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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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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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.

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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.

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Biden Visit Leaves Tokyo Worried About American Muddle

The approach adopted by President Barack Obama’s White House seems feckless, raising frustration among those fearing China’s military advance.

By Yuka Hayashi and Toko Sekiguchi

Publicly, Japanese leaders are proclaiming U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s Asian swing a success, with the U.S. and Japan presenting a united front in the face of China’s latest territorial muscle-flexing.
Privately, many officials and security experts are growing frustrated about what they perceive to be Washington’s muddled response to China’s increasingly aggressive stance, a fear that has been exacerbated, rather than alleviated, so far during Mr. Biden’s visit to Asia.
Even as he stated the U.S. doesn’t recognize China’s new “air defense identification zone,” Mr. Biden also said the U.S. was “deeply concerned” about China’s unilateral decision, which some in Japan interpreted as an expression that tacitly acknowledged that Beijing would continue to press forward with its steps.
There also appears to be mixed message about whether or not the allies want to push China to pull back its move. 

Japan has demanded China rescind its new ADIZ, but has not explicitly asked the U.S. to do the same because of the perception that such a request would appear to be inappropriate meddling in American policy. 

Earlier this week, a U.S. State Department spokeswoman said the Obama administration did want China to “rescind” the zone, but Mr. Biden did not use that word during his visit to Tokyo — an omission noted in the Japanese news media.
And even before Mr. Biden’s trip — which started in Japan Monday might, moved to China on Wednesday, and continues Thursday to South Korea — officials in Tokyo were annoyed by confusing messages from the U.S. government related to whether commercial airlines should file flight plans with China to comply with its new aviation rules. 

That has resulted in U.S. carriers filing such plans, while their Japanese counterparts have been discouraged by their government to do the same.
“Recent U.S. interactions with China, including its response to a contested air defense zone, seem to suggest a disaccord within Washington that may be encouraging Beijing,” the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, a leading economic daily, said in its editorial Thursday. 

“To some, the approach adopted by President Barack Obama’s White House seems feckless, raising frustration among those fearing China’s military advance".
And Mr. Biden’s new call on Tokyo and Beijing to establish an emergency response mechanism to avoid unintended accidents has also some in Japan worried that such a system would be designed to reflect China’s desire to assert further its claim on the East China Sea Islands contested by the two countries, rather than Japan’s position that the islands belonged to Japan.
Efforts to create an emergency communications system have taken place in fits and starts, with Tokyo taking the initiative, Japanese officials have said. 

But now under the renewed pressure of the new ADIZ, some in Japan are worried China would try to exert more influence in the process, while Washington, with its priority on avoiding the escalation of tensions, would be willing to accommodate such a move. 

“We are in a very difficult position,” one Japanese government official said.
But officials in public play down such concerns. 

Japan’s chief government spokesman was asked directly at his Thursday news conference if there was any gap between how the two allies were handling China’s move. 

“I don’t believe there is at all,” Yoshihide Suga told reporters. 

“Vice President Biden, during his Japan visit, reaffirmed that Japan and the U.S. stand together in our opinion of the matter. During his talk with the Prime Minister, the vice president was clear that the U.S. does not acknowledge China’s ADIZ, and that it may lead to unforeseen events in the region.”

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Safeguarding the Seas

How to Defend Against China's New Air Defense Zone
By Michael J. Green

A helicopter of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force lifts off from the aircraft carrier USS George Washington during Annual Exercise 2013.

Much of the coverage of China’s November 23 announcement of a new Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over waters claimed by Japan and South Korea has focused on the reactive and blundering nature of Chinese diplomacy. 

China’s sudden insistence on its right to take defensive action against foreign aircraft in this zone, the argument goes, was either an attempt to play to domestic nationalism or else to respond to Japan’s own increasing assertiveness in the region. 

Either way, the coverage concludes, China underestimated how quickly and vigorously other countries in the region would respond, including with flights directly into that airspace.
The implication of this analysis, which may be tempting to the overstretched Obama administration, is that Beijing made a hasty move that the region will now correct with a little help from Washington. 

Unfortunately for the administration, however, this was not just an ill-conceived slap by Beijing against a testy Japan. 

The reality is that the new ADIZ is part of a longer-term attempt by Beijing to chip away at the regional status quo and assert greater control over the East and South China Seas.
To understand this reality, one must begin the story of the ADIZ before Japan’s nationalization of three of the eight disputed Senkaku Islands in 2012, which is where most assessments start. 

