ASEAN will hold joint military drills in the South China Sea for the first time in history. -- China Boss update 6.16.23
Update -- *Please note there will be no update next Friday. China Boss will be on holiday June 23 - July 10.
What happened.
The Indonesian chair of ASEAN announced plans to "hold its first-ever joint military exercise in the South China Sea," CNN has reported. The bloc’s decision is a new show of strength “at a time of rising tension and uncertainty in the region.”
ASEAN’s unity has for years been tested by a rivalry between the United States and China that is being played out in the South China Sea. ASEAN members Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia have competing claims with Beijing, which asserts sovereignty over vast stretches of ocean that include parts of Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
Indonesian military spokesperson Julius Widjojono said the exercise was related to the “high risk of disaster in Asia, especially Southeast Asia.”
Not everyone is on board, however. Earlier this week, Cambodia issued a statement saying it “had yet to agree to the drills,” according to Voice of America.
VOA:
[General Vong Pisen, commander-in-chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces] said Indonesia's military chief had raised the idea as the rotating chair of the bloc, but Cambodia and "several other countries" — which were not named — did not respond. He added that a joint statement from the 20th ASEAN Commander-in-Chief Meeting, held in Bali last week, "did not mention ASEAN joint military exercises in the South China Sea."
He said Cambodia's military had now formed a working group to study the proposal and would ultimately request a decision from the Ministry of Defense.
Why it matters.
Cambodia’s Chinese knot
It's not the first time that Cambodia has balked at ASEAN proposals that could damage its close ties with China. In 2016, its representative refused to sign off on the bloc’s statement of support for a Hague Tribunal ruling against Chinese claims to the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.
Striking a balance between Cambodia’s security and economic interests puts Phnom Penh in a difficult position, and some have doubts as to "[w]hether Cambodia can truly forge a foreign policy that stands apart from China."
Melinda Martinus and Chhay Lim, Fulcrum:
Cambodia has been portrayed as China’s proxy for decades because of its pro-Beijing stance and its economy’s deep dependence on its larger neighbour. Cambodia treasures the ironclad friendship. China contributed to 44 per cent of the country’s total foreign direct investment between 1994 and 2021. China is Cambodia’s largest trading partner with two-way trade volume recording a substantial rise in 2022, despite supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic and war in Ukraine. Since 2012, China has surpassed Japan as Cambodia’s largest official development aid and soft loan provider.
US-China competition for influence
That said, the South China Sea is also the nucleus of an intense US-China strategic rivalry, where, both, Washington and Beijing “have [been] boosting their military activity and arms build-up.”
For the US, the priority is to secure “freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea to guarantee open shipping lanes and the world’s supply of advanced semiconductor technology. China, however, claims the entire region under its “9-dash-line” theory for nuclear deterrence, as a buffer zone against the US, and to control trade.
But, as researcher Narantsatsral Enkhbat wrote in The Diplomat earlier this month, Beijing’s dilemma is that it has no partners in the South China Sea that support its position, whilst the US, despite being on the other side of the world, has plenty.
Enkhabat, The Diplomat:
Recently, Washington has been increasing its military presence in the Asia-Pacific region through frequent joint military exercises, high-level visits, arms trade, military assistance to allies and partners, and cooperation on defense technology. As an example, the United States has announced plans to establish a presence at four military bases in the Philippines, in addition to its five bases covered by a 2014 agreement. The additional bases reportedly include ones in the north of the Philippines, close to Taiwan. Additionally, the United States conducted the largest-ever joint military exercise with its treaty ally in the Philippines, involving more than 17,600 military personnel.
The South China Sea is heating up
But more substantial than a beefed-up US military presence are the “significant strategic gains” that Washington has made to reverse the “dominant perception that China’s domination of Asia is inevitable and America’s retreat is irreversible,” as Asia Society’s C. Raja Mohan noted last week.
Mohan is convinced that “US initiatives in Indo-Pacific are paying dividends as many Asian nations are developing the political will to confront China.”
Mohan, Indian Express:
Removing the Asian fear by explicitly challenging China’s claim to regional hegemony has been at the core of the US Indo-Pacific strategy in the last few years. This is beginning to generate rewards of its own, as many Asian nations step up political and military engagement with the US.
Whether ASEAN’s new willingness to confront Beijing is sufficient to quell Xi Jinping’s geopolitical ambitions remains to be seen. In the meantime, however, China has "set off an arms race" with its "more militarized, more aggressive" coast guard fleet, New York Times' Damien Cave reported.
NYT:
The waters around Taiwan, the self-governed island China claims as its own, are one potential battleground. But with coast guard standoffs quietly escalating around the region, officials and analysts increasingly worry about a rising threat: an accident or violent skirmish anywhere in the vast area that China’s Coast Guard roams, which could spark a broader conflict, even a war between major powers.
For the past few weeks, international security analysts have been watching a "new stand-off between Vietnamese and Chinese [coast guard] ships" in Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The confrontation involved “more than a dozen vessels” and began after Hanoi issued “a notice expanding its oil drilling operations in Vanguard Bank,” according to the South China Morning Post.
SCMP:
Ray Powell, the head of Project Myoushu, a Stanford University initiative looking at China’s strategy in the South China Sea, said the Chinese vessels had moved eastward through the Vietnamese oilfield, with one coastguard ship trying to “twice abruptly cut off” a Vietnam coastguard ship.
It is not clear whether the stand-off has finished because of the lack of official comment from either side.
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**Please note there will be no update next Friday, as China Boss will be wiggling her toes in the warm sands of Portugal’s beautiful Silver Coast. Até logo! :)