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, said ties were likely to see a gradual but long-term improvement.
“Both sides will continue to protect their self-interests. To some degree, this will limit the speed at which the bilateral relationship develops. Nevertheless, the relationship can grow despite these disagreements,” he said.
“In a sense, this is an advantage because expectations are lower when everyone realises these are former adversaries with mutually-antagonistic political systems.”

BEIJING TAKES NOTICE

Mr Obama’s visit to Vietnam and how ties between both sides progress will no doubt be closely watched by Beijing.
“For China, Vietnam’s increasingly active embrace of the US rebalance — from its participation in the TPP and acquisition of US-built patrol boats, to its citizens’ fanfare reception of President Obama — is a major setback for its strategic influence in South-east Asia,” said Mr Ashley Townshend, a research fellow at the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.
“Despite long-standing cultural ties and extensive party-to-party relations, China is effectively ‘losing’ Vietnam to the US,” he added.
China’s official response to the outcome of Mr Obama’s visit was muted and measured, with a Foreign Ministry spokesman saying that Beijing hoped the lifting of the arms embargo would be beneficial to regional peace, stability and development.
However, the Global Times, an influential state-run newspaper, slammed the announcement, saying the move was aimed at Beijing. It added that the US’ move would exacerbate the “strategic antagonism between Washington and Beijing” and accused the White House of “taking advantage of Vietnam to stir up more troubles in the South China Sea”.
Closer US-Vietnam ties come at a time when China is challenged on several fronts over its claims in the South China Sea, through which roughly US$5 billion (S$6.88 billion) of shipborne trade pass through every year. China, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan have overlapping claims in the disputed waters.
Massive land reclamation, construction of military facilities and the siting of military equipment in the disputed islands and reefs controlled by Beijing have sparked fears of militarisation in the region. The Pentagon has carried out repeated patrols near Chinese-controlled islands, ostensibly to uphold freedom of navigation in international waters.
Manila has asked a court of arbitration at The Hague to recognise its right to exploit waters in the South China Sea, but Beijing has insisted that the court has no jurisdiction over the case.
A ruling on the case is expected in the coming weeks. But leading up to that, China has cobbled up a list of more than 40 countries — many of which are landlocked ones from beyond the region — which Beijing claims endorses its position that the issue should be settled through direct negotiations and not international courts.
When asked if China is getting more nervous about developments in the South China Sea, Mr Kausikan replied that “at least the PRC MFA is getting nervous”, referring to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“Otherwise why go around collecting so-called statements of support from such major maritime powers as Sudan, Gambia and Belarus, among others? It impresses no one and only internationalises the issue, which all along (is something) the Chinese say they don’t want,” said Mr Kausikan.
“I think this is because the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) will have to explain to its own people why, if the Great Rejuvenation (espoused by President Xi Jinping) is really so great, and China under CCP leadership is recovering territories lost when China was weak, an international tribunal thinks these are not really Chinese,” he added.
“So they have to show that there is no international consensus and many countries support China, never mind if most of these countries either don’t have a clue what the South China Sea issue is all about or have had words put into their mouth.”
Mr Kausikan believed it was not necessary for Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to divide the Association of South-east Asian Nations (Asean) by recently getting Laos, Cambodia and Brunei to agree to a so-called four-point consensus on the South China Sea.
“Asean would not have been able to agree on a common position on the tribunal’s decision even if Wang Yi did not do anything. But Wang Yi is worried about his career as the MFA was bound to be blamed if it did nothing.”

STRATEGIC CAM RANH BAY

Adding to Beijing’s anxieties is how the operational picture in the South China Sea might change if Vietnam allows the US Navy to access a recently inaugurated international commercial port in Cam Ranh Bay, a dual-use facility that can also serve foreign warships.
Situated on the south-eastern coast of Vietnam approximately 290km north of Ho Chi Minh City, Cam Ranh Bay is closer to the disputed Paracel Islands claimed by both Beijing and Hanoi than China’s nearest naval base in Hainan.
The bay is also near the Strait of Malacca, giving the US influence over the important global shipping route. It is a deepwater facility that can reportedly receive aircraft carriers and submarines.
The navies of Singapore, Japan and France have visited Cam Ranh International Port since it was opened several months ago. Singapore’s RSS Endurance was the first foreign warship to call at Cam Ranh port on March 17.

