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.”

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

A South China Sea ADIZ: China’s Next Move

American betrayal: Washington not only gave de facto approval of the East China Sea ADIZ, but also suggested that future Chinese moves would not be met with strong resistance. 
By Harry Kazianis

I hate making predictions. 

Truthfully, I am the type of person who likes to go to casinos for the latest sporting events or concerts and would never throw my money away in a slot machine or on the blackjack table. 

However, I can guarantee Vegas would lose its shirt on this bet, an easy wager to make: Look for China in the next year to eighteen months to declare an ADIZ over the South China Sea — in fact, Beijing’s ambassador to the Philippines appears to have alluded to such a move. 

Heck, I will even take it a step further and bet the wife and dog on this one: Beijing will create such a zone in the Yellow Sea as well at some point in the near future.

Why am I making such a prediction? 

Two recent factors come into play that in my view give China the rationale along with the ample cover they need to make such a move.
First, Washington appears to have given Beijing the green light to go forward — albeit unintentionally it seems.
Various reports based off a Kyodo news agency article have suggested a senior official traveling with Vice President Joseph Biden to Asia explained that “Washington is also asking China not to set up an air defense zone in the South China Sea, where Beijing is locked in territorial rows with Southeast Asian nations, without first consulting countries concerned.”
So let me see if I have this correct: It would be OK if China crafted an ADIZ in the South China Sea as long as it tells its neighbors in some fashion, in advance? 

Considering Beijing has already made a veiled reference that it could set up additional ADIZ in the future, the timing of such a comment was ill advised at best.
Honestly, I am hoping the official was misunderstood or misspoke because if accurate, Beijing could use such wording to openly declare such a new ADIZ in the South China Sea — an area with sovereignty disputes involving multiple claimants. 

In fact, Beijing has already gone so far to claim 80 percent of the area, effectively taking control of Scarborough Shoal last summer, which is well within the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the Philippines and is pressing its claims now on Second Thomas Shoal. 

China has also deployed its new aircraft carrier to the region in what could be seen as a show of force (although, let’s be frank, the carrier won’t be operational for sometime, however, the point is still made).
Second, when America’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) gave guidance that U.S. domestic carriers should inform Beijing of their flight plans, Washington not only gave de facto approval of the East China Sea ADIZ, but also suggested that future moves would not be met with strong resistance. 

Yet, any move that gives this ADIZ declaration on China’s part any legitimacy will certainly be used by Beijing as a sign of acceptance. 

If we got away with it once, why not try the same move again and again?
As I explained in a piece for the Washington Times recently, creating an ADIZ, an area that is essentially an early-warning buffer zone for possible intrusions into a nation’s airspace, is not aggressive. 

It is the arc of Chinese actions dating back to 2006 onward that should worry the international community. Looked upon as a whole, the trend is truly concerning. 

No one is saying Beijing does not have the right as a great power and possible someday a superpower to shape the international stage in a way that is friendly to its own national interest. 

It is the optics of how it is going about doing it that frightens its neighbors. 

For all of China’s worries about being contained by the U.S. “pivot” to Asia, China is doing a great job of aligning its neighbors against its actions — effectively containing itself and giving credence to the growing narrative as Asia’s new regional bully. 

Bad move Beijing.

Read More

China stands to lose in island spat

Threat of backlash if Beijing secures islands by force

By Geoff Dyer in Washington

Two weeks ago, few people had ever heard of an “air defence identification zone”, the Cold War-era set of air regulations that China has decided to put in place across a large stretch of the East China Sea. 

But the obscure rules have become the latest flashpoint in the region’s unresolved historical disputes. 

By the end of the week, Joe Biden's Air Force Two will probably have passed twice through what has suddenly become the world’s most controversial airspace.

The air rules are part of a broader pattern: the steady procession of Chinese pressure tactics to push its claims on Japanese Senkaku islands.

Since around 2008 – and especially over the past year – China has been sending ships to patrol the seas around the islands. 

The air defence zone extends its claim to the skies above.
The long-term Chinese agenda is to exert greater control over the East China Sea and South China Sea and in the process to ease the once-dominant US Navy out of large stretches of the western Pacific. 

China is attempting what aspiring great powers often do: to prevent another country from dominating its own region.
China’s latest move does appear to be driving something of a wedge between Japan and the US. 

Tokyo was heartened when two US B-52 bombers flew across the air zone, calling China’s bluff. 

But to its immense displeasure, Washington has told commercial US airlines to abide by the rules. 

Japan sees the pressure from China as a hot, immediate challenge: for the US, it is a more distant concern, a piece on a geopolitical chessboard. 

Tokyo will always worry that Washington does not quite have its back.
Yet the Chinese tactics are also too clever by half. 