Over three decades ago, China and Japan agreed to set aside their disagreement over the islands and focus on a common problem: the Soviet Union. 

It was China that first nullified the understanding by staking claim to the islands in 1992. 

It was also China that, in 2008, began significantly expanding its maritime patrols in and around those waters. In recent years, the Chinese maritime services have conducted patrols at least once a day near the islands and have crossed Japan’s 12-nautical-mile border around the islands on hundreds of occasions. 

Meanwhile, Chinese navy units have circumnavigated Japan and conducted major military exercises on all sides of the Japanese archipelago. 

In other words, by the time Tokyo purchased some of the Senkaku Islands from private landowners in 2012, Chinese pressure had reached alarming levels for Tokyo.
Both Japanese and Chinese diplomacy on the issue have been inept at times, of course, but the difference is that Japan -- which has effective administrative control of the islands -- is trying to preserve the status quo, whereas China is bent on using coercive pressure to try to change it. 

And Japan is not China’s only target. 

Beijing has also been pressing Manila over the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. 

China has increased its maritime and air presence around the contested area and imposed export bans on key products from the Philippines. (This strategy smacks of the same mercantilism China showed when it halted rare earth exports to Japan because of those two countries’ island disputes.)
Unlike the ongoing dispute with Japan, the Scarborough Shoal confrontation going badly for Manila. 

In 2012, Chinese maritime patrol ships finally overwhelmed the tiny Philippine navy and took de facto control of the shoals. 

Filipinos whose families have fished those waters for a millennium are now barred from entering.
Japan’s air force and navy are too strong for China to attempt a similar grab of the Senkaku Islands anytime soon. 

But Hanoi, Manila, Taipei, and Tokyo all sense that, in the Scarborough Shoal, Beijing “killed the chicken to scare the monkey,” as officials from those governments say. 

Most observers would agree that China has every intention of following the same strategy against Japan, just in slow motion. 

Although the smaller powers have remained quiet about the announcement of a new Chinese defense zone, most are privately urging Japan not to back down.
Japan, South Korea, and the United States have stated that they will not let the Chinese ADIZ announcement change their military operations in the area. 

To prove the point, the Pentagon sent two B-52 bombers out of Guam to fly through the new defense zone. Japan and South Korea quickly followed suit with their own patrols. 

The administration’s opening move certainly demonstrated by word and deed that Beijing went too far. 

But if the Chinese announcement comes from a deeper strategy of coercing smaller states and establish greater control in the Western Pacific -- as many governments in the region rightly suspect -- then Washington had better be prepared for a longer-term test of wills with Beijing.
The administration needs to consider the larger context that the rest of the region sees. 

Some of the policies included in the so-called rebalance to Asia will help, including the announcement in October that Washington and Tokyo will revise their bilateral defense guidelines to deal with new contingencies, including from China. 

Other moves have been less helpful. 

It was not lost on China or Japan, for example, that U.S. service chiefs testified in front of Congress that planned defense budget cuts would leave the armed forces unable to fulfill their current missions or security commitments; that U.S. President Barack Obama threw the decision about honoring his redline in Syria to Congress; or that senior U.S. officers in the Pacific continue trying to calm the waters by speaking of a new strategic partnership with China and naming climate change as their greatest security concern in the region.
More immediately, the disconnect between Washington and Tokyo this week over whether commercial flights should recognize the ADIZ and file flight plans with Beijing (Tokyo says no and Washington says yes) was a poor case of alliance management and an embarrassment for Tokyo during a serious security problem. 

Whatever the merits of each side’s respective policies in terms of strategic signals and airline safety, the two will have to work as one in the future.
The Obama administration needs to stick to a disciplined message of resolve and reassurance. 

And that would mean accurately assessing Beijing’s strategic intent. 

Confrontation with China is far from inevitable, and the potential areas for productive U.S.-Chinese cooperation remain vast. 

Vice President Joe Biden will no doubt emphasize the positive in U.S.-Chinese relations when he travels to Beijing this week. And that makes sense. 

But he should also leave no doubt that the United States is prepared to work with regional allies and partners to ensure Beijing understands that its attempts at coercion will not work. 

Then, when he is in Tokyo and Seoul, he should take time to listen carefully to what those allies think is at stake in the troubled East and South China Seas. 

Their problem is our problem, not just because we are allies but also because this moment could determine how China uses its growing power.

