Time To Get Tough With China

Vice President Biden cooled tensions in his talks with Chinese leaders, but many in Asia and the U.S. now question whether that’s the right course.

By Leslie H. Gelb

“We’re being too soft on China”—such are the increasingly audible whispers of an ever mounting number of China’s neighbors and U.S. foreign policy experts. 

They are still mostly whispering because of the enormity of such a change in policy direction. And they certainly don’t wish to trigger crises. 

But they do feel that the U.S. needs to get tougher with Beijing. 

To them, China unilaterally asserts its rights and demands, doesn’t budge, wears everyone down, waits and waits until everyone shrugs and goes along. 

Vice President Joe Biden handled his visit with Chinese rulers in the traditional manner: that is, he was strong in defending American values and concerns, but always far short of confrontation. And Chinese leaders mistook his care as weakness. 

Perhaps they’ve seen this as weakness all along.
Or as Winston Lord, a former ambassador to China, put it: “The Chinese do not shy from provocation and count on eventual foreign forebearance. It is time to parry this pattern and be willing to risk some dustups."
Such commentary on the Biden visit did not rise above murmurs here and there. 

Those pushing for a tougher line toward China realize such a policy shift takes time, and can’t be decided upon in the space of a week or so, the time it took to digest China’s imposition of its new Air Defense Identification Zone or ADIZ over the Japanese islands in the East China Sea. 

If Washington is to adopt a tougher stance toward Beijing, it needs a lot of methodical calculation. 

And U.S. diplomats would have to ensure beforehand that Asian nations would follow suit, so that Washington did not string itself out alone. 

The Obama administration is not near such a policy departure. 

And so, Biden deftly carried out his prescribed paces, perhaps disturbing no one greatly beyond the Japanese. 

Japan is less and less inclined to let Beijing push it around. In this regard, they’re out in front of the U.S. government, but they are not alone.

Many Asian and American policy experts were quite unhappy about China’s new ADIZ—and with the Obama administration’s quick acceptance of China’s right to do so. 

Washington alerted U.S. commercial airlines (not military aircraft) to comply in order to avoid mishap. 

There was good reason, however, not to do so. 

Washington acknowledges the right to establish ADIZ’s. 

But by U.S. policy, commercial aircraft flying through such zones need identify themselves only if they intend to enter Chinese airspace. 

More to the point, Beijing’s new ADIZ was announced without warning or consultation over an unusually large area, and an area that was in hot dispute with Japan. 

Japan and South Korea did not go along with the new China ADIZ, and the White House or State Department should have coordinated the U.S. response with these and other countries.
It’s not a stretch to assume that Chinese leaders took the U.S. response as caving in to their excessive demands. 

Tokyo certainly came to that precise conclusion. 

Apparently, Biden made no hard line effort to walk this cat back in Beijing. 

Instead, he seems to have asked his Chinese counterparts simply not to “enforce” the new ADIZ rules. 

Later in his Asia trip, in South Korea, the U.S. position appeared to have hardened, with a U.S. briefer saying that the U.S. and others did not accept China’s ADIZ. 

In the familiar refrain of diplomats, only time will tell.
The new ADIZ is only the latest in a long line of lamentations about Chinese treatment of American interests. 

There’s the cyberwarfare against U.S. defense industries. 

There’s Chinese flagrant violation of intellectual property rights. 

There’s the near total resistance to opening up Chinese internal markets to fair competition and to letting outsiders own a majority share of businesses. 

There’s strong resistance to accepting the WTO trade rules on the grounds that though China is an economic juggernaut, it’s really a “developing country” and thus not subject to the same rules as America, Japan, Germany, et al. 

There’s the constant intimidation of American journalists and news organizations. 

Biden did note the latter publicly as a matter of American values. 

Did Beijing even notice?

Asian nations certainly feel Beijing has been pushing them around, increasingly. 

That’s why they pressured the Obama team to “pivot” or “rebalance” its policy and resources from Europe and the Mideast to Asia and the Pacific, a course already favored by the Obama team. 

To be sure, and at the same, Asian leaders worry about being too closely associated with a tougher U.S. They want Americans to be tougher, but they don’t want Beijing to blame them for it. (It’s the old story with America’s friends and allies.)
Then, there’s the question that troubles all serious policy makers—exactly what leverage does Washington actually hold over Beijing? 

No military expert dreams of challenging China’s military power on the Asian mainland. The manpower gap is insurmountable. 

But at sea and on the coastlands, the U.S. Navy and Air Force remain clearly superior. China’s knows all this. 

But the last thing anyone desires is a military confrontation. 

There’s no telling where this would lead. 

By the same token, however, China can’t simply be allowed to make its own rules at sea by asserting its unilateral rights and dispatching ships and fighter planes to enforce them. 

So far, China has been doing the asserting in both the East and South China seas, resource rich areas, much to the dismay of the Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan.
But the real leverage between the U.S. and China comes down to economic horsepower. 

However much military strength is needed, and it is, policy makers understand full well that power in the region stems from domestic economic strength and vitality, plus trade and investment power. 

China’s economy still marches upward and has already surpassed Japan’s. 

The American economy is limping along. 

Congress hasn’t passed a budget in six years. It regularly brings the nation to debt default. 

It won’t increase funds for physical and intellectual infrastructure, where America is clearly falling behind. 

If China or anyone else, for that matter, is going to pay attention to America’s wishes and demands, Congress will have to stop acting like a Banana Republic. 

The Tea Baggers say they want a strong America; they’re destroying it.
Ambassador Lord provided this perspective: “We need a firmer posture toward Beijing which means getting our domestic political and economic acts together, investing in the future; giving our Asian rebalancing more heft by successfully concluding the critical Pacific trade pact; and helping to reconcile our two most important Asian allies, Japan and South Korea."
Stapleton Roy, another former U.S. ambassador to China, who opposes the tougher line, put his case rather pithily: “You talk about getting tough on China,” he chuckled, “We first should get tough on ourselves.”

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The US Waffles on China’s Air Defense Zone

State Department concerns appear to trump military ones
Asia Sentinel

A computer screens display a map showing the outline of China's air defense zone in the East China late last month.

Asian nations looking for US protection in the face of concerns about China’s hegemonic designs on east and Southeast Asia are left baffled by Washington’s response to China’s controversial declaration of an air defense zone covering most of the East China Sea.
The first US reaction, clearly driven by highest level military concerns, was to send military aircraft through the zone without notifying the Chinese authorities. 

Japan and Korea did likewise and Japan’s civilian aircraft similarly ignored this great leap forward in China’s de facto claims over airspace close to the territorial waters of Japan and South Korea.
But since then the US, seemingly driven by a State Department that often appears to place short- term relations with China ahead of longer-term strategic questions, has adopted a somewhat ambiguous posture. The visit to the region by US Vice-President Joe Biden could have been used to condemn the Chinese action unequivocally and bolster Japanese and South Korean confidence in US determination to stand by them in rejecting Chinese presumptions.
As it happened, however, the US seemed set on avoiding provoking China into yet more aggressive claims – even though it was China’s announcement of the zone shortly before Biden’s visit, which was the immediate provocation.
Much of the western media also appeared to portray the air zone issue as simply an extension of China’s dispute with Japan over the Senkaku islands when even a glance at a map of the Chinese self-proclaimed zone shows it encompasses almost the whole airspace over the East China sea, not just the southwestern portion close to the Senkakus. 

Such misinterpretation must be music to China’s ears.
While in Beijing, Biden is reported to have told Chinese President Xi Jinping that the US rejects the zone claim and looks to China to ease tensions by effectively not doing anything to enforce its claims. 

It could, for example, not do anything about plans, civilian or military, which fail to provide their flight plans to the Chinese authorities. 

Nonetheless, the claims are now on the record and having made them, President Xi may come under nationalist and populist pressure to try to enforce them.
The US position has clearly been weakened by its advising its own airlines to file their flight plans with China – unlike Japan. 

Not surprisingly, Japan has not been pleased with this failure to back its own position of declining to provide civilian flight information to the extent China demands. 

The US has explained its action by reference to the safety needs of civilian aircraft. 

However, that implies that China represents a risk to civilian aircraft which do not comply. 

Clearly China is not going to start shooting down commercial aircraft so the US response is in effect surrender to a theoretical threat. 

Stouter hearts would have called China’s bluff.
Many countries declare air defense zones which go well beyond their territorial waters as well as flight control zones for the safe operation of civilian aircraft. 

But these have no formal international standing and require neighboring countries to cooperate rather than compete in demanding exclusive rights.
The vast extension of China’s zone could be seen, most worryingly, as a preliminary move to be followed at some future date with attempts to enforce it first of all in the vicinity of the Senkakus, islands which the US recognizes as Japanese. 

It is also noteworthy how close the zone goes to Japan’s territorial waters in the vicinity of the Ryukyu Islands, and of Okinawa, with its US bases in particular.
In another direction, next on China’s agenda could be declaration of a similar zone above the South China sea, following the infamous nine-dash line of its claims there which take it almost up to the territorial waters of Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia, and very close to Indonesia’s Natuna islands. 

