The United States must not tolerate China’s use of military coercion in pursuit of its territorial claims in the seas of East Asia, lawmakers said at a hearing on Tuesday, in which experts warned that Beijing’s assertiveness is unnerving its neighbors and challenges American security interests AFP PHOTO
WASHINGTON—The United States must not tolerate China’s use of military coercion in pursuit of its territorial claims in the seas of East Asia, lawmakers said at a hearing on Tuesday, in which experts warned that Beijing’s assertiveness is unnerving its neighbors and challenges American security interests.
Separately, Philippine Ambassador to Washington Jose Cuisia Jr. complained about China’s “aggression” and urged Vietnam, another claimant state in the South China Sea, to follow the Philippines in mounting an international legal challenge to Beijing’s expansive claims.
China’s recent declaration of an air defense zone over disputed islands controlled by Japan in the East China Sea, and its new rules to regulate fishing in a huge tranche of the South China Sea, including the West Philippine Sea and the East Sea, have deepened concerns that its rise as a regional power could spark a confrontation.
On Wednesday, Gen. Emmanuel Bautista said Filipino fishermen should not yield to Chinese “threats and intimidation” and instead go on plying their trade in the West Philippine Sea.
But the Philippines wants to acquire two more warships from the United States to boost its maritime protection amid those threats from China, Bautista said.
Washington’s response
House lawmakers overseeing US policy toward Asia and America’s use of sea power held a joint hearing to consider Washington’s response, amid worries that the United States may be drawn into a crisis or conflict over a territorial dispute involving China because the United States has bilateral defense treaties with Japan and the Philippines.
Republican Rep. Steve Chabot called China “dangerously aggressive” and said it was attempting to take disputed territories by gradual force with the “misguided hope that Japan, Southeast Asian nations and the US will just grudgingly accept it.”
Democratic Rep. Ami Bera called for a strong, bipartisan message from the US Congress that China’s “threatening and provocative moves to assert their maritime territorial claims are unacceptable.”
Republican Rep. Randy Forbes said the United States must be “100 percent intolerant of China’s territorial claims and its continued resort to forms of military coercion to alter the status quo in the region.”
Lawmakers typically take a more uncompromising stance on foreign policy than the administration. But their opinions reflect widespread concern in Washington about Beijing’s intentions as it challenges decades of American military preeminence in Asia, and its adherence to international law.
Air defense zone
China unilaterally declared its air defense zone over parts of the East China Sea last November, requiring foreign aircraft to submit flight plans to Chinese authorities and accept instructions from the Chinese military.
The United States responded by flying B-52 bombers through the zone, to show it didn’t recognize it.
The US state department last week also criticized the new Chinese regulations on fishing in the South China Sea as “provocative and potentially dangerous.”
China maintains that it has peaceful intentions and it wants the United States to stay out of territorial disputes in which it has no claim.
The United States, however, says it has an interest in freedom of navigation and commerce through the Asia-Pacific region.
Despite America’s huge national debt, the Obama administration wants to boost the US military presence in the region and recently announced tens of millions of dollars in new security assistance to Vietnam and the Philippines.
‘Unacceptable’
Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the US response to China’s coercion would be a key measure of the effectiveness of the Obama administration’s policy shift toward Asia and how countries there assess its staying power in the region, she said.
Cuisia told reporters in Washington late Monday that Manila wanted good relations with Beijing, but called it “unacceptable” that China is preventing Philippine fishermen from operating inside parts of its own exclusive economic zone, or EEZ. That is the 370-kilometer offshore area where a nation has sovereign rights for exploring and exploiting resources.
Cuisia said to avoid a potential confrontation, the Philippines has told fishermen to avoid seas covered by China’s new fishing regulations, pending clarification from Beijing on what they entail.
But the waters covered by the new Chinese rules include parts of the Spratly archipelago and the Panatag Shoal (Scarborough Shoal) in the West Philippine Sea, traditional fishing grounds for Filipinos.
Ignoring new rules
Last week, Mayor Eugenio Bito-onon of Kalayaan Island in the Philippine part of the Spratlys said he would not discourage fishermen on the island from going out to those waters, and on Wednesday, Bautista urged fishermen not to allow themselves to be intimidated and instead “go on with their lives.”
Bautista, however, declined to answer when asked if the military would come to the aid of the fishermen should they be harassed by Chinese coast guards, saying the question was hypothetical.
Asked how the government would handle the fishermen’s insecurity about the new Chinese fishing rules, Bautista replied: “Let’s put it this way: Should we give in to terror, to threats and intimidation? Should we? We should not. . . . We should stand up for our rights.”
The Philippine stand is to ignore China’s new fishing rules, and Bautista said the military would need more frigates to boost the country’s maritime protection.
More frigates needed
Speaking in a television interview, Bautista said the military needed around six frigates to guard the Philippines’ maritime domain.
The Philippines has already acquired two refurbished American frigates in the past two years, and they now lead patrols in the West Philippine Sea.
Bautista said the Gregorio del Pilar, as well as the Ramon Alcaraz, which arrived last year, had been deployed to protect the country’s waters.
“There are Chinese fishing vessels in the West Philippine Sea as we speak,” he said, but declined to say where they were in the disputed waters.
Bautista said the acquisition of two more frigates were undergoing government bidding procedures. The vessels could be acquired “in a couple of years,” he said.
The Philippines has antagonized China by bringing a case challenging China’s claim to virtually all of the South China Sea to a United Nations arbitration tribunal.
Cuisia called it a “legitimate and friendly” way to resolve a dispute, and when asked, supported the idea of Vietnam taking the same approach.
China refuses to participate in the arbitration.
Huge resources
While most lawmakers at Tuesday’s House hearing were strongly supportive of the US military presence in the Asia-Pacific region, Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman was skeptical.
Sherman complained that the United States was plowing huge resources into confronting China and helping defend the territorial claims of nations like Japan that allot a far smaller proportion of their own budgets to defense.—Reports from AP, AFP and Nikko Dizon
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