Despite speculation that Hanoi may be willing to allow the US Navy to access Cam Ranh Bay, the nature of the arrangement — occasional port calls, rotational deployment, or long-term presence — has yet to be announced.
If the US Navy is given access to Cam Ranh Bay, it will open up another front that China has to watch, in addition to the Scarborough Shoal at the eastern reaches of the South China Sea, where Beijing is facing off against a Philippines supported by the US and Japan.
“Were Hanoi to permit the US military to access airstrips and port facilities at Cam Ranh Bay, Beijing would be confronted with American military access points along the western, southern and eastern flanks of the South China Sea,” noted Mr Townshend of the US Studies Centre.
Professor Alexander Vuving, of the Daniel K Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, said that granting the US military access to Cam Ranh Bay would be a “smart move in a weiqi game”, a Chinese traditional chess game based on the principle of indirect offence.
“If the US Navy has permanent access to Cam Ranh Bay, this can neutralise some of the advantage China can enjoy due to its artificial islands in the South China Sea,” he said.

Other analysts point out that, ultimately, the modality through which the US is allowed to access Cam Ranh Bay will be carefully considered by Vietnam. High among Hanoi’s considerations will be how to balance sending a clear signal to Beijing that it is no pushover, with minimising the chances of conflict.
Prof Thayer of the Australian Defence Force Academy said that Vietnam is unlikely to give the US privileged access to Cam Ranh Bay. He said Vietnam will also stop short of allowing any permanent presence or rotational presence by the US Navy there.
“Vietnam will carefully orchestrate these visits so as to minimise Chinese concerns,” said Prof Thayer.

Dr Le of the Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute added that, for the moment, Vietnam is likely to take a gradual approach to the issue. “It does not want to generate the perception that it is ganging up with the US and other countries against China,” he noted.
“Every step Vietnam takes with the US, it will have to look back to see how China reacts.”

Bill Hayton May 16, 2016

There’s a new Chinese charm offensive underway in Southeast Asia. Two years after their uncharming offensive to drill for oil in waters disputed with Vietnam, and with their massive proto-military artificial islands almost complete, Beijing’s officials are trying to spread love. They’re trekking around the world spinning a story in which China is the virtuous actor in the South China Sea, suggesting that the only reason for all the trouble there is Washington’s arm-twisting of its dupes in the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia.

From London to Jakarta, I've heard stories of Chinese officials seeking meetings with Southeast Asian diplomats to peddle this line. We've also seen a cack-handed attempt to bounce Brunei, Cambodia and Laos into apparently endorsing a joint statement supporting China’s position on the disputes. Unfortunately for Beijing, Cambodia and Laos immediately denied the story—and Brunei remained as silent as ever. Most recently, we’ve been treated to a very long article on the National Interest site by two of China’s most charming diplomats: Fu Ying, chairperson of the Foreign Affairs Committee of China’s National People’s Congress, and Wu Shicun, president of the National Institute of South China Sea Studies.

The article is fascinating because of the way it recasts China’s South China Sea narrative for an age in which many of its old myths have been destroyed by new historical research. The historical account it presents is much less bad than similar Chinese accounts used to be. In places it’s almost accurate. However episodes are recast and crucial facts omitted in order to make China appear the victim of imperialist perfidy. Its silky style and conciliatory tone is likely to win over many who don’t know the full facts.

This narrative is unlikely to convince many Americans, however, nor those Southeast Asian governments that have been on the receiving end of China’s rising “assertiveness” over the past seven years. To me, it reads like a narrative deliberately crafted to win over ASEAN states that aren’t claimants in the South China Sea, along with officials in other parts of the world who have little knowledge of the disputes. The purpose is to show that the ASEAN “claimants” have only themselves to blame, either because of their provocative actions or because they allowed themselves to be used by Washington.