China’s ambassador in Manila Ma Keqing was quoted as saying that China had the right to set up a similar zone over the South China Sea.
Exactly how that “right” is defined has not been made clear. 

But if such a right exists, presumably other countries, such as Vietnam and the Philippines, have similar rights to air defense zones extending close to China’s coast and its military airfields.
Given China’s world view and its history of expansion over most of the past 500 years (only during the period 1840-1945 was it on the defensive, against the west and Japan) it is hard to predict how far its ambitions now go. 

But Asian neighbors might like to see the US put more backbone into its response if they are to believe that its “tilt” towards Asia and the centrality of the western Pacific to US long-term strategic interests.

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Joe Biden: The Bull in the China Shop

The vice president creates waves with comments in China, but he was right to make them.
By Elizabeth C. Economy

In the midst of an already diplomatically challenging trip to Japan, China, and South Korea, U.S. vice president Joe Biden managed to make life just that much more difficult for himself. 

The vice president had a number of thorny issues already on his agenda, such as advancing the cause of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, discussing how to make progress on North Korea, trying to get Japan and South Korea on the same page, and most importantly, trying to persuade Beijing to step back and renounce its establishment of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) that overlapped with the pre-established ADIZs of South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan or at the very least, to avoid declaring any new ADIZs.
Despite this full plate of unenviable tasks, Vice President Biden couldn’t resist igniting a mini-media firestorm in Beijing when, in the name of creativity and innovation, he called on young Chinese seeking to visit the United States to “challenge the government, challenge your teachers, challenge religious leaders.” 

He went on to praise the importance of new immigrants to the United States in reinvigorating “the spirit of America” and reinforced that “stamped in the DNA of every American” is an “inherent rejection of orthodoxy.”
At first glance, his remarks seem at best impolitic, at worst downright harmful to the overall cause of furthering cooperation with China. 

Yet, upon further reflection—which the vice president may or may not have undertaken prior to uttering his call to arms—his comments signaled one of the most important policy thrusts of the entire visit.
As China cracks down politically at home and promulgates its own ideals abroad through its Confucius Institutes and state-run media, it matters that U.S. officials reiterate American political values. 

Not doing so in an effort to appease Chinese sensibilities not only is craven but also doesn’t win any favors from Beijing. 

This past week during his own visit to China, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron showered nothing but praise upon his Chinese hosts; in return he earned a scathing editorial in the Global Times and was forced to stand by and watch as one of his journalist countrymen was barred from his press conference with Chinese President Xi Jinping. 

Similarly, when Bloomberg fired star reporter Michael Forsythe in November—apparently for leaking to the New York Times that Bloomberg was kowtowing to Chinese pressure by holding back on the publication of a politically sensitive piece—the news corporation was rewarded with nothing better than visits by Chinese police to their newsrooms in Beijing and Shanghai.
In fact, Vice President Biden took on the issue of Chinese treatment of U.S. journalists and media companies directly in his talks with Chinese president Xi Jinping. 

U.S. media companies have long been stymied in their efforts to report openly and critically on China for fear of reprisals from Beijing. 

As Mark Landler reported in the New York Times, nearly two dozen New York Times and Bloomberg journalists are awaiting accreditation from Beijing; without it they will be expelled, effectively shutting down their China bureaus. 

The question now is whether the U.S. government will take further steps to pressure China on this issue. Would Washington be willing to delay the visas of Chinese journalists? 

Is there an issue of market access that could be advanced through the World Trade Organization? 

It may seem foolish to risk the overall relationship with China for such issues: The ADIZ, for example, represents a more immediate threat to regional security than access to China for U.S. journalists. 

However, the political values the vice president is advancing—transparency, openness, and accountability—in the final analysis are reflected not only in the way that China does business at home but also in how it behaves abroad. 

Biden is right to hold China to account on both fronts.

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‘China’s planned ADIZ over West Phl Sea to trigger tension’

“The world shares the same understanding that the regional tension should not be raised by Beijing’s unilateral course of action.” -- Itsunori Onodera

By Jaime Laude 

Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera and his Philippine counterpart, Secretary Voltaire Gazmin, meet at Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City yesterday. 

MANILA, Philippines -- Visiting Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said yesterday that China’s plan to establish an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the West Philippine Sea would further trigger tension as Beijing’s unilateral action would be opposed by other nations in Southeast Asia.
Emerging from a bilateral meeting with Department of National Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin at Camp Aguinaldo, Onodera pointed out that an ADIZ over the South China Sea would cause alarm not only to the Japanese government but to the international community as well.
“I think the world shares the same understanding that the regional tension should not be raised by Beijing’s unilateral course of action,” Onodera said.
Japan and China are locked in a territorial row over a chain of islands known as Senkakus in the East China Sea.
Tension has been mounting in the region following China’s establishment of ADIZ over the area, a moved defied by the Tokyo government and the US military.
Beijing recently announced it is also establishing an ADIZ over the South China Sea to further boost its maritime claim in the hotly-contested region against other claimant countries including Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines.
“The United States, South Korea, Taiwan and European Union and other countries are expressing strong concern over this. If the new ADIZ will be set in South China Sea or the West Philippine Sea, I think the government of Japan needs to express its concern similarly to what we have stand in East China Sea,” Onodera said.
Aside from several reefs that Beijing has converted into forward naval bases in the South China Sea, it has also established what it calls Sansha City on the Woody Island in the Paracels to manage its supposed territorial waters in the East and South China Seas.
Several Chinese warships have been conducting regular patrols over the two areas. 

As China’s naval operations are continuously being challenged by Japan in the East China Sea, they have remained largely uncontested in the South China Sea and West Philippine Sea.
China has been maintaining warships in Panganiban Reef and Subi Reef in Palawan. 

Only this year, China deployed two maritime surveillance vessels within the vicinity of Ayungin Shoal.

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Impending Japan-China war has the makings of a Clancy classic

BY MARK SCHREIBER

Japanese soldiers from the 22nd Infantry Regiment of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force train in urban assault with American Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment, 5th Brigade Oct. 17, 2008 during a bilateral exercise at Fort Lewis' Leschi Town.
On Nov. 23, China announced the creation of a newly expanded air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea, overlapping a large expanse of Japanese territory. 

The move has produced a visceral reaction in the Japanese vernacular media, particularly the weekly tabloids. 

Five out of nine weekly magazines that went on sale last Monday and Tuesday contained scenarios that raised the possibility of a shooting war.
One can only wonder what sort of tale American “techno-thriller” writer Tom Clancy — author of “The Hunt for Red October” (1984, involving the Soviet Union) and “Debt of Honor” (1994, involving Japan) — might have spun from the scenario that’s now unfolding in the East China Sea.
Alas, Mr. Clancy passed away of an undisclosed illness on Oct. 1, so instead the task has fallen to Japan’s gunji hyōronka (military affairs critics) or gunji jānarisuto (military affairs writers), whose phones have been ringing off the hook.
First, let’s take Flash (Dec. 17), which ran a “Simulated breakout of war over the Senkakus,” with Mamoru Sato, a former Air Self-Defense Force general, providing editorial supervision. 

Flash’s scenario has the same tense tone as a Clancy novel, including dialog. 

On a day in August 2014, a radar operator instructs patrolling F-15J pilots to “scramble north” at an altitude of 65,000 feet to intercept a suspected intruder and proceeds from there.
Sunday Mainichi (Dec. 15) ran an article headlined “Sino-Japanese war to break out in January.” 

Political reporter Takao Toshikawa tells the magazine that the key to what happens next will depend on China’s economy.
“The economic situation in China is pretty rough right now, and from the start of next year it’s expected to worsen,” says Toshikawa. 

“The real-estate boom is headed for a total collapse and the economic disparities between the costal regions and the interior continue to widen. I see no signs that the party’s Central Committee is getting matters sorted out.”
An unnamed diplomatic source offered the prediction that the Chinese might very well set off an incident “accidentally on purpose”: “I worry about the possibility they might force down a civilian airliner and hold the passengers hostage,” he suggested.
In an article described as a “worst-case simulation,” author Osamu Eya expressed concerns in Shukan Asahi Geino (Dec. 12) that oil supertankers bound for Japan might be targeted.
“Japan depends on sea transport for oil and other material resources,” said Eya. 

“If China were to target them, nothing could be worse to contemplate.”
In an air battle over the Senkakus, the Geino article continues, superiority of radar communications would be a key factor in determining the outcome. 

Japanese forces have five fixed radar stations in Kyushu and four in Okinawa. 

China would certainly target these, which would mean surrounding communities would also be vulnerable.
One question that seems to be on almost everybody’s mind is, will the U.S. military become involved?
Shukan Gendai (Dec. 14) speculated that Chinese leader Xi Jinping might issue an order for a Japanese civilian airliner to be shot down. 