Given Japan’s significant navy, China cannot just simply assert control over the Senkaku – as it was able to do last year with the Scarborough Shoal, an area in the South China Sea which is also disputed by the Philippines. 

If Japan and the US maintain a firm and disciplined position and avoid obvious provocations, the status quo is likely to hold for some time.
Even if China were to muscle control of the Senkaku from Japan, the downsides would outweigh any potential gains. 

The uninhabited islands have become a symbol of competing nationalism and of a great power tug-of-war, but they are of little strategic value and would be difficult to defend.
The diplomatic fallout in the region would be immense. 

Beijing would like to isolate Japan in Asia, scaring off other nations with warnings about its second world war revisionism. 

But such a move would end up engineering strong regional support for Japan. 

Even South Korea, the one country that shares Beijing’s reservations of the Japanese government, has been outraged by the Chinese air zone.
Most of all, Beijing would secure the enmity of the second-biggest economy in the region for generations. China, whose own economy depends on an open trading system, seems to think that its tough approach will eventually oblige Japan to respect its designs for the region. 

But the likely result is one of two very different options: either a substantial beefing-up of the US-Japan alliance or a major shift in Japan towards greater defence muscle, including even the possibility of a nuclear bomb. 

Beijing warns constantly about the revival of Japanese militarism, which is still a long way off. Yet it is creating the conditions for its revival.

All of this raises questions about what sort of endgame China really has in mind. 

In a recent speech in Beijing, Paul Keating, former Australian prime minister, laid out the dilemma China faces. 

“There can be no stable and peaceful order in Asia unless Japan is, and feels itself to be, secure,” he said.
If Beijing really wants to shape the next century in Asia at the expense of the US, it will need friends and allies to advance its priorities and to push its agenda. 

Instead, if it steps up efforts to coerce its neighbours, China is setting itself up to be a very lonely great power.

Read More

Japan caught in dilemma over China air defence zone

By Jonathan Soble in Tokyo and Demetri Sevastopulo in Hong Kong

Any Asian country trying to preserve its hold on remote territory coveted by China, the region’s increasingly powerful and assertive giant, faces a daunting challenge.
For Japan, the task of retaining control of the disputed Senkaku Islands is especially fraught – as the delicately orchestrated visit to Tokyo by US vice-president Joe Biden highlighted this week.
On Tuesday, Mr Biden reiterated US criticism of China’s decision to declare an “air defence identification zone” over much of the East China Sea, including the Japanese Senkaku.

But he stopped short of joining Japan in calling for the zone’s removal – disappointing some Japanese officials.
Japan’s unusual security arrangements, under which its defence is largely outsourced to Washington, mean it must read the intentions of two different countries in managing the dispute: China, the adversary that is trying to wrest the islands away, and the US, the "ally" that is supposed to protect them. 

Neither is always easy.
Japanese officials say their biggest worry is that China will strengthen its influence over the islands in steps so gradual that no single move invites a decisive response, but that ultimately adds up to a change of de facto control.
Washington, not surprisingly, is setting the bar for action especially high – it is keen to avoid conflict with China over what many Americans would see as a few inconsequential Japanese rocks.
China has been employing a similar strategy elsewhere, in what one well known Chinese navy officer has dubbed the “cabbage strategy” to wrest control of the Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines – surrounding the area in thin layers until it is eventually enveloped.
“It’s very obvious that they’re doing the same thing they did in the South China Sea,” says one Japanese foreign policy official. 

“First they send fishing boats, then survey boats, and finally the military to guard their national assets.”
The Senkaku conflict flared up in 2012 after Japan’s government purchased three of the islands from their private owner, prompting China to accuse it of hatching its own plot to assert more control. 

Since then, however, Tokyo has been at pains to avoid escalating the dispute.
Before he came to power a year ago, Shinzo Abe had suggested Japan might station soldiers or government workers on the islands, a step that would infuriate Beijing. 

That idea was shelved once he became premier, but some worry that nationalist pressure could mount on Mr Abe if US and Japanese protests fail to deter Beijing.
“He will be accused by some of lacking backbone,” the official said. 

“When it comes to a critical point, we may have to act.”

Another high-ranking Japanese official familiar with Mr Abe’s thinking said Tokyo would have “rejoiced” if Mr Biden had sent a stronger message to China. 

But he added that there was a “common sense” that putting too much pressure on him ahead of his Beijing visit – he arrived on Wednesday – would have been counterproductive.
While the US does not take a position on the sovereignty of the Senkaku, Washington has made clear that they fall under the auspices of the US-Japan security treaty because they are under Japanese administrative control.
But the official said it was clear that China’s strategy was to produce an outcome where “one day in the future, the Japanese assertion of administrative control will appear questionable”. 