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In the East China Sea, a Far Bigger Test of Power Looms

 

The long-term goal of the Chinese was to push the United States to “the second island chain,” farther out in the Pacific, keeping American air and naval assets ever farther from the region around China’s coast.
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON — In an era when the Obama administration has been focused on new forms of conflict — as countries use cyberweapons and drones to extend their power — the dangerous contest suddenly erupting over a pile of rocks in the East China Sea seems almost a throwback to the Cold War.
Suddenly, naval assets and air patrols are the currency of a shadow conflict between Washington and Beijing that the Obama administration increasingly fears could escalate and that American officials have said could derail their complex plan to manage China’s rise without overtly trying to contain it.
As in the Cold War, the immediate territorial dispute seems to be an excuse for a far larger question of who will exercise influence over a vast region.
The result is that, as the Chinese grow more determined to assert their territorial claims over a string of islands once important mainly to fishermen, America’s allies are also pouring military assets into the region — potentially escalating the once obscure dispute into a broader test of power in the Pacific.
Now a maritime outpost that had modest strategic significance is taking on enormous symbolic import.
South Korea, which has broader concerns about China’s regional power, is building a new naval base for 20 warships, including submarines, arguing that it has to protect vital shipping lanes in the East China Sea for its exports — including many electronics headed to China.
The Japanese, after largely depending on American bases on Okinawa to back up their own limited patrols in the area, plan to build a new army base by 2016 on a small, inhabited island near the Senkaku islands.
The Japanese are also planning to deploy more F-15s and radar planes to Okinawa and a new helicopter carrier, and, for the first time, have considered buying unarmed American drones to patrol the area, part of a three-year-long shift in military strategy to focus on their southern islands and on China.
That is part of a fundamental change in the national mind-set toward a Japan that is more willing and able to defend itself than anytime since World War II, in part because of doubts about America’s own commitment to the region.
As Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. left on Sunday for a trip that will take him to the capitals of all three major contestants — Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing — the administration’s public message is that all sides need to cool down and keep nationalistic talk from making a tense situation worse.
Mr. Biden will encounter countries that are now re-examining how civilian and military officials interact: Over the past few weeks, for very separate reasons, Japan and China have each approved the creation of a national security council.
For Japan, it is an effort to strengthen the hand of the prime minister in times of crises, a concept the Japanese body politic long resisted because of the legacies of World War II.
For China, it appears to be an effort by President Xi Jinping to exercise a degree of control over all sources of national power that his immediate predecessor, Hu Jintao, never fully mastered.
Interestingly, as China sent its aircraft carrier to another potential trouble spot, the South China Sea, its path avoided the disputed islands, perhaps a sign that the Chinese realize they may have overplayed their hand.
Still, in private, American officials say they are worried that a small incident — a collision like the one between an American intelligence plane and the Chinese air force a dozen years ago off Hainan Island — could rapidly worsen the situation.
On ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, Tom Donilon, who was Mr. Obama’s national security adviser until earlier this year and a principal architect of the administration’s approach to China, said a similar “risk of miscalculation” is what “we need to be very concerned about going forward here.”
A senior administration official said Mr. Biden’s message would be that the United States will “seek crisis management mechanisms and confidence-building measures to lower tensions and reduce risk of escalation or miscalculation.”
But one of Mr. Obama’s current advisers said, “It’s pretty clear this isn’t really about the islands.”
Declining to speak on the record about a sensitive strategic issue, the official added that it was about a desire by some in China, including the People’s Liberation Army and perhaps the new political leadership, “to assert themselves in ways that until recently they didn’t have the military capability to make real.”
The adviser added: “They say it’s in response to our efforts to contain them, but our analysis is that it’s really their effort to push our presence further out into the Pacific.”
In fact, on his last trip to Asia as secretary of defense, Robert M. Gates said in January 2011 that he believed the long-term goal of the Chinese was to push the United States to “the second island chain,” farther out in the Pacific, keeping American air and naval assets ever farther from the region around China’s coast.
Two years later, Obama officials will not utter that view in public, but it is a running theme in American intelligence assessments about the Chinese military, tempered by evidence that some Chinese officials worry about blowback if they overreach.
That has been a repeated cycle in Mr. Obama’s relations with the Chinese.
In 2010, a series of episodes, touched off by American arms sales to Taiwan and the ramming of a Japanese coast guard ship in the Senkakus by an inebriated Chinese sea captain, led China to cut off military-to-military relations between Beijing and Washington and the sale of rare-earth metals, used for electronics, to the Japanese.
Both proved temporary, and by the end of the year some senior Chinese officials, led by the state councilor, Dai Bingguo, warned that China’s actions were driving countries in the region into American hands.
“Some say China wants to replace the United States and dominate the world,” Mr. Dai wrote in an article that Mr. Donilon frequently cited. “That is simply a myth.”
But Mr. Dai is gone from power, and the Obama administration is now trying to figure out how to interpret each new Chinese action under Mr. Xi, of which the recent “air defense identification zone” was considered the most calculated and, perhaps, the most muscular.
Many countries claim such zones; China knew it was claiming it over disputed territory.
Mr. Obama’s immediate response was to send two unarmed B-52 bombers on what the Pentagon called “routine” runs over the territory; they were routine, but the timing and symbolism were lost on no one.
Now the White House faces the more complex task of its longer-term response.
To make the promise of his “Asian pivot” real, the president will have to convince Congress, and allies in the region, that he means to devote more military, diplomatic and economic attention there — not to contain China, he insists, but to preserve and extend America’s longtime role as a keeper of the peace in the Pacific.
That will be challenging at a time of Pentagon budget cuts, a national mood to focus on problems at home and a national security apparatus focused on Iran, Syria and the future of the Middle East.