As a result of this, a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier would come to Japan’s aid and send up fighters to contend with the Chinese.
“Unlike Japan, the U.S. military would immediately respond to a radar lock-on threat by shooting down the Chinese planes,” asserts military analyst Mitsuhiro Sera. 

“It would naturally regard an aircraft flying overhead as hostile. They would shoot at it even if that were to risk discrediting the Obama administration.”
“With the creation of Japan’s National Security Council on Dec. 4, Japan-U.S. solidarity meets a new era,” an unnamed diplomatic source told Shukan Gendai. 

“If a clash were to occur between the U.S. and China, it would be natural for the Self-Defense Forces to provide backup assistance. This was confirmed at the ‘two-plus-two’ meeting on Oct. 3.”
“China is bent on wresting the Senkakus away from Japan, and if Japan dispatches its Self-Defense Forces, China will respond with naval and air forces,” Saburo Takai predicts in Flash.

“In the case of an incursion by irregular forces, that would make it more difficult for the U.S. to become involved. Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs would protest through diplomatic channels, but China would attempt to present its takeover as a fait accompli."
“China fears a direct military confrontation with the U.S.,” Takai adds. 

“A few days ago, two U.S. B-52s transited the ADIZ claimed by China, but the flights were not for any vague purpose. I suppose the Chinese tracked the flights on their radar, but the B-52s have electronic detection functions that can identify radar frequencies, wavelength and source of the signals. These flights are able to lay bare China’s air defense systems. It really hits home to the Chinese that they can’t project their military power.”

Which side, wonders Shukan Gendai, will respond to a provocation by pulling the trigger? 

The game of chicken between two great superpowers is about to begin.

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U.S. senators to Chinese ambassador: Senkakus under Japanese control

Japan Times

WASHINGTON – A bipartisan group of senators sent a letter to the Chinese ambassador to the United States on Thursday that criticizes Beijing’s establishment of an air defense identification zone and recognizes the Senkaku Islands as being under Japanese control.
The four members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, including Chairman Robert Menendez, said in the letter to Cui Tiankai that they view the unilateral ADIZ declaration as “an ill-conceived attempt to alter the status quo.”
“China’s declaration of an ADIZ over areas of the East China Sea does not alter the U.S. acknowledgement of Japan’s administrative control over the Senkaku Islands,” the letter said.
The senators include Bob Corker, the ranking Republican on the committee.
The senators took the action because of the U.S. government’s strong reaction to the ADIZ, which overlaps similar zones previously set up by Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
China is also demanding that all aircraft entering the zone submit flight plans and has cited the possibility of military action.
Washington has said the bilateral security treaty with Japan, under which the United States is required to defend Japan, covers the Senkakus.
“This declaration reinforces the perception that China prefers coercion over rule of law mechanisms to address territorial, sovereignty or jurisdictional issues in the Asia-Pacific,” the letter said.
Given that China is involved in territorial disputes in the South China Sea with countries such as the Philippines and Vietnam, the senators urged Beijing not to implement the ADIZ and to “refrain from taking similar provocative actions elsewhere in the region.”
The Senate unanimously adopted a resolution in July that condemned “the use of coercion, threats or force” in the South China Sea and the East China Sea to assert disputed maritime or territorial claims or alter the status quo.

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China meets its own worst enemy

An assertion of power backfires
By Steve Chapman

To achieve any ambitious goal, you have to want it badly enough to work and sacrifice. 

But there is such a thing as trying too hard. 

Overzealous pursuit of your heart's desire can end up chasing it away.
The Chinese government may be learning that right now. 

China, a great civilization brought low by foreign powers in the 19th and 20th centuries, has long burned to acquire a global stature corresponding to its self-image.
Its transformation from an economic catastrophe to an export machine has made it a much bigger player in world affairs. 

But sometimes efforts to assert itself generate not respect and cooperation but fear and resistance.
The decision to establish an air defense identification zone in the East China Sea didn't have to set alarm bells clanging from Seoul to Tokyo to Washington. 

Other countries have their own along their coastlines, and Beijing can make a reasonable case that it's entitled to one as well.
But the Chinese didn't make the case; they just proclaimed it. 

The change came in such an abrupt and surprising way as to make it impossible for anyone to cheerfully accept. 

China failed to consult with its neighbors in advance, took in islands long under Japanese jurisdiction and established rules beyond what other countries impose.
In attempting to expand its reach, the regime got its fingers scorched. 

Japan not only objected vigorously but mobilized support from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which includes 10 of China's neighbors. 

South Korea carried out military exercises in the area and told its airlines to ignore the Chinese demand.
The U.S. Air Force sent a couple of B-52s rumbling through the space in an ostentatious show of disrespect. President Xi Jinping had to endure the torture of a Joe Biden lecture. 

Oh, and if Chinese fighters provoke actual combat with their Japanese and American counterparts, they are likely to be shot down.
How does all this make China stronger and more influential? It doesn't. 

It repels its neighbors and spurs them to band together. 

It encourages Washington to retain a big military presence in the Pacific. 

Those in power in Beijing ought to understand as much, because they usually try to avoid steps guaranteed to cheese people off.
Twenty years ago, as China was building up its military and asserting itself in the region, experts feared it would end up going to war with various nearby countries over territorial claims, or that it would use force to keep Taiwan in line. 

But neither scenario came to pass. 

China, unlike some countries I could mention, hasn't fought a war since 1979. 

Taiwan is as independent, in practice, as ever.
Meanwhile, China has worked to behave like an upstanding member of the community of nations — joining the World Trade Organization, channeling aid and investment to Africa, hosting the Olympics and joining efforts to stop North Korea from building nuclear weapons.
This was a huge shift from the militancy of Mao Zedong, who saw himself as the enemy of the West, defied global norms of conduct and occasionally cackled about winning a nuclear war.
But nationalism can warp the government's judgment, as it did this time. 

China's rulers might take a page from the history of another country that has often played an outsized role in its part of the world: Germany. 

Or, rather, two pages.
In the early 20th century, Germany aspired to play a larger role in Europe, and it feared being encircled by enemies. 

But its behavior, such as building a navy to compete with Britain and forging an alliance with Austria-Hungary, stimulated other nations to coalesce against it, which led to defeat in World War I. 

Its ambitions destroyed its own ends.
After the fall of the Third Reich, by contrast, Germany put aside narrow national interests and made a priority of respecting and accommodating its neighbors. 

Its once-terrifying military became a servant of the Western alliance. 

Through humility and restraint, Germany somehow rose to the point that it is now, in the words of a BBC commentator, "Europe's indispensable power."
The Chinese leaders are doubtless familiar with Italian political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli's adage that it is better to be feared than loved. 

They shouldn't forget the more pertinent advice of an underrated international relations theorist from Nazareth. 

Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, he said, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

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Julie Bishop stands firm in diplomatic spat with China

‘‘Australia should never be afraid to stand by our values and our views.’’ -- Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop

By Philip Wen 

'We stand by our view': Julie Bishop in Beijing.
Beijing -- Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop has held firm in the face of an unconventionally strong protest from Beijing over the federal government’s position on China’s newly-declared air defence zone in the East China Sea, insisting Australia ‘‘should never be afraid to stand by our values and our views’’.
In another flashpoint in the simmering diplomatic spat between the two countries, the Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi sidestepped convention by launching into a stern rebuke of Ms Bishop in front of international and Chinese media before a formal closed-door meeting on Friday.
‘‘I have to point out that what Australia has said and done with regard to China’s establishment of the air defence identification zone in the East China Sea has jeopardised bilateral mutual trust and affected the sound growth of bilateral relations,’’ Mr Wang said, in introductory comments usually reserved for polite exchanges of pleasantries. 

‘‘This is not what we desire to see.’’
While appearing surprised by the unusually direct and public nature of Mr Wang’s comments, Ms Bishop responded firmly.
‘‘I must take issue with you on the matter of the East China Sea. We stand by our view,’’ she said, before reporters were ushered out of the room.
Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Ms Bishop rejected suggestions that foreign policy was not a strong suit of the Abbott government, with relations with Jakarta also strained over a spying scandal.
She said the government held a ‘‘credible’’ position with respect to China’s air defence zone which was motivated by the importance with which it viewed peace and stability in the region.
‘‘Australia has its own national interest, its view, its position, and we should never be afraid to stand by our values and our views,’’ Ms Bishop said.
She denied the disagreement over the East China Sea had overshadowed the first annual foreign and strategic dialogue between the two countries, pointing out a wide range of issues were canvassed in a ‘‘robust’’ discussion that lasted nearly four hours, deep into Friday night.
Beyond the East China Sea, tensions in North Korea and Syria, the economic and investment relationship between Australia and China, as well as the New Colombo plan which will help boost the numbers of Australian undergraduate students studying in China, were all discussed, she said.
Ms Bishop said she also raised ‘‘specific instances’’ of human rights concerns and Australian consular matters, without providing details. 

