In view of Beijing’s close ties to the Pakistani military, we were keen to find out more about China’s possible responsibility in this terrorist activity. If China’s associates are the same ideologues who are supposedly behind the terrorism against India, China could exert its influence to prevent new attacks, we argue. “Does China have any responsibility?” asks Uday Bhaskar, director of the National Maritime Foundation and one of the subcontinent’s leading military analysts. “Absolutely. It is not that China doesn’t know that the establishment and the army of Pakistan are supporting terrorism [against India]. They know, but China chooses to follow a policy of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ They say, ‘I don’t want to know about it. You can do what you want but don’t tell me.’ China could do much more, there’s no doubt about that,” he continues. Why don’t they do it, then? “When I talk to my Chinese colleagues about this, they have no answer,” he reiterates.24
While Beijing argues that India’s suspicions are highly exaggerated or even completely unjustified, India’s circles of power in the fields of academia, diplomacy, the military or journalism consider China’s complicity and responsibility for Pakistan’s undercover war against India as a proven and indisputable fact. “It wouldn’t be possible without China’s active support. This is about keeping India in a state of constant disequilibrium. This is what it means to wound and bleed India with 10,000 cuts,” the Indian experts say. There is, of course, the underlying question of China and India’s rivalry over regional supremacy, but, according to Uday Bhaskar, what we are seeing here is also a case of two countries which are in some ways philosophically incompatible. China’s regime governs the country like a private corporation, while India is a completely different type of animal. “The very existence of India, with its secular democracy, its diversity and the fact that India is succeeding despite its shortcomings, poses a challenge to China. The form in which India interprets itself, including its constitution with its principles and values, and the way that India manages diversity are causing the greatest sort of anxiety for China, because it repudiates the Chinese system. That is burning the Chinese up inside,” he argues.
How, then, will the two most populated countries on the planet face up to the future? Will they be able to live alongside each other? Is there room for two tigers on the same mountain? Like other analysts we consulted, Uday Bhaskar foresees a turbulent future. He explains that the potential risk is rooted in the way in which China interprets its place in the world: “China’s objective at a global level is to seek multipolarity; but in Asia [it] wants unipolarity. This is the challenge facing India. Tension with China is inevitable.” And how will India react? we ask him. In his answer, he draws on his knowledge of the strategic culture of the subcontinent. “In India today the most amount of interest is generated by political controversies, and maybe cricket; not national security issues. India will respond slowly, it won’t do anything in a hurry … But if we do have to respond, it will not be insignificant. When we react, it takes time, but we react strongly,” he warns. In this way, the comparison drawn between India and the elephant is not incorrect: “It takes time to turn around. But once it turns, and if it decides to sit down, then it brings a lot of weight [to the issue].”
CHINA DISPLAYS ITS FIRST AIRCRAFT CARRIER
We have already seen evidence of China’s strategy of building relations of trust and friendship in southern Asia based especially on economic clout, as is seen indisputably in the cases of Nepal and Pakistan. However, this tactic is not limited to these two countries alone. Beijing is spreading its tentacles throughout the region and especially into India’s neighboring countries, which it manages to win over using million-dollar investments, military co-operation and diplomatic seductive power. This “strategic siege,” as it is known in India, has led China to dip its toes into the Indian Ocean, which has historically been included within India’s sphere of influence. Beijing has invested in the Pakistani deep-water port in Gwadar25—at the entrance to the strategic Strait of Hormuz and just 70 kilometers from Iran—as well as container ports in Bangladesh, the Maldives and Sri Lanka. China also upgraded the facilities and infrastructure in the militarily significant Coco Islands in Burmese waters, just 18 kilometers away from the border with India.26
What is China hoping to achieve? Is it aiming to geopolitically isolate its regional rival? Or is it simply trying to increase its naval power in order to protect its maritime routes and, therefore, its economic interests? Whatever the answer might be, China’s eruption into its periphery waters has led to an immediate counter-offensive from New Delhi, who has decided to play China at its own game. India has extended its military co-operation with a cast of countries from the Persian Gulf to the Pacific, creating especially important—albeit somehow symbolic—links with Japan and Vietnam, the two countries which are most concerned about the “peaceful rise” of China. Furthermore, India plans to increase the number of naval vessels to 145 over the next decade, complementing three aircraft carriers which are meant to be in operation by 2017. This can be interpreted as a clear statement of intent, particularly considering that this is a country where a large part of the population remain below the poverty line.27
This glimpse of future tension in the Indian Ocean provides a good example of what the Indian military analyst Uday Bhaskar warned us about during our meeting: “When China becomes more powerful, it will act in a more assertive way.” China is already demonstrating signs of authoritarianism in other waters with a much greater geopolitical importance for Beijing at this time: the South China Sea. These waters carry 25 percent of world trade and around 80 percent of China’s oil imports from the Middle East and Africa. It is here that Beijing has several territorial disputes on the go with five regional countries over the sovereignty of the Spratly Islands,28 as well as a dispute with Vietnam over the Paracel Islands.29 “The peaceful rise of China? Do you see how they’re behaving in the South China Sea? They [the other countries in the region] are really petrified, like a rabbit when you shine a torch in its eyes,” Bhaskar argues.