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Xi Jinping’s Rise Came With New Attention to Dispute With Japan

By JANE PERLEZ

BEIJING — The new air defense zone declared by China has been approved by Xi Jinping, the culmination of more than a year of pressure by Beijing to weaken Japan’s grip on the Senkaku islands in the East China Sea, and by extension to expand China’s long-term access to the Western Pacific.
As Mr. Xi amassed power in the past year, he voiced increasing displeasure with Japan, and in a curt, impromptu encounter in St. Petersburg, Russia, in September with the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, Mr. Xi said Japan must face “history squarely,” according to an account in China’s state-run news media.
Mr. Xi has rebuffed Mr. Abe’s requests for a formal summit meeting, another sign of Mr. Xi’s firm stance on Japan.
Mr. Xi’s position as leader of the Communist Party and chairman of the military commission that runs China’s armed forces made him the primary decision maker on issues like the air defense zone, Chinese experts said. 

Over the past year, they say, he has been particularly attentive to the East China Sea dispute.
Unlike some other Chinese leaders, Mr. Xi had little involvement with Japan as he climbed the ranks of the Communist Party.
On a visit to Japan in 2009 as vice president, he was granted an audience with the emperor, met numerous politicians and was treated to a gala dinner. 

In 2001, when he was governor of Fujian Province, he toured the prefecture of Nagasaki and visited Okinawa. 

He has spoken little of these trips, although as vice president he did welcome the governors of Nagasaki and Shizuoka when they came to Beijing, Japanese officials say.
Most likely he sees the country as a policy lever, said Rana Mitter, a historian at Oxford University and the author of “Forgotten Ally,” an account of China’s struggle with Japan from 1937 to 1945.
“He does not appear to have any direct experience with Japan or connection with it through his family background,” Mr. Mitter said. 

“This is different from some other politicians, for instance Bo Xilai, who courted Japanese business quite strongly through his period as mayor of Dalian and later as commerce minister.” 