There are many parts of the Fu-Wu narrative that an informed reader can dispute, but the hinge of the article is what happened in 2009. Fu and Wu are trying to rewrite the history of this crucial year to erase the memory of how China’s own actions caused its current difficulties. In the words of their article, “the general situation was under control before 2009.” The nub of the Fu-Wu story is that the new Obama administration, particularly its evil henchwoman Hillary Clinton, strong-armed the Philippines and Vietnam into taking provocative actions. They pin part of the blame on the “official deadline set by the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS)” for states to submit their maritime claims. However, they also argue that “an even greater factor [was] the introduction of the American Asia-Pacific rebalancing strategy.”

The authors then imply that the U.S. rebalance was the reason why the Philippines adopted its new maritime “Baselines Law” in March 2009, and why Malaysia and Vietnam submitted a joint claim to the UNCLCS in May. This is clearly nonsense. Both actions were triggered by the looming CLCS deadline, which had been set by the UN a decade before. The Philippines Baseline Law was the result of several years of discussion and internal argument. A regional diplomatic source tells me that Vietnam and Malaysia began discussing their joint claim in 2007—well before anyone in Washington had any plans for a “rebalance.”

The trigger for the Malaysia-Vietnam discussions was China’s rising assertiveness in 2007. Contra Fu and Wu, the general situation was not “under control” before 2009. China was already encroaching on areas of sea which Southeast Asian countries regarded as rightfully theirs. This directly involved Madame Fu. On May 18, 2007, shortly after she became China’s ambassador to the UK, she visited the headquarters of BP in London and told its executives that China could not guarantee the safety of either BP’s $4 billion investments in China or its staff if they kept working on Vietnamese projects in disputed waters off the coast of Vietnam. I had the chance to ask Madame Fu about this incident during a conference in Beijing in 2014. She told me that she did what she did because “I love BP and didn’t want to see it get hurt.”

BP was only one of several international oil companies that were heavily pressured by Chinese officials during 2007–08 to force them to abandon their activities in waters claimed by China off the coasts of Vietnam and Malaysia. This was the real trigger for the joint Malaysian-Vietnamese submission to the CLCS.

The Fu-Wu story can only argue that the incidents of 2009 were the result of U.S. pressure by bringing forward the date of the U.S. “pivot/rebalance” to Asia by two and a half years. Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State on January 21, 2009, but key figures of Obama’s Asia team didn’t join until later: Derek Mitchell became Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Asian and Pacific Security Affairs in late April 2009, and Kurt Campbell was confirmed as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs on June 26. The United States signed ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation on July 22, but the actual “pivot” announcement didn’t come until late 2011.

In fact, as I outline in Chapter 8 of my book, China’s actions were already worrying Southeast Asian governments well before the Obama administration took office. The proceedings of a conference held at Washington think tank CSIS in September 2008 make that clear. But there was one more crucial episode in 2009 that worried Southeast Asia even further—one that is always played down in Chinese accounts of the South China Sea disputes. On May 7, in response to the joint Malaysia-Vietnam submission, China sent a copy of its U-shaped line map to the CLCS.

This was the first time China had ever submitted that ambiguous claim in an international forum. Up until then, other countries could pretend it was simply an internal Chinese oddity. In fact, for many years it was illegal for foreigners to even take the map out of the country—it was regarded as a national secret. It was the submission of this document to the UN that, more than anything else, alarmed Southeast Asia and caused its governments to step up their lobbying to get Washington reengaged in the region.

I’m not sure that Fu and Wu realise that they’re peddling such a parody of reality. Having discussed South China Sea issues with both, they seem completely unable to understand the perspectives of the other claimants. They start from the position that everything China does is virtuous and correct and therefore that anyone who disagrees must be wrong. As one Southeast Asian diplomat told me recently, “China may not yet be a great power but it already seems to have acquired great-power autism.”
The risk, however, is that those who are not particularly well informed about China’s actions during 2007–09 could be taken in by the new narrative. It’s a version of events that is particularly unhelpful for anyone trying to untangle the South China Sea disputes. So far, the only government that seems to have bought into it is Gambia. But Beijing is clearly hoping others will follow.
Bill Hayton is an associate fellow at Chatham House and the author of The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia.