Among the publicly-known Australians to be jailed in China include former Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu and entrepreneurs Matthew Ng and Charlotte Chou, who is awaiting the result of an appeal.
She said Chinese Vice-President Li Yuanchao expressed a desire to conclude a free trade agreement ‘‘in the very near future’’, in a separate meeting earlier on Friday.
The foreign and strategic dialogue is part of the newly-expanded bilateral strategic architecture set up by the former Gillard government in April.
China’s move to establish the air defence zone in the East China Sea last month is seen as a strategic move to bolster its claim over a group of Japanese islands – known as Senkaku.
China has threatened to use military force to enforce the zone, contributing to heightened tensions in the region, with the United States, Japan and Korea ignoring China’s demands and continuing to fly military aircraft through the zone without notification.
An escalating series of diplomatic gestures between Canberra and Beijing have strained relations since last week after Australia took the rare step of calling in China’s ambassador to demand an explanation.

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Debate on Air Zones Continues in South Korea

By Alastair Gale

South Korea continued to debate its response to China’s move to include an area of ocean disputed by the two nations in its own new air-defense identification zone.

On Thursday, South Korea said it would consider extending its own air-defense zone to respond to China’s move after Beijing refused a demand from Seoul to redraw its new zone.
Since then, the issue has been on the agenda at a series of high-level meetings in Korea’s capital as the government considers how to proceed.
In addition to inflaming its dispute with China, officials are aware the move could also worsen already-fraught ties with Japan. 

The air-defense identification zones of South Korea and Japan share a border and any move to extend the Korean zone would almost certainly overlap with Japanese interests.

A picture made available by the South Korean Navy shows a South Korean destroyer patrolling in waters around Ieodo. 

South Korean media reported that Seoul is considering extensions of its ADIZ to the south, east and west, primarily to cover an area of ocean around a submerged rock that is claimed by China but administered by South Korea. 

The rock has a Korean-built marine research station on it and the two nations claim exclusive economic rights to the area.
South Korea’s defense ministry, foreign ministry and presidential office all declined to comment on the discussions.
A decision from Seoul on the matter had been expected early this week. 

But local media report that it is likely to be delayed until later in the week and may come during or after a visit from U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. 

Officials say a move to extend South Korea’s air-defense zone isn’t a given, but Seoul feels pressured to respond forcefully because of the long-running dispute with China over the area of ocean around the submerged rock and concerns the new Chinese air-defense zone would worsen South Korea’s position in future talks.
“An expansion isn’t the only option that serves national interest. Resolving, moderating and managing conflict is also a part of a national gain in a forward-looking perspective,” Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Wi Yong-seop said last week.
South Korea has refused to recognize the new Chinese zone and has instructed the nation’s airlines not to file flight plans to Chinese authorities when entering the zone.

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China pulls out of UN process over territorial dispute with Philippines

“There is a price to be paid for branding yourself an international outlaw – a state that does not comply with the rules.” -- Paul Reichler
By Paul Lewis in Washington

Fallout over China’s territorial claims has become the dominant issue for Joe Biden. 

China is taking the highly unusual step of refusing to participate in a United Nations arbitration process over a territorial conflict with the Philippines, one of five countries challenging Beijing’s claims of ownership over the oil-rich South China Sea.
The legal dispute underscores the tough geopolitical approach China is adopting in the Pacific region. 

It has adopted an aggressive approach toward neighbours over a 2,000-mile stretch that also includes the East China Sea, over which it recently declared the air defence identification zone that has inflamed tensions with Japan and South Korea.
China sent its only aircraft carrier to the disputed waters off the coast of the Philippines for the first time last week, in a move Manila said raised tensions. 

China’s military said the carrier Liaoning will conduct drills in the area, accompanied by two destroyers and two frigates.
Dealing with the fallout over China’s territorial claims has become the dominant issue for the US vice-president, Joe Biden, who is currently touring the Asia Pacific region.
Biden arrived in South Korea on Thursday after high-level bilateral meetings in China and Japan that were dominated by the issue of the air defence zone.
The Philippines will submit its formal case to the UN arbitration tribunal of judges, which has agreed to hear the case at The Hague, in March. 

A preview of their arguments were outlined this week in Washington by Paul Reichler, an expert attorney at Foley Hoag LLP hired by Manila to handle the case.
He said China’s blank refusal to participate in the tribunal process, a move it revealed to the Philippines by way of diplomatic letter in February, marked the first time a state had ever refused to take part in an inter-state arbitration under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Under the convention, the panel of senior international judges is still required to issue a ruling in the case, despite China’s non-cooperation, although Reichler conceded there were no way of enforcing any ruling.
But he added: “There is a price to be paid for branding yourself an international outlaw – a state that does not comply with the rules.” 

China declined an opportunity to comment on the case.
The dispute concerns China’s declaration of the so-called nine-dash line, which claims jurisdiction over nearly all of the mineral-rich South China Sea, overlapping with large segments of territory claimed by the Philippines as well as of Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei.
In parts, China’s declared jurisdiction, which enables it to exploit lucrative fishing waters and potential oil and gas reserves, stretch more than 800 miles from its mainland coast. 

It also comes to within 30 miles of the coast of the Philippines.
Under the convention, states have a right to an exclusive economic zone and continental shelf within 200 miles of their coast. 

Disputes over the South China Sea are not unlike those over the Japanese Senkaku islands which are dominating Biden’s visits to Japan, China and South Korea this week.
Although the ad-hoc tribunal formed to deal with the case cannot rule on the sovereignty of the islands claimed by both China and the Philippines, it can provide rulings about the nature of rock formations, with implications for any territorial claims under the convention. 

Some of the disputed territories are barely visible at high tide, while others are fully submerged even at low tide.
In a bid to strengthen its claims, China has constructed concrete installations on some underwater formations, complete with basketballs and helipads. 

“A state cannot transform an underwater feature into an island by building on top of it,” Reichler said at a seminar organised by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
In simple terms, the judges will in part be asked to determine when a rock can be defined as an island. 

If a rock protruding from the sea cannot sustain human life or economic activity, for example, the associated rights in surrounding waters are, under the convention, dramatically reduced, regardless of which state claims ownership.
Reichler also showed one slideshow of an island that, at high-tide, consisted of rocks that only just protruded out of the water. 

“It is barely big enough to support the Filipino flag,” he said.

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Japan Passes Resolution Urging China to Scrap ADIZ

By ELEANOR WARNOCK

TOKYO—Japan's lower house unanimously passed a resolution condemning China's new air-defense zone Friday, the first official action by the nation's legislators on the issue.
Beijing established the zone on Nov. 23 above islands in the East China Sea that China, Japan and Taiwan claim. 

China has said that foreign aircraft entering the Air Defense Identification Zone must notify Beijing of their flight plans beforehand.
Security experts say the development could increase the likelihood of a clash between Japan and China, and potentially force U.S. involvement.
China's decision and Japan's response are the latest developments in a territorial squabble that has chilled relations between the two countries in recent years.
While the resolution's title directly called for the zone's abolishment, the text of the resolution called for Japan's neighbor to "immediately remove all measures that limit the freedom of flight over international waters."
The resolution said the creation of the zone "raised tensions in the East China Sea more than ever and by extension is a dangerous action that risks threatening the peace and stability of the Asia-Pacific region."
It also characterized the zone as an infringement of Japan's territorial sovereignty.
In response to the passage of the resolution, China's foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said: "Japan has no right to make irresponsible statements like that and China is firmly opposed to it. Japan should stop these erroneous actions, and stop its meddling and provocation."
The spokesman also said the establishment of the zone was legal.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden condemned China's actions earlier in the week during his visit to Tokyo.
"We in the U.S. are deeply concerned by the attempt to unilaterally change the status quo in the East China Sea," he said.
Tensions over the Senkaku islands have been elevated since last year, following Japan's decision to nationalize some of the islands, a decision that prompted demonstrations in China and a boycott of Japanese products.

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China's Threat: South Korea Plans to Expand Defense Zone

JONATHAN CHENG

SEOUL—South Korea pressed ahead with plans to expand its air-defense identification zone after a meeting with visiting U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Friday.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye shakes hands with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Friday.

As early as Sunday, Seoul says it will make a formal announcement about expanding its air defense zone, a direct response to China's recent move to create an air-defense identification zone in the East China Sea that has angered Japan, South Korea and the U.S.
Seoul is the only one of China's neighbors to respond in-kind following Beijing's unexpected announcement last month that it would require foreign aircraft to notify it when entering its new air-defense zone.
According to a statement issued by South Korea's presidential office, Mr. Biden acknowledged South Korean President Park Geun-hye's position on Korea's air defense zone.

Both sides agreed to continue discussing the matter, the statement said.
U.S. officials had no immediate account of the closed-door meeting, but shortly afterward, South Korea's foreign affairs and national security ministers convened to finalize plans for the new, expanded Korean zone.
In a briefing earlier on Friday, a spokesman for the defense ministry said that South Korea's newly-drawn expanded air-defense zone should cover a submerged reef claimed by both China and South Korea that falls within China's new air defense zone.
The submerged rock, known internationally as the Socotra Rock, is called Ieodo. South Korea runs a marine research station built on top of the rock.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said South Korea should keep to international laws and conventions in expanding its zone, adding that Beijing would stay in communication with Seoul.
Mr. Biden didn't refer to the plans for the enlarged South Korean air-defense zone in a speech at a Seoul university after his meeting with Ms. Park. 