Mr. Bo is the disgraced Communist Party leader of the city of Chongqing now serving a life sentence in prison.
The idea for the air defense identification zone had been circulating within the Chinese military for some time before it reached Mr. Xi’s level, said Jia Qingguo, professor of international relations at Beijing University.
The military was acutely aware that other countries, including Japan and the United States, had air defense zones but China did not, he said.
As the tensions mounted this year in the East China Sea, with Chinese and Japanese planes flying in close quarters over the Senkaku islands, Japan often complained that China’s planes were flying in the Japanese air defense zone.
The leadership reasoned that if Japan had an air defense zone for the past 40 years, China should have one, too, as a way of achieving parity, and as a tool to eventually wrest the islands from Japan’s control, Mr. Jia said.
But Tokyo’s position on the islands is simply that there is no dispute, that the islands belong to Japan and there is nothing more to discuss.
It is this Japanese position that Mr. Xi and his top military and foreign policy advisers wanted to change.
China’s top foreign policy makers believed that China’s new air defense zone overlapping with Japan’s and covering the islands would be “another way to force Japan to recognize there is a dispute,” and come to the negotiating table, Mr. Jia and other experts said.
Even before Mr. Xi became general secretary of the Communist Party in November 2012, he was in charge of a small leading group of maritime affairs that had principal responsibility for the problems in the East China Sea — both in the air and on the sea.
It was a period when the dispute over the islands had spilled onto the streets of China, with government-sanctioned anti-Japanese protests, and Mr. Xi’s quick ascent to the policy making group on the islands signaled his plans to take overall control of the issue.
After becoming general secretary of the Communist Party in November 2012, and then assuming the presidency of the country in March, Mr. Xi toured important military installations, including ports where China is building its blue water navy — another signal of his long-term interest in gaining unfettered access in the Western Pacific.
Mr. Xi told a Politburo meeting this summer that China must become a “maritime strong power,” according to Xinhua, the state-run news agency.
In late October, Mr. Xi called a conference of senior party leaders, including the six other members of the Politburo Standing Committee and the Chinese ambassador to Washington, Cui Tiankai, to discuss how China should maintain good relations with its neighbors in Asia.
“The fundamental guiding policy for our country’s diplomacy with its periphery is to treat neighbors with friendship and as partners,” Mr. Xi said.
But it was clear that Japan was not included in the friendly group of neighbors — those consisted chiefly of countries in Southeast Asia — and a few days later, the Chinese Ministry of Defense intensified its warnings to Japan over the disputed islands.
A Defense Ministry spokesman, Geng Yansheng, said that China would consider it “an act of war” if Japan carried out its threat and shot down a Chinese drone flying over the islands. 

“We would have to take decisive measures to counterattack,” Mr. Geng said, the most warlike words from China in the dispute so far.
A recent account in a Hong Kong-based magazine, Asia Weekly, which often carries reliable reports on Beijing’s foreign policy deliberations, described the imposition of the air defense zone as a “great sea-air strategic breakthrough for China.” 

The magazine said Mr. Xi finalized the decision four months ago.
The breakthrough the article referred to was the piercing of what China sees as a boundary that stretches from the southernmost Japanese islands toward the east coast of Taiwan and joining the South China Sea.
“China is no longer focusing just on Senkaku Island, not only on the gas field of the East China Sea median line, but this is a way of breaking through the first island chain to reach the ocean,” the account said.

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China is treading on thin ice in the Pacific

By Kurt Campbell

Beijing’s declaration last week of a special air defence identification zone above disputed islands in the East China Sea and the surrounding waters claimed by Japan and China is a clear escalation of an already dangerous situation. 

It might be tempting for commentators at this stage to digress into describing the torturous history of the disputed Chinese or Japanese sovereignty over these uninhabited rocks, to provide context for how the two great nations of Asia have virtually drawn daggers over barren island territories in a distant corner of the Pacific Ocean. 

Yet, the deeply unwise and provocative new Chinese decree of unspecified military measures in the event of unauthorised entry into this airspace has served to dramatically broaden the regional context of this bilateral stand-off.
This matter is no longer simply about duelling nationalisms in China and Japan. 

It now concerns the peace, security and safety of some of the most frequently utilised civilian airspace on the planet, and a critical air route used regularly by Chinese (yes, even Chinese airliners might conceivably be at risk), Taiwanese, Korean, US, Japanese, Russian and other carriers traversing the region that is generally regarded as the cockpit of the global economy. 

Into an already fraught set of circumstances, China has introduced the possibility of civilian airliners loaded with tourists, families and businessmen now at risk simply for flying through a block of airspace in the western Pacific.
China is well-known for nursing historical grievances and for having a long memory, but it must be said that this memory is generally saved for things Chinese. 

However, the animating concern in the case of this new airspace decree is not a perceived century of humiliation but rather something much more specific: the tragic shooting down by Soviet fighters of Korean Air Lines flight KE007 in 1983 during the cold war flying through another murky set of flight identification procedures.
For the Chinese government not to understand that their new airspace guidelines would immediately conjure memories of one of the most regrettable and avoidable air tragedies in history is worrisome. 

It creates unwelcome comparisons between the former Soviet Union with today’s China, and it suggests a coming propensity for Beijing to tempt militarisation of difficult diplomatic problems. 

This move also potentially averts the recent remarkable improvements in Sino-South Korean relations – one of the only positive trends in northeast Asia in recent years. 

It also comes on the eve of the visit of Vice-President Joe Biden to China who worked overtime last year to develop a strong personal connection with then vice-president Xi Jinping. 

All told, it is a remarkable misstep for China’s diplomacy that is seeking to build better ties with virtually everyone in the region, save for Japan and the Philippines. 