 

By DEREK WATKINS
UPDATED February 29, 2016

China has placed runways and radar facilities on new islets in the South China Sea, built by piling huge amounts of sand onto reefs. The construction is straining already taut geopolitical tensions.

The speed and scale of China’s island-building spree in the South China Sea last year alarmed other countries with interests in the region. After announcing in June that the process of building seven new islands by moving sediment from the seafloor to reefs was almost done, China has focused its efforts on building ports, three airstrips, radar facilities and other military buildings on the islands. The installations bolster China’s foothold in the Spratly Islands, a disputed scattering of reefs and islands in the South China Sea more than 500 miles from the Chinese mainland. China’s activity in the Spratlys is a major point of contention between China and the United States, and has prompted the White House to send Navy destroyers to patrol near the islands twice in recent months.

The new islands allow China to harness a portion of the sea for its own use that had been relatively out of reach. Although there are significant fisheries and possible large oil and gas reserves in the South China Sea, China’s efforts serve more to fortify its territorial claims than to help it extract natural resources, said Mira Rapp-Hooper, formerly the director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington research group. Though they are too small to support large military units, the islands will also enable sustained air and sea patrols, strengthening China’s influence in the area.

Several reefs have been destroyed outright to serve as a foundation for the new islands, and the process also causes extensive damage to the surrounding marine ecosystem. Frank Muller-Karger, professor of biological oceanography at the University of South Florida, said sediment “can wash back into the sea, forming plumes that can smother marine life and could be laced with heavy metals, oil and other chemicals from the ships and shore facilities being built.” Such plumes threaten the biologically diverse reefs throughout the Spratlys, which Dr. Muller-Karger said may have trouble surviving in sediment-laden water.

Although China was a relative latecomer to construction in the Spratly archipelago, its island building is much more extensive than similar efforts by other countries in the area. The recent activity has unsettled the United States, which has about $1.2 trillion in bilateral trade go through the South China Sea every year.Washington does not recognize China’s ownership of the islands, and in February President Obama reiterated the government's position that “the United States will continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows.” To reinforce the message, the United States Navy sent missile destroyers in October and January within 12 nautical miles of the islands, the conventional limit for territorial waters. According to statements from David Shear, the top Pentagon official in charge of Asia and the Pacific, the last time before October that the United States had sent ships or aircraft that close to the islands was in 2012.
What Is on the Islands

China has built airstrips, ports, radar facilities, solar arrays, lighthouses and support buildings on the islands. The airstrips and ports lengthen the reach of Chinese ships and planes, while the radar facilities allow the country to keep a closer eye on what is happening nearby. Imagery from January compiled for a recent report by the C.S.I.S. suggests that China may be constructing a longer-range high-frequency radar installation on Cuarteron Reef that would help the country monitor air and ship traffic in the south, farther from the Chinese mainland.



Fiery Cross Reef is one of China’s most strategically important new islands, with an airstrip that is long enough to allow the country to land any plane, from fighter jets to large transport aircraft.

Two additional airstrips on Mischief Reef and Subi Reef that China has been building since mid-2015 are nearing completion, bringing China’s total to three airstrips in the region.

Though China’s airstrips expand the country’s ability to operate in the South China Sea, they are not the first in the region — every other country that occupies the Spratlys already operates an airstrip as well.

Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan have also expanded islands in the Spratlys, but at a much smaller scale than China’s efforts.

China’s reefs hosted smaller structures for years before the current surge in construction. By preserving these initially isolated buildings, China can claim that it is merely expanding existing facilities, similar to what other countries have done elsewhere in the region.



http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/30/world/asia/what-china-has-been-building-in-the-south-china-sea-2016.html?_r=0