Once that happens, he adds, “it is easy for China to assume that if the Senkaku are not under Japanese administrative control, the US will have to have second thoughts” about defending the islands.
With few concrete options to respond to Chinese pressure, Mr Abe has been trying to build alliances with other Asia-Pacific countries concerned about the consequences of China’s rise. 

He visited southeast Asia earlier this year, is scheduled to make a trip to India – which has its own border disputes with China – in January, and is expected to visit Australia in 2014.

Japan has been bolstering its coast guard and shifting its military assets toward its southwestern seas, away from the north of the country where they had been concentrated during the cold war against the Soviet Union. 

The latest update of its national defence strategy, due to be announced this month, is expected to continue the trend.
Japan patrols the Senkaku by sea and air 24 hours a day, but the efforts of the Japanese coast guard and military benefit from the presence of the US navy in the region, including in the East China Sea. 

The Japanese official close to Mr Abe said it was important that Japan extend independent efforts to maintain control.
“Of course, Japan wants the US to commit to protect the Senkaku, but at the end of the day the islands are our own territory, so the Japanese government is now attempting to protect them,” he said.

Read More

Joe Biden mum on airspace tensions after meeting with Xi Jinping

By Josh Lederman

Xi Jinping (R) shake hands with Joe Biden (L) inside the Great Hall of the People on Wednesday in Beijing, China.

BEIJING -- Emerging from a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Vice President Joe Biden said Wednesday that U.S.-China relations depend on trust and a positive notion of each other's motives. 

Neither leader made public mention of a major clash over disputed airspace that's pitted China against the U.S. and its Asian allies.
Vice President Biden meets with China's president among other world leaders to discuss China's decision to declare an air defense identification zone that includes disputed islands.
Appearing somber and subdued, Biden said the relationship between the two major powers will significantly affect the course of the 21st century. 

If the U.S. and China can get that relationship right, the possibilities are limitless, Biden said as reporters were allowed in briefly after he met with Xi in Beijing.
"This new model of major country cooperation ultimately has to be based on trust and a positive notion about the motive of one another," Biden said.
Biden said he had come to Beijing because complex relationships require sustained engagement at high levels. 

He said Xi's candor and constructive approach had left an impression on him.
"Candor generates trust," Biden said after a meeting that ran more than an hour longer than scheduled. 

"Trust is the basis on which real change — constructive change — is made."
The two leaders had a second meeting involving larger delegations and a working dinner planned for later Wednesday.
Absent from Biden's comments was any discussion of U.S. concerns over China's new air defense zone. Only a day earlier, Biden pledged to raise those concerns "with great specificity" with Xi and other Chinese leaders, adding that China's move was deeply concerning.
"This action has raised regional tensions and increased the risk of accidents and miscalculation," Biden said in Tokyo Tuesday after meeting with Japanese President Shinzo Abe.
Japan has been on edge for the past two weeks since China unilaterally declared any planes flying through the zone must file flight plans with Beijing. 

The airspace sits atop tiny islands that are at the center of a long-running territorial dispute between China and Japan.
The U.S. refuses to recognize the zone, but Biden has avoided calling publicly for Beijing to retract it, wary of making demands that China is likely to snub. 

Rather, the vice president hoped to persuade China not to enforce the zone or establish similar zones over other disputed territories.
After meeting with Biden, Xi said the U.S.-China relationship had gotten off to a good start this year "and has generally maintained a momentum of positive development." 

But he said the global situation is changing, with more pronounced challenges and regional hotspots that keep cropping up.

"The world as a whole is not tranquil," Xi said through a translator, adding that the U.S. and China shoulder important responsibilities for upholding peace. 

"To strengthen dialogue and cooperation is the only right choice facing both of our countries."
Added Biden, "The way I was raised was to believe that change presents opportunity."
At the start of his visit to Beijing, Biden urged Chinese students to challenge orthodoxy and the status quo, drawing an implicit contrast between the authoritarian rule of China's government and the liberal, permissive intellectual culture he described in the United States.
"I hope you learn that innovation can only occur where you can breathe free, challenge the government, challenge religious leaders," Biden told young Chinese citizens waiting at the U.S. embassy to get visitor visas processed.
Biden said he hoped they would learn during their visit that "innovation can only occur where you can breathe free."
"Children in America are rewarded — not punished — for challenging the status quo," he said.
Biden's comments were not immediately reported by Chinese state media and were not likely to be widely known in China. 

A one-minute excerpt of his speech posted by the Sina news website included Biden's comment about challenging the "status quo," but left out the one about challenging the government.

Read More