It suggests a nation more interested in the pursuit of 19th century-like spheres of influence and prohibited areas, rather than a 21st-century nation committed to sustaining an open and transparent regional operating system.
The Chinese decree has created an enormous conundrum for surrounding countries. 

The US has already indicated that its military planes will not acknowledge these new Chinese government procedures, and will continue operations as if nothing has changed. 

But already civilian aviation authorities, including the Federal Aviation Administration in the US, have instructed civilian airliners to abide by the new regulations precisely to avoid another KE007 calamity. 

Their finding is fundamentally apolitical in these strained circumstances, based almost solely on fulfilling their prime directive, which is the global safety of civilian aviation. 

This potential split between military and civilian authorities creates administrative confusion but, more importantly, it creates uncertainty in the airspace. 

How will the Chinese air defence authorities respond to what they think is a military airliner brazenly defying repeated hails that turns out to be a commercial jet with a broken transponder loaded with unsuspecting travellers? 

Will “emergency defensive measures” be taken as the new Chinese decree indicates?
It is true that many other nations have established air defence identification zones, including the US, South Korea, Guam and Japan, yet none has ever sparked this degree of concern. 

It smacks of what Chinese commentators occasionally accuse the US of: a cold war mentality.
China must now decide whether to retract its controversial edict, phase it out over time with little fanfare (preferably in the short term) or try to tailor it to more specific circumstances. 

How China responds to the confusion and consternation created by this new defence measure will tell a lot about what kind of a great power China is becoming.

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China pushing to change order

By Song Sang-ho

The U.S. and its Asian allies will continue to face increasing pressure from China, as the emerging great power seeks to reshape the security order and ultimately expel the U.S. from the region, a top political thinker said.
In an interview with The Korea Herald, Stephen M. Walt, professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, also noted the need for collective action to fend off China’s unilateral territorial assertions.
“It is unacceptable for any states in Asia to unilaterally declare new territorial arrangements. I believe China is likely to keep pushing for revisions of this kind, and it will be important for its neighbors and the U.S. to resist these probes,” said Walt.
“If China’s power continues to rise, there will be intensifying security competition in Asia. China will try to push the U.S. out of Asia, mostly by pressuring America’s current allies. The U.S. will want to maintain its current position, but it will need resolute and enthusiastic support from its Asian allies,” he added.
China’s recent demarcation of its Air Defense Identification Zone in the East China Sea has sharply raised military tensions in East Asia. 

South Korea and Japan have strongly protested the unilateral move and vowed not to recognize the zone, which overlaps with their own zones.
Seoul demanded last week that Beijing adjust the zone to exclude parts of South Korean territory. 

Beijing rejected the demand, asserting its right to ensure territorial integrity. 

China’s ADIZ incorporates the area over Ieodo, a South Korea-controlled submerged rock in the overlapping exclusive economic zones of the two countries.
At the same time, South Korea has sought to strengthen its strategic partnership with China ― a crucial partner in trade, investment, tourism as well as North Korea’s denuclearization.
Commenting on Seoul’s increasingly difficult strategic position between the preponderant U.S. and ascendant China, Walt cautioned against becoming too reliant on China.
“There is nothing wrong with South Korea having mutually beneficial economic ties with China; the U.S. does too,” he said. 

“But it is even more important for South Korea not to become too dependent on China, and to maintain a reliable security relationship with the U.S.”
As to Japanese’ pursuit of the right to collective self-defense ― the use of force against an attack on an ally, namely the U.S. ― and heavier armaments, Walt painted a positive outlook.
“I think a more ‘normal’ Japan would be in everyone’s interest,” he said, referring to the archipelago state’s push to become a “normal” state with a full-fledged military, which would go beyond the current defense-oriented force management.
Walt also dismissed concerns that Japan’s stronger armament could lead to its reversion to a militaristic national strategy. 

“The militarist attitudes that dominated Japan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are a thing of the past, and are not going to return in any serious way,” he said. 

“Given economic and social trends in Asia, Japan is not a security threat that other Asian countries need to worry about.”
To a question of whether Washington would feel uncomfortable with Japan adopting too aggressive a military policy, Walt pointed out that the U.S. would not want anyone else to try to alter the status quo.
“The U.S, Japan, and South Korea have a common interest in maintaining the status quo in East Asia,” he said. 