The analyst highlights China’s current display of bravado in these waters, as well as its unilateral ban on fishing and the pressure that it is putting on foreign oil companies to suspend any exploration activities on behalf of other countries. Confrontations between Chinese warships and Vietnamese or Filipino fishing boats have consequently been a regular occurrence for decades, leaving frequent diplomatic clashes and a trail of dead bodies in their wake.30
As well as these sea-based activities, it is also important to take into account Beijing’s coercive diplomatic tactics. These tactics begin with China’s hopes of dealing with the disputes in the South China Sea bilaterally—drawing on the usual Chinese strategy of divide and conquer—and end with an increase in China’s naval military capacity in the region, where it is using Hainan Island and its nuclear submarines as strategic battering rams. In its diplomatic dealings and conversations surrounding this issue, Beijing defaults to using a map dating from 1947 and a 1935 variant, both of which were drawn up before the foundation of the People’s Republic. The map is used by China to ambiguously claim almost everything, although it is unclear whether it is “merely” claiming all the atolls within the nine-dashed line or everything within that line—waters, island, resources and all.
China has never explained the scope or significance of this map, according to Ian Storey, from the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in Singapore. “The short answer is, we don’t know [what it is based on], because China has never explained what this map means. I go to conferences and I talk to the Chinese all the time, and I say: What does this mean? I never get an answer. I think it’s because they haven’t decided what it means.” The official statement that China uses today is: “China has indisputable sovereignty over the South China Sea islands and adjacent waters.” However, we discovered the real reason for China’s official silence on the matter in an attic in the heart of Ho Chi Minh City, the economic capita
l of Vietnam.
In order to find out what the other countries involved have to say on the matter, we had arranged to meet with several Vietnamese historians and experts based in the country. One of them is Dang Dinh Dau, who has spent decades carrying out an enormous document study, exploring every resource from the United States Library of Congress to archives containing maps of Asia drawn up by Portuguese and Spanish missionaries in the sixteenth century. Dang has spread out copies of these fabulous maps in his attic, all of which confirm his theory: Imperial China never considered the territories to the south or west of Hainan Island in the South China Sea as its own. “China’s territorial claims over the Paracel Islands began in 1910, when it became aware of the territory’s strategic importance. However, in the earlier maps made by Western missionaries, and even in the maps drawn up by the Chinese empire itself, China’s territory ended at southern Hainan,” he concludes.
As Beijing is therefore unable to bring any forceful historical or legal precedent to the negotiating table, it has instead opted for a display of its present and future military power. In Southeast Asia, this is causing genuine concern, according to a high-ranking source that we met in Taiwan. “Publicly, we all in the region talk about engaging with China, but when the doors are shut we ask the US Navy not to go too far away.” Ian Storey sums up this feeling in similar terms: “There’s a growing sense of anxiety in the region about China’s growing military power and where it is going.” These fears have not been calmed by the public presentation of the Liaoning (formerly known as the Varyag), China’s first aircraft carrier, which is operational from September of 2012.
There is no doubt that access to an aircraft carrier makes all the difference. A navy without an aircraft carrier is a defensive navy; a navy which includes one is a combat unit ready for action. If we also take into account the pace at which China’s military budget has grown over the last decade,31 part of which has gone towards increasing its naval capacity, as well as speculations that China could be constructing one or more additional “made in China” aircraft carriers, it is easy to imagine the “rabbit” paralyzed by the glare of China’s warships. This is not so much because of the military significance of the Liaoning: at the end of the day, it is still just a piece of updated Ukrainian junk from the 1980s, which came very close to ending up as a floating casino at the port of Macao. Its real importance is entirely political. What is really worrying here is the clear message being sent by Beijing.
“An aircraft carrier is used to project power across the world … China will use [the aircraft carriers] to show their presence in the South China Sea, to show that China is the dominant player there, and it has the aircraft carriers to prove it. No country in Southeast Asia has ships any way near that level and never will: it’s too expensive,” Storey explains. With the launch of its first aircraft carrier, China is announcing its intention “to be a strong military power with aircraft carriers. It’s a symbol.”
Military experts explain that the new Chinese ship has not awakened excessive concern in Washington, particularly as the United States has up to eleven aircraft carriers at its disposal. America is much more concerned about the Dong-Feng 21-D, a Chinese missile capable of sinking an aircraft carrier. Although it has not yet been tested, the missile represents a dangerous threat both because of its long range and because it is difficult to detect and block. With the creation of a naval arsenal which will eventually include one or more aircraft carriers, a long-range anti-aircraft-carrier missile and nuclear submarines, the overarching question is obvious. Why does the “peaceful rise” of China require such a large arsenal? Is a war between China and the United States in the Pacific inevitable?