However, he did repeat the U.S. position that it doesn't recognize the Chinese zone, while stopping short of calling on Beijing to repeal its air zone.
"We do not recognize the zone. It will have no effect on American operations—just ask my general," Mr. Biden said. "None. Zero."
In his speech, Mr. Biden called on South Korea, as well as Japan and China, to "lower the temperature" after several weeks of confusion and rhetoric on the region's various air defense zones.
"The possibility of miscalculation, a mistake, is real," he said, repeating recent calls by U.S. officials for better ties between Japan and South Korea, two U.S. allies that continue to bicker over historical and territorial disputes.
"The entire region will be more stable and more secure if the leading democracies—Japan, South Korea and the United States—are able to improve their relations and cooperation with one another," Mr. Biden said.

Mr. Biden's stop in Seoul, which concludes Saturday, wraps up a three-nation Asian tour that was originally planned to promote trade, but which has instead tested Washington's ability to keep tensions between China, Japan and South Korea from spilling over.

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How to Answer China's Aggression

A freshly aggressive tone from Beijing greets Joe Biden on his week-long trip to Asia.
By JOHN BOLTON

China's declaration on Nov. 23 of an air-defense identification zone over the Japanese Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea transformed Vice President Joe Biden's Asia trip this week. 

Mr. Biden's main objective in meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Abe on Tuesday was to assure him that America opposes China's belligerent, unilateral action in asserting the defense zone. 

Of course, if Mr. Abe really wants to know how the Obama administration treats close American allies, he can always call Bibi Netanyahu.
Although Mr. Biden publicly criticized the defense-zone announcement, he did not expressly reject it. Moreover, the administration earlier advised U.S. commercial airlines to notify China of flights into the zone, whereas Japan and South Korea told their airlines not to make such notifications. 

At the very best, these are mixed, and therefore dangerous, signals.
Beijing's new zone over the Senkaku islands, along with the government's broader territorial claims, is indicative of a much larger problem for the United States. 

For too long, American business and political leaders have accepted the notion that China is engaged in a "peaceful rise" to become a "responsible stakeholder" in world affairs, which we should placidly allow to happen. 

Instead of fantasizing about what China might become, it is far more sensible to consider what America's strategy should be under a range of possible scenarios. 

The rosy "peaceful rise" theory ignores countless other possibilities, particularly its polar opposite.

Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao, right, and U.S Vice President Joe Biden in Beijing on Wednesday.Associated Press

The People's Liberation Army remains the dominant force within the Communist Party, and the party remains the dominant political (and major economic) force in China. 

That explains Beijing's sustained increases in military budgets; its expanding nuclear and ballistic-missile arsenals; its unmatched cyberwarfare program; its construction of a blue-water navy; and its anti-satellite, anti-access and area-denial weapons systems. 

These aren't the marks of a "peaceful rise," especially combined with Beijing's aggressive territorial claims.
America urgently needs strategic thinking about China's radically different alternative futures. 

Simply ignoring the bad news won't work. 

Here are three building blocks for a more realistic U.S. strategy on China.

First, since China's principal theater of action for decades will be Asia, that must also be the focus of America's response. 

China's territorial claims, and now the air-defense zone, provide Washington with an enormous opportunity to maintain and expand its influence along China's periphery, from India to Japan. 

Whether we have the wit to exploit this opportunity remains to be seen.
Ideally, the U.S. would benefit from something akin to an alliance system among our friends and allies, currently a far-fetched goal given, for example, tensions between South Korea and Japan. 

Contemporary Japanese-Chinese disputes are mirrored in Seoul-Tokyo arguments over seemingly useless islands and reefs, reflecting even deeper historical grievances and animosities. 

Nonetheless, America alone can provide the support necessary to resist Chinese hegemonism, which essentially all Asian governments recognize. 

They would welcome a stronger, more visible, Washington role, even if they won't necessarily say so expressly in today's uncertain and dangerous environment.
Taiwan has an interesting potential role. 

Although its territorial claims mirror Beijing's, Taipei could gain substantial support for its unique status from its Asian neighbors, thereby reducing its international isolation, by distancing itself from China's current assertive posture. 

For example, Taiwan could say publicly that it does not recognize Beijing's defense-zone declaration, and that it wants to confer with Japan, South Korea and others to align their responses. 

So doing would serve notice that Taiwan won't accept being declared part of China's next power projection.

Second, China's military growth demonstrates persuasively why the U.S. can no longer countenance massive military-budget cuts. 

We need superior Pacific Ocean air and naval power to counter Chinese aggressiveness, but we also need capabilities in the Middle East, the North Atlantic and elsewhere against other potential threats.
Beijing doesn't have to match America's military capabilities world-wide to equal the U.S. off China's shores. Accordingly, allies who pulled their weight in meeting common-defense needs would certainly help. 

Most of Europe may be beyond redemption, but Japan is poised to resume a normal nation's full self-defense role, something Washington should welcome.

Third, the U.S. and its allies should press China to join a vigorous campaign to counter the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by North Korea, Iran and others. 

Pyongyang's nuclear and ballistic-missile capabilities have fueled enormous concern in East Asia. 

While China has the heft to bring North Korea to heel, Beijing's persistent failure to do so signals that it is not as interested in solving the problem as its rhetoric indicates.
No wonder, therefore, that Tokyo and Seoul look to their own military capabilities, including missile defense, to protect themselves against Pyongyang and Beijing's growing nuclear arsenal as well. 

Nor has China's interest in Iran's oil reserves helped in containing Tehran's nuclear program.
Japan and Israel both live in the real world of threats and dangers, not in the Obama bubble where national-security issues rarely intrude on his efforts to reshape American society. 

But China's air-defense zone move has pierced the bubble, and Joe Biden's Asia trip could tell us if President Obama now gets it.

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U.S., China Signal Retreat From Standoff Over Air-Defense Zone

By PETER NICHOLAS in Washington, JEREMY PAGE in Beijing and YUKA HAYASHI in Tokyo

The U.S. and China both signaled they are backing away from a confrontation over China's new air-defense zone, with both nations moving toward an understanding that the zone won't be policed in ways that threaten the region or endanger the lives of pilots and passengers.
U.S. officials insist the defense zone established by China on Nov. 23 over disputed islands in the East China Sea is illegitimate. 

Some said privately that they don't expect China to roll it back.
Vice President Joe Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping for more than five hours in Beijing on Wednesday to discuss the air-defense zone and other issues.
A focus of Mr. Biden in those meetings was to define the "rules of engagement" between China and other nations in the region to prevent a calamity, said a former national security aide to Mr. Biden who spoke to administration staffers on the trip.
"I don't think it's going to disappear," said the former aide, Julianne Smith. 

Having already set up the zone, "it would be really hard for [the Chinese] to back out of this," she said.
"The bottom line right now is doing all we can on the margins to ensure the safety of any of the aircraft that finds itself in this vicinity," said Ms. Smith, a senior vice president at Beacon Global Strategies.
Mr. Biden arrived in South Korea on Thursday for another round of talks aimed at defusing tensions in the region, grappling with Seoul's plans to expand its own air-defense zone in a move that stands to intensify animosities in the volatile region. 

South Korean officials will meet on Friday to finalize plans for the new zone.
Obama administration officials reiterated on Thursday that the U.S. doesn't accept China's zone and isn't changing U.S. military operations to accommodate the Chinese.
Calling China's actions "dangerous and provocative," White House spokesman Jay Carney said of the zone Thursday that "we don't accept it and we call on China not to implement it."
Still, there was little talk of China formally rescinding the air-defense identification zone, or ADIZ. 

A defense official echoed the U.S. position that China shouldn't "implement" the zone—statements that could suggest the U.S. wants China to halt steps toward adopting the stringent regulations Beijing originally announced.
The U.S. position, coupled with China's elastic interpretation of its own rules so far, appeared to reduce the immediate threat of the standoff widening into a military clash that could embroil the U.S.
China on Thursday asked the U.S. to respect the zone, saying it complied with international norms. 

But China added that it was willing to discuss "technical issues" with other countries on flight safety in the region.
Beijing has also clarified requirements that aircraft file reports or face unspecified defensive measures.
China's defense ministry, which issued the rules, now says the military won't shoot down aircraft in the zone, and will instead monitor and identify them, only sending up fighter jets to track them if they are considered a threat.
Defense experts said that interpretation of the rules is relatively close to how other countries, including the U.S. and Japan, enforce air-defense zones, which are established unilaterally and aren't regulated by an international body.
"Here we have our ally, Japan, saying the zone should be undone, but that's a position the U.S. is unlikely to take," said M. Taylor Fravel, an expert on China and international security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

"The real question is what you do to enforce it, so that's why you see the U.S. increasingly focusing on the procedures." 