“Fortunately, I do not think any of our Asian allies have such ambitions (to alter the status quo), so I am not particularly worried about Japan becoming too aggressive.”
Urging Seoul and Tokyo to try harder to improve their ties, strained due to historical and territorial animosities, Walt underscored that conflicts between the U.S. allies were “counterproductive” for regional security.
“(Conflicts) can weaken our joint efforts to maintain stability in Asia. South Korea and Japan should do more to resolve their current differences, as quarrels between them will make it harder for the U.S. to work with both,” he said.
On North Korea, Walt said the current regime in Pyongyang was unlikely to give up its nuclear program considering that it is the regime’s ultimate protection from external pressure.
“I believe a post-Kim government might be willing to give up their nuclear weapons in exchange for economic benefits, just as South Africa, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus did. But political change will have to come first,” he said.
Walt also expressed skepticism over the possibility that negotiations would lead to a complete denuclearization of North Korea.
“Negotiations may convince North Korea to freeze its program, or convince it not to expand its nuclear arsenal further. But I do not believe that the six-party talks will lead to actual disarmament at any point in the near to medium term,” he said.

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China’s Aggressive Expansionism Hits Archaeology

China Has Begun Asserting Ownership of Thousands of Shipwrecks in the South China Sea
By JEREMY PAGE

A replica of a treasure ship sailed by Zheng He about 600 years ago at a museum in Nanjing. 
Underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio's team was exploring the wreckage of a 13th-century Chinese junk off the coast of the Philippines when it made an unwelcome discovery about China's maritime muscle in the 21st century.
As a twin-prop plane swooped overhead, a Chinese marine-surveillance vessel approached the team's Philippines-registered ship and began broadcasting instructions in English over a loudspeaker.
"They said this area belonged to the People's Republic of China, and they told us to scram," recalls one of the people on board last year. 

"It was pretty scary." 

Chinese officials confirm the incident took place but say the archaeologists' mission was illegal.

A boatman paddles away from the Sarangani, a ship on which archaeologists became embroiled in a standoff with China, in Manila Bay.

With territorial disputes escalating in the waters off China, the Chinese government has begun asserting ownership of thousands of shipwrecks within a vast U-shaped area that covers almost all of the South China Sea, which it says has been part of its territorial waters for centuries.
China has ordered its coast guard to prevent what it considers illegal archaeology in the waters it claims, and it is pouring money into a state-run marine-archaeology program. 

Chinese archaeologists are preparing their first comprehensive survey of undersea sites, including in disputed areas.
Chinese officials say their efforts will curb the theft and treasure hunting they say has destroyed numerous sites and flooded the global market with looted Chinese antiquities.

There is a political dimension to China's plans. 

Chinese archaeologists openly aspire to bolster their country's historical claims to the contested South China Sea, which overlap with those of Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines.
"We want to find more evidence that can prove Chinese people went there and lived there, historical evidence that can help prove China is the sovereign owner of the South China Sea," says Liu Shuguang, head of the Chinese government's Center of Underwater Cultural Heritage, set up in 2009 to oversee underwater archaeology in the country.
Tensions have been running high in the region over China's intensifying campaign to assert territorial claims, not only in the South China Sea, but in the East China Sea, which is contested by Japan. 

On Nov. 23, China proclaimed a new air-defense identification zone over Japanese Senkaku islands.
The South China Sea, one of the world's busiest trading routes, is littered with wrecks from the last two millennia, including Chinese junks, Indian and Arab dhows, Dutch and British trading schooners and World War II warships. 

Chinese archaeologists say they have gathered coordinates for 70 shipwrecks in those waters but estimate there are at least 2,000, and possibly many more.

A team working with French underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio, shown in 2010, was exploring the wreckage of a 13th-century Chinese junk off the coast of the Philippines when a Chinese marine-surveillance vessel ordered them to leave the area. 

Mr. Goddio, a Frenchman who is one of the world's leading marine archaeologists, had worked in the area since the 1980s, excavating 15th-century Chinese junks, 16th-century Spanish galleons and 18th-century British merchant ships. 

In addition to the trip last year, his team had visited the cluster of reefs and rocks off the Philippines, called the Scarborough Shoal, in 2011. 

Both expeditions were part of a joint research project with the National Museum of the Philippines, which collaborates with foreign archaeologists because of a shortage of state funding.
Different countries refer to the disputed islands by different names.
People involved in the project say it has no political or commercial agenda. 