China is more interested in regional stability than anyone, but it is also quick to defend its “core interests” in its maritime periphery, from Taiwan to the Spratly Islands via its maritime routes and the Straits of Malacca, a bottleneck situated between Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore which is key to the energy route stretching from the Middle East to Asia and America.
China and the United States share many interests in the South China Sea and, by extension, the Pacific Ocean, where they both champion stability, peace and the free passage of commercial ships. However, their geopolitical aspirations and strategic aims, with Washington determined to stay in an area where it has been made welcome and Beijing set to play a dominant role in the region, could threaten these declarations of good will. It is therefore precisely in these waters where the interests of the two powers could potentially come into conflict. Three areas of risk begin to appear: from north to south, they are North Korea, Taiwan and the islands of the South China Sea. According to the experts, there is no doubt about it: there is tension on the horizon. After all, the hegemony of the western Pacific is at stake.
MISSION: RECOVER TAIWAN
In the context of the escalation of tension in the South China Sea, Southeast Asian countries opt for the dual strategy of co-operating with China on economic issues, while also sheltering with the United States on military matters. In this game of chess, Taiwan plays a vital role in the geopolitics of the region. The “rebel province,” as Beijing still sees the island, benefits from an exceptional geographical location at just 100 nautical miles from continental China, right in the path of the maritime route which carries oil from the Middle East to northeast Asia and the United States. From the point of view of the United States military, Taiwan’s proximity to China’s coastline makes it an “unsinkable aircraft carrier.” In Beijing, the current status quo is seen as the Achilles’ heel of its national security, as it is blocking China’s strategic development in the western Pacific.
Obsessed with reverting to the territorial integrity which existed before 1949, the Chinese government has been fighting a relentless crusade to move towards the permanent integration and absorption of Taiwan. Even after the six decades of de facto independence which Taiwan has enjoyed, ever since nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan after losing the war against the Communists and formed the Republic of China, Beijing’s historic mission has been to recover Taiwan. Reclaiming Taiwan for the mother country is clearly one of Beijing’s most important objectives in terms of foreign policy. Achieving it would represent a decisive step towards rebalancing power with the United States and thereby securing hegemony of the region.
To win over its rebel province, China is showing Taiwan the economic benefits of becoming integrated with the world’s fastest-growing market while simultaneously displaying the military force it would be prepared to unleash on Taiwan should the island dare to make a false move that would bring its future sovereignty into question. Since the 2005 approval of a law authorizing the use of force against Taiwan should it declare its independence, China has been steadily increasing the number and sophistication of the missiles distributed along its southeast coast, all of which point directly at the island. The latest figures provided by the Taiwanese secret services estimate that there are between 1,600 and 1,800 missiles currently pointing at Taiwan, ready to open fire the day that Taiwan crosses the line.32
“Taiwan would like to promote peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region. That is why we feel that [relations] on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have implications not only for Taiwan and mainland China, but also for the whole region in terms of regional and strategic balance, regional development, and regional peace and security,” said the Taiwanese deputy minister for foreign affairs, David Lin, when we met him in Taipei, acknowledging the fact that relations between Taipei and Beijing transcend domestic issues. Until now the island—and, by extension, its American ally—has contributed to a balance of power in regional waters which is equally beneficial to other allies of the United States such as Australia and Singapore, and China’s territorial rivals, such as Vietnam and the Philippines. The presence of the United States in the region compensates for China’s superior military power in Southeast Asia where, as we have seen, it has various ongoing territorial disputes.
> “In this region, who is mainland China’s real enemy? Japan is not a military power, and neither is South Korea. There is no serious threat, and yet mainland China has been continuing its expansion of military operations for decades. It is difficult to understand this mentality. Mainland China wants to become a regional power, but in what sense? Will it become more aggressive or is it still sincere about keeping its commitment to peaceful development? That is why China is still a potential threat to regional peace and stability. Many [Southeast Asian] countries don’t want to say it out loud because they have very strong economic relations with China, but in their hearts and minds they still consider mainland China’s military expansion as a threat … I hope mainland China can receive this message from the region, so that it can fulfill its commitments [to security in the region]. But I am not quite sure … whether mainland China can fulfil its commitment,” Lin argues.
For obvious reasons, Taiwan is the country which is most attentive to Beijing’s every gesture, trying to decipher its message down to the last comma. “Beijing wants the world to think that it will use force. Its strategy is to be ready, to act as a deterrent, but preferably not to use force,” explained the former deputy minister of defense and former professor at Georgetown University, Chong-Ping Lin. “However, China has developed a major new strategy which goes beyond military issues. The best option is to absorb Taiwan without using force.” The other possible way of integrating the island into Chinese territory is via the economic route. In fact, bilateral trade reached $75 billion in the first half of 2012, while it is estimated that Taiwan has invested over $200 billion in mainland China, most of which will go towards building electrical component factories, a sector in which the island is a leading player.
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