He added that "there's been an evolution" in the U.S. position.
The U.S. response has disappointed officials in Japan, which has called for the zone to be withdrawn. 

Still, Japanese officials said Thursday they understand the U.S. predicament and remain in lockstep over basic security principles.
Some congressional Republicans also are unhappy with the White House. 

"You've got to give the other side notice right off the bat that there is going to be a cost to them for being so aggressive," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R., Calif.), a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. 

Administration officials "certainly aren't projecting strength now that we're on the edge of a crisis."
The discrepancy between the U.S. and Japanese positions highlights the challenge facing the U.S. as it tries to reassure its closest traditional allies in the region, Japan and South Korea, while adapting to China's rapidly expanding influence.
The Obama administration has pledged to refocus military and other resources on Asia. But Asian officials expressed doubts about U.S. staying power.
Mr. Biden in his meetings with Mr. Xi repeated that the U.S. didn't recognize the new zone, but never demanded that China rescind it—the position Tokyo has taken since China first unveiled the plan last month.
U.S. officials have said in recent days that their main concern is China's stipulation that the rules apply to any aircraft in the zone, even if it is not planning to enter China's national airspace.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon briefing this week that the international norm was for pilots to report to local authorities only if intending to enter its airspace.
"So it wasn't the declaration of the ADIZ that actually was destabilizing," he said. 

"It was their assertion that they would cause all aircraft entering the ADIZ to report regardless of whether they were intending to enter into the sovereign airspace of China. And that is destabilizing."
That appeared to be a departure from earlier U.S. statements, which declared the establishment of the zone itself as a destabilizing attempt to change the status quo in the region.
Defense officials said Thursday that the Pentagon's position hadn't changed.
"The U.S. does not recognize this ADIZ and urges China to not implement it," said a defense official. 

"U.S. military flights have and will continue to operate in the region and we will not recognize the ADIZ."
Chuck Hagel, the U.S. defense secretary, was asked at the same briefing whether he thought China should "roll back" the zone.
"It's not that the ADIZ itself is new or unique," Mr. Hagel said. 

"The biggest concern that we have is how it was done so unilaterally and so immediately without any consultation or international consultation."
Officials in Tokyo say that Japan and the U.S. maintain a unified policy in their response to the ADIZ. 

They also deny that Washington has changed its stance to accept Beijing's new policy in effect.
"The U.S. and Japan reaffirmed that China's unilateral change shall not be accepted and that we will continue to work closely together," said Yoshihide Suga, chief cabinet secretary.
However, Japanese officials say in private that the statements made by Mr. Biden and other U.S. officials over the past few days have fallen short of what they had hoped to hear under an ideal scenario.
Neither has the U.S. criticized China specifically for its decision to include the islands at the center of its bilateral dispute with Japan in the new zone, even as they used expressions such as "escalatory" or "destabilizing" to describe the move.
Japanese officials say the inclusion of the islands is the biggest issue they have with the Chinese zone.
"China takes advantage of other countries when they show their weakness and grabs things away from them one after another," said Makoto Iokibe, a former president of the National Defense Academy. 

"The U.S. shouldn't tolerate the attempt to change the status quo by use of force. If they do, it's wrong."
Japanese officials have also privately complained about U.S regulators' decision to urge its private carriers to comply with China's new rule and file their flight plans. 

The move has put Tokyo in an awkward position as it has forbid its own airlines from doing so.
Still, Japanese officials are quick to point out that the U.S. and Japan are in agreement over basic principles on regional security and in their mutual commitment to their six-decade-old alliance.

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ADIZ stirs fears for South China Sea

By Richard Javad Heydarian

MANILA -- China's recent controversial announcement of an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) covering disputed island features in the East China Sea has raised concerns in Southeast Asia that Beijing will soon invoke a similar measure for the hotly contested South China Sea.
The ADIZ encompasses the South Korean leodo rock as well as the Japanese Senkaku islands in the East China Sea, helping to China on a sharper collision course with Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, as well as the United States.
Southeast Asian claimants in the South China Sea, particularly the Philippines and Vietnam, have reportedly been alarmed by China's expressed willingness to "adopt defensive emergency measures to respond to aircraft that do not cooperate in the identification or refuse to follow the instructions".
China's Defense Ministry's announcement said that it will "establish other air defense identification zones at an appropriate time after completing preparations". 

To Manila and Hanoi, these statements signal that China intends to eventually adopt an ADIZ over the contested Paracel and Spratly islands and other features in the South China Sea.
Given the lopsided power asymmetry between China and its Southeast Asian neighbors, neither the Philippines nor Vietnam possesses credible indigenous deterrence against China's prospective announcement of an ADIZ in the South China Sea.
Both countries have thus carefully watched the response of Washington and its powerful northeast allies in the East China Sea, hoping that China will re-examine its apparent planned moves in the South China Sea.
"There's this threat that China will control the air space [in the South China Sea] ... It transforms an entire air zone into China's domestic air space," Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert Del Rosario said in response to China's ADIZ announcement.

"That is an infringement and compromises the safety of civil aviation ... it also compromises the national security of affected states."
The US, Japan and South Korea have swiftly challenged China's ADIZ. 

On November 27, Washington dispatched two B-52 bombers from its forward-deployment base in Guam to enter China's unilaterally declared ADIZ without notifying Beijing.
Two days later, Japan sent fighter jets to the area to fend off Chinese patrol ships, while on December 4 South Korea conducted a joint sea and air military drill in the vicinity of the Chinese ADIZ to protest the inclusion of its Ieodo rock.
The concerted challenge coincided with the visit of US Vice President Joe Biden to the region, where he met leaders in Tokyo, Beijing, and Seoul. 

"China's recent and sudden announcement of the establishment of a new air defense identification zone has, to state the obvious, caused significant apprehension in the region," Biden declared during his visit to Beijing, contrasting with his earlier expressions of solidarity with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe while in Tokyo.
China, meanwhile, has adamantly asserted that there is no reason for "panic" among its neighbors, arguing that its ADIZ adheres to established international practices. 

Beijing has contended that a wide range of countries, from India, Japan, Pakistan, Norway, the United Kingdom and the US, maintain their own air identification zones.
"[The ADIZ is] a defensive measure and in line with international common practices," Chinese air force spokesperson Shen Jinke stated, emphasizing his country's sovereign right to protect its airspace. 

"China's air force is on high alert and will take measures to deal with diverse air threats to firmly protect the security of the country's airspace."

Unpunished defiance
China has sought to avoid further embarrassment of the open and unpunished defiance of its ADIZ by dispatching its own jet fighters to the area and reiterating the legal legitimacy of the new imposed measure.
Some analysts believe Beijing could soon move to impose an ADIZ in the South China Sea to underline the rationale of its claim. 

China's ADIZ is viewed by some commentators as an extension of its broad "cabbage strategy" to exert control over adjacent waters, combining new regulations and increased military maneuvers to consolidate its claims over contested features in the Western Pacific.
China's decision to include disputed territories in the East China Sea under its ADIZ, and the issuance of an explicit threat against uncooperative foreign aircraft, is a reflection of its rising territorial assertiveness. 

All ADIZs around the world only apply to civilian aircraft, with the US limiting its application to civilian aircrafts bound for US territory.
Many Southeast Asian states had earlier pinned hopes on a new era of constructive relations under Xi's leadership. 

For leading Filipino officials, this year has instead seen an escalation in territorial tensions, with the Xi administration more vigorously stepping up its claims, expanding military maneuvers in contested waters and leveraging its economic heft in a bid to sideline the US and Japan in the region.
Widely viewed as China's most charismatic leader since Deng Xiaoping, President Xi Jinping has more explicitly sought to reward regional allies with multi-billion trade and investment deals while isolating more recalcitrant Southeast Asian claimants such as the Philippines, which has expanded its military relations with Washington and Tokyo and openly challenged Beijing's territorial claims at The Hague.
Shortly before the ADIZ announcement, Xi's administration established a new State Security Committee, an overarching decision-making body tasked with handling foreign policy and national security issues. 

China's leaders previously handled such issues through a fragmented institutional arrangement, involving so-called Leading Small Groups on Foreign Affairs and National Security as well as the Central Military Commission.
Now with a streamlined decision-making process, Xi is personally directing all key decisions in the East and South China Seas. 

To his critics, Xi's close relations with the military and his "China Dream" motto signals a considerably more assertive stance in regional affairs and territorial issues, with the ADIZ announcement a reflection of this new trend.
In response, Japan and its Southeast Asian allies, most notably the Philippines and Vietnam, have fortified bilateral ties, hedging against a potential escalation in territorial disputes. 

Japan and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are drafting a joint statement to express concern over any "threat" to international civilian aviation. 

The draft statement, which reaffirms the common positions of Southeast Asian nations and Japan on "maritime security" and "freedom of navigation" in international waters, will be presented at the upcoming Japan-ASEAN summit in Tokyo.
There are no signs so far that China will back down from its new regulations. 