During last year's trip, they say, they were examining pieces of celadon, a form of green-glazed ceramic, from a wreck that long ago broke apart on the sharp coral.
Chinese officials see ulterior motives.
"The Philippines sent some French archaeologists to do what? To drag away this shipwreck," says Mr. Liu of China's Center of Underwater Cultural Heritage. 

"Because this was material evidence that Chinese people first found the Scarborough Shoal, they wanted to destroy evidence that was beneficial to China." 

The archaeologists deny that.
Chinese archaeologists haven't started excavating sites at the Scarborough Shoal, but they have begun work on Chinese wrecks around the Paracel Islands, which lie about 200 miles from the coasts of China and Vietnam and are claimed by both countries. 

China has controlled the islands since 1974, when it defeated Vietnam in a brief naval battle.

Mike Hatcher prepares to dive from his ship in the South China Sea in 1986. On the expedition he found the 'Nanking cargo,' a haul of Chinese porcelain and gold from the wreck of the Geldermalsen, an 18th-century Dutch East India Co. ship that raised more than $20 million at auction in Amsterdam. 

"Marine archaeology is an exercise that demonstrates national sovereignty," Li Xiaojie, the vice minister of culture, was quoted as saying by state media in September 2012 as he examined porcelain retrieved from a wreck off the Paracels.
Chinese archaeologists say the survey encompassing other disputed areas will begin this year or next.
They also say they hope to support the government's efforts to re-establish China as a world maritime power, by focusing their research on the "Maritime Silk Road," which connected China by sea with India and Africa beginning in about the second century B.C.
China's five-year plan for 2011 to 2015 calls for the government to promote a seafaring heritage embodied by Zheng He, a eunuch admiral who sailed an armada of treasure ships as far as Africa about 600 years ago. 

The admiral is celebrated in China as the face of an era when it projected power far beyond its shores.
Xi Jinping, China's new president, has repeatedly emphasized the importance of maritime power—at times invoking Zheng He—as part of a vision to reclaim China's world prominence.
Zhang Wei, one of China's first underwater archaeologists, says the nation is "extremely focused on being a great and strong maritime power," which he calls the "grand backdrop" to China's marine-archaeology program. 

The program was launched, he says, under the auspices of President Xi's father, who served as vice premier under Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s.

Two enameled globular teapots painted with peony and bamboo below a border of trellis-pattern; the porcelain survived the wreck and lasted more than two centuries under the sea so well because it was packed inside the tea, which in turn was in wooden chests.

Mr. Zhang says interest was kindled by commercial treasure hunters who operated in the South China Sea. Among the most famous was Mike Hatcher, a Briton whose haul of Chinese porcelain from the wreck of the Geldermalsen, an 18th-century Dutch East India Co. ship that sank in the South China Sea, raised more than $20 million at auction in Amsterdam in 1986.
Chinese leaders dispatched two officials to that auction to try to buy some of the items with cash, according to Mr. Zhang. 

"They only took about $30,000, and they couldn't buy a single thing," he says.
China's National Museum established its Underwater Archaeology Center the following year and appointed Mr. Zhang to head it—mainly, he says, because he was one of the few Chinese archaeologists who could swim.
The first big find in Chinese waters—a roughly 800-year-old merchant ship named the Nanhai One—was made in 1987 while a British salvage company was searching for a Dutch East India Co. wreck. 

The British team was forced to withdraw after the Nanhai One was identified as a Chinese ship.
Since then, there has been almost no foreign participation in marine archaeology in China, according to Chinese and foreign archaeologists. 

And only Chinese wrecks have been excavated in Chinese waters.
Chinese authorities, meanwhile, have trained more than 100 marine archaeologists, built at least three underwater-archaeology museums and invested millions of dollars in research. 

On Thursday, they announced a new project to remove up to 80,000 artifacts from the Nanhai One, which was lifted off the seabed in 2007 and placed in a water tank in a museum.
Next year, China plans to launch a 184-foot ship designed for marine archaeology, the first of its kind in the country, according to state-media reports.
China also is funding joint projects in other countries' waters, focusing mostly on locating wrecks linked to Zheng He. 

Last year, Chinese archaeologists using sonar identified five wrecks they believe were part of his fleet in the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz, according to Chinese state media.
One reason Chinese authorities are so interested in tracing Zheng He's travels is that he is said to have visited several rocks and islands in the South China Sea.

Chinese archaeologists work with porcelain artifacts from the Nanhai One shipwreck, which dated back to the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279), in a structure in Yangjiang, China, in 2009.

Foreign experts say they welcome China's new willingness to invest in underwater