Indeed, the Xi administration seems determined to stand up to external powers and assert China's national security and territorial interests. 

The Philippines and Vietnam, on the other hand, hope that the widespread criticism of China's ADIZ will deter the imposition of a similar measure in the South China Sea. 

Otherwise, they will have to hope Washington and Tokyo launch similar challenges to any southern extension of China's new aerial ambitions.

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China's ADIZ Challenges the Pacific Defense Quadrangle

By Robbin Laird and Ed Timperlake

The PRC has recently declared an Air Defense Identification Zone, which covers not just its territory but those of Japan as well.
A key consideration as well is the NATURE of the rules, which the PRC is seeking to enforce in their self-declared ADIZ.
The PRC is seeking to enforce rules that are different from standard rules for an air identification zone. 

The Chinese authorities require reports from all aircraft that plan to pass through the zone, regardless of destination.
In contrast, Japan and the United States have their own air defense zones but only require aircraft to file flight plans and identify themselves if those planes intend to pass through national airspace. 

And in Japan, the Air Self Defense Force receives information on flight plans of incoming civil aircraft from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism, but does not seek reports directly.
As Bonnie Glaser put it:
China’s Aircraft Identification Rules make no distinction between aircraft flying parallel with China’s coastline through the ADIZ and those flying toward China’s territorial airspace.
Secretary of State Kerry highlighted this issue in his statement, saying that the US “does not apply its ADIZ procedures to foreign aircraft not intending to enter US national airspace,” implying that the US would not recognize China’s claimed right to take action against aircraft that are not intending to enter its national airspace.
The PRC Air Defense Identification Zone may seem an anomaly or an irrational act challenging multiple players in the Pacific.
But what it is in reality is the opening gambit in trying to impede and defeat the formation of a 21stcentury Pacific defense and security strategy by the U.S. and its allies.

The PRC and its newly declared Air Defense Identification Zone is about taking a bite out of 21st century approaches of the US and its allies for Pacific defense. 

What we have called the strategic quadrangle in the Pacific is a central area where the U.S. and several core allies are reaching out to shape collaborative defense capabilities to ensure defense in depth.
This area is central to the operation of forces from Japan, South Korea, Australia, India, Singapore and the United States, to mention the most important allies.
These allies are adding new air and maritime assets and are working to expand the reach and range of those assets through various new capabilities, such as air tanking and the shaping of electronic surveillance and defense assets.
Freedom to operate in the quadrangle is a baseline requirement for allies to shape collaborative capabilities and policies. 

Effectiveness can only emerge from exercising evolving forces and shaping convergent concepts of operations.
This requires time; this requires practice; and this requires introducing new systems such as A330 tankers and F-35s, P-8s, or Wedgetails into the operational area.
In our book on the shaping of a 21st century strategy, we highlight Pacific operational geography as a key element for forging such a strategy.
In effect, U.S. forces operate in two different quadrants—one can be conceptualized as a strategic triangle and the other as a strategic quadrangle.
The first quadrant—the strategic triangle—involves the operation of American forces from Hawaii and the crucial island of Guam with the defense of Japan. 

U.S. forces based in Japan are part of a triangle of bases, which provide for forward presence and ability to project power deeper into the Pacific.
The second quadrant—the strategic quadrangle—is a key area into which such power needs to be projected. 

The Korean peninsula is a key part of this quadrangle, and the festering threat from North Korea reaches out significantly farther than the peninsula itself.
The continent of Australia anchors the western Pacific and provides a key ally for the United States in shaping ways to deal with various threats in the Pacific, including the PRC reach deeper into the Pacific with PRC forces. 

Singapore is a key element of the quadrangle and provides a key ally for the United States and others in the region.
A central pressure in the region is that each of the key allies in the region works more effectively with the United States than they do with each other.
This is why the United States is a key lynchpin in providing cross linkages and cross capabilities within the region. 

But it is clear that over time a thickening of these regional linkages will be essential to an effective 21st-century Pacific strategy.
The distances in these regions are immense.
For the strategic triangle, the distance from Hawaii to Japan are nearly 4,100 miles. 

The distance from Hawaii to Guam—the key U.S. base in the Western Pacific—is nearly 4,000 miles. 

And the ability of Guam to work with Japan is limited by the nearly 2,000-mile distance between them as well.
For the strategic quadrangle, the distances are equally daunting. 

It is nearly 4,000 miles from Japan to Australia. It is nearly 2,500 miles from Singapore to Australia and nearly 3,000 miles from Singapore to South Korea.
Clearly, air and naval forces face significant challenges in providing presence and operational effectiveness over such distances.
This is why a key element of shaping an effective U.S. strategy in the Pacific will rest on much greater ability for the allies to work together and much greater capability for U.S. forces to work effectively with those allied forces.
In an interview we did earlier this year with Lt. General Robling who is MARFORCPAC, the General highlighted the significance of the geographical challenge to the kind of persistent presence the US is seeking in working with allies:
To get from Hawaii into the strategic triangle or quadrangle takes significant time. 

 Between Hawaii and Okinawa is about 5 steaming days. 

 It is longer to get to Australia and Guam and then back up to Okinawa and Tokyo within the Quadrangle.
Strategic aircraft lift – C-17s – cuts that time down significantly…hours vice days. 

However, they are expensive to use, take several sorties to move the same amount of equipment you could move on shipping and are not always available.
Our strategic partners and allies are spread out over a significant geographical area.
They want to train with us, but not always bilaterally, they sometimes want us to work with them and some or several of their partner countries.
That means we must take the training to them.
Enter the PRC and its attempt to declare an Air Defense Identification Zone or ADIZ.
This is clearly a significant gambit to take a bit out of the strategic quadrangle and to foment discord among allies.
According to a Japan Times article about the ADIZ:
The (Japanese) government branded as “very dangerous” China’s announcement Saturday that it has set up an East China Sea air defense identification zone that includes the Japan-held Senkaku Islands.
The Chinese Defence Ministry said the zone was created to “guard against potential air threats,” but the move will only inflame a bitter sovereignty row over the islets.
Later Saturday, China scrambled air force jets, including fighter planes, to patrol the new zone…..
(The new zone) covers a wide area of the East China Sea between South Korea and Taiwan, and includes the Senkaku islets…..
Along with the new zone, the Chinese ministry released a set of aircraft identification rules that it says must be followed by all aircraft entering the area, under penalty of intervention by China’s military.
Aircraft are now expected to provide their flight path, clearly mark their nationality and maintain two-way radio communication in order to “respond in a timely and accurate manner to identification inquiries” from Chinese authorities….

This last point is an important one: for the PRC is asserting its right to verify the operations of all aircraft, whether commercial or military and whether intending to enter PRC territory or not.
This might seem a irrational act of a power hungry power but seem from the perspective of the strategic geography of the Pacific it is not.
The PRC is putting down its marker onto the quadrangle and if not dealt with will undoubtedly expand its definitions of air and maritime defense outward.
We have placed the ADIZ down upon the strategic geography we have identified and a key reality quickly emerges. 

Just by chance the zone covers reinforcements to Taiwan.
This is clearly a backhanded attempt to promote the PRC’s view of the nature of Taiwan and the South China Sea in their defense calculus.
There have been hints as well that the PRC is looking to do something similar with Vietnam in mind.
China is about to establish a second air defense identification zone over the South China Sea, Qin Gang, spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, said on Nov. 25, according to the Moscow-based Voice of Russia.
Qin said the air defense identification zone over the East China Sea announced by Beijing on Nov. 23 was a buffer zone to defend the territorial integrity of China and said a second air defense identification zone which may cover the disputed South China Sea will be established in due course.
The Vietnamese case could prove interesting, not only in terms of expanding the Pacific defense equation dealing with the PRC seeking to expand its area of control out into the Pacific.
We have made the case in the book that focus of a 21st century US strategy is Pacific defense, not simply a U.S. military strategy in the Pacific.
The PRC focus on Vietnam is a good case in point because it will lead immediately to PRC-Indian “discussions.”
The recent Indian and Vietnamese summit focused among other things upon the further development of Vietnamese resources and augmenting its defense capabilities.
According to a Thanh Nien story drawing upon a Times of India story:
India’s navy is training over 500 Vietnamese submariners as part of the countries’ resolution to expand bilateral military ties, the Times of India reported last week.
During talks between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and visiting Communist Party general secretary Nguyen Phu Trong last Wednesday, it was decided that India would issue Vietnam a US$100 million line of credit for the purposes of enabling the latter to acquire four naval patrol vessels from the former, the report said.
The ongoing training of Vietnamese sailors in “comprehensive underwater combat operations” at the Indian Navy’s submarine training center, INS Satavahana in Visakhapatnam, is a major bilateral initiative of the nations’ emerging strategic partnership.
Over 500 Vietnamese sailors will be trained in batches at the center, which is equipped with state of the art technology, by the Indian Navy, according to the report.
In December 2009, Vietnam signed a $2 billion deal to buy six submarines from Russia, which is due to deliver them all by 2016.
The Indian Navy’s extensive experience in operating Russian Kilo-class submarines, which dates back to the mid-1980s, will be invaluable to Vietnam as its navy learns how to handle their new underwater vessels, according to the Times of India.
In the past, India has supplied spare parts for Russian Petya class warships and Vietnamese OSA-II class missile boats.
“India will continue to assist Vietnam to modernize and train its defense and security forces, including via the $100 million line of credit for defense purchases,” said PM Singh.
And The Japan Times added additional information, which highlighted the importance of the recent Vietnamese-Indian summit:
India and Vietnam made serious efforts to upgrade their bilateral relations earlier this month during the visit to New Delhi by Vietnamese Communist Party Secretary General Nguyen Phu Trong.
Eight pacts were inked, including ones on energy cooperation and protection of information, which are strategically significant areas that will influence the trajectory of this bilateral relationship.
Vietnam has offered seven oil blocks to India in South China Sea, including three on an exclusive basis where Hanoi is hoping for production-sharing agreements with India’s state-owned oil company ONGC Videsh Ltd. (OVL).
In a significant move, India has also decided to offer a $100 million credit line to Vietnam to purchase military equipment. 

Usually a privilege reserved for its immediate neighbors, this is the first time that New Delhi has made such an offer to a more distant nation.
Delhi and Hanoi have been working toward building a robust partnership for the past few years.
It is instructive that India entered the fraught region of the South China Sea via Vietnam.
New Delhi signed an agreement with Vietnam in October 2011 to expand and promote oil exploration in the South China Sea and then reconfirmed its decision to carry on despite the Chinese challenge to the legality of an Indian presence.
Beijing told New Delhi that its permission was needed for India’s state-owned oil and gas firm to explore for energy there. 

But Vietnam quickly cited the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to claim its sovereign rights over the two blocks in question.
Hanoi has been publicly sparring with Beijing over the South China Sea for the last few years, so such a response was expected.
What was new, however, was New Delhi’s newfound aggression in taking on China.

It immediately decided to support Hanoi’s claims.
By accepting the Vietnamese invitation to explore oil and gas in Blocks 127 and 128, OVL not only expressed New Delhi’s desire to deepen its friendship with Vietnam, but also ignored China’s warning to stay away.
A clear message from our recent discussion with General Hawk Carlisle, the AFPAC commander, was that enhancing allied cooperation among themselves as well as working with the U.S. was a core American objective in shaping Pacific defense.
In the interview, he noted that the U.S.-Japanese relationship is undergoing a fundamental transformation. The Japanese are clearly rethinking their defense posture and he argued that the U.S. was working much more deeply and comprehensively with the Japanese defense forces than even two years ago. 

For example, “We have moved our air defense headquarters to Yokota Air Base and we are doing much closer coordination on air and missile defense with the Japanese to deal with a wider spectrum of regional threats.”
The Air Force is stepping up its collaborative efforts and capabilities with key regional air forces, including with Australia, Singapore, South Korea and Japan. 

And Carlisle emphasized that the service is pushing to enhance cross-collaborative capabilities among those allies as well.
While trying to get the allies to work more closely with each other, the Pacific commander also underscored that the US Air Force is adopting allied innovations.
“Singapore is doing very innovative things with their F-15s, notably in evolving the capabilities of the aircraft to contribute to maritime defense and security. We are looking very carefully at their innovations and can leverage their approach and thinking as well,” he said. 

“This will certainly grow as we introduce the fleet of F-35s in the Pacific where cross national collaboration is built in.”
Forging paths towards cross-domain synergy among joint and coalition forces is a key effort underway.
There is a tendency in Washington to believe that PRC actions are really just directed against the United States.
This misses a fundamental point: Pacific allies and the United States are seeking to shape an effective 21st century defense strategy, in which the US is clearly important but not the only player.
The PRC understands this and is working towards Ben Franklin moments for the US and its allies.
We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.
The PRC leadership hopes that discord between the US and its allies and among the Pacific allies themselves will lead them to chose hanging separately.
It is a gamble but apparently one worth taking for the PRC leadership.

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Forget Japan: China’s ADIZ Threatens Taiwan

The East China Sea ADIZ effectively cuts off US forces in Japan and South Korea from Taiwan.
By Zachary Keck

Most have assumed that China’s establishment of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea is aimed at Japan the bilateral dispute over the Senkaku Islands. 

There’s good reason for this: China has apparently said as much.
Although China at first claimed that the ADIZ was not aimed at any particular country, when it was asked by South Korea to redraw the lines of the ADIZ Chinese officials reportedly responded by assuring their counterparts in Seoul that the ADIZ was aimed at Japan not South Korea.
Many of China’s harshest responses to criticism over the East China Sea ADIZ have been directed at Japan as well. 

For example, last week a Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson said: “Japan has absolutely no right to make irresponsible comments regarding China setting up the East China Sea ADIZ. We would like to ask Japan to revoke its own ADIZ first, China will then consider this request in 44 years.” 

Then there’s the fact that China has been waging an unrelenting campaign to isolate Japan from the region, along with the Philippines.
In all reality, the East China Sea ADIZ is likely aimed in no small part at Japan in general and the Senkaku Islands in particular. 

Still, there’s another more important factor at play here for China: Taiwan.
Second Line of Defense’s Robbin Laird and Ed Timperlake have a characteristically perceptive article on the new ADIZ, and how Taiwan fits into the equation. 

Laird and Timperlake analyze the East China Sea ADIZ through the lens of the strategic quadrangle concept they develop in their new book: Rebuilding American Military Power in the Pacific A 21st-Century Strategy.
The strategic quadrangle is an enormous expanse of (mostly) water that stretches from Singapore to South Korea to Japan and back down to Australia. 

The distances involved in this quadrangle are “daunting,” they note: “It is nearly 4,000 miles from Japan to Australia. It is nearly 2,500 miles from Singapore to Australia and nearly 3,000 miles from Singapore to South Korea.”

The only thing that may outmatch the sheer size of the quadrangle is its importance to the U.S. and allied forces. 

As Laird and Timperlake explain in the article, “[The strategic quadrangle] is a central area where the U.S. and several core allies are reaching out to shape collaborative defense capabilities to ensure defense in depth…. Freedom to operate in the quadrangle is a baseline requirement for allies to shape collaborative capabilities and policies. Effectiveness can only emerge from exercising evolving forces and shaping convergent concepts of operations.”
Notably, China’s ADIZ falls directly within this quadrangle, as does Taiwan. 

This may not be a coincidence. 

With the East China ADIZ, Laird and Timperlake warn, “The PRC is putting down its marker onto the quadrangle and if not dealt with will undoubtedly expand its definitions of air and maritime defense outward.”
More ominously, they write, “We have placed the ADIZ down upon the strategic geography we have identified and a key reality quickly emerges. Just by chance the zone covers reinforcements to Taiwan.” 

That is, the ADIZ happens to cover the exact areas that the U.S. or Japan would have to traverse in order to promptly respond to a PLA invasion of Taiwan.
Thus, if China can deny U.S. and allied forces the ability to operate in the waters and airspace covered by the ADIZ, the U.S. would be unable to use its immense military resources in South Korea and Japan in defense of Taiwan. 

Instead, the U.S. military would have to travel from Guam, the Philippines and other nations located around the South China Sea (until China establishes an ADIZ over that body of water as well). 

This is where the tyranny of distance really weighs heavily on U.S. forces.
It’s worth noting, in this context, that China has demanded that aircraft flying in the East China Sea ADIZ identify themselves even when their destination is not the Chinese mainland. 

This is different from most nations’ ADIZs, which only require aircraft identify themselves if they intend to enter national airspace.
Notably, soon after China declared the East China Sea ADIZ last month, its sole aircraft carrier, Liaoning, passed through the Taiwan Strait on its way to the South China Sea. 

The Director-General of Taiwan’s National Security Bureau, Tsai Der-sheng, said this week that the Liaoning’s passage through the strait demonstrated that there was an inevitable imbalance of military forces between China and Taiwan. 

At the same time, Tsai told Taiwan’s parliament that the country is prepared to use force to protect its ADIZ. 

Thus far Taiwan has joined with South Korea, Japan, and the United States in defying China’s new ADIZ.
As my colleague Shannon pointed out last week, China’s historic claims to the Senkaku Islands rest on it being part of Taiwan. 

Thus, were China to gain control over the disputed islands, it would effectively be controlling part of Taiwan.
Perhaps in deference to Taiwan’s sensitivity, according to a map on Wikipedia, China’s ADIZ doesn’t include Yonaguni Island, which belongs to Japan but is located just 70 miles from Taiwan and falls within Taipei’s ADIZ. 

In recent years, Japan has been boosting the presence of Self-Defense Forces on Yonaguni, which many believe is part of an effort by Tokyo to assist Washington in protecting Taiwan. 

Articles in Chinese state media this week have railed against Japan for expanding its own ADIZ in 2010 to include Yonaguni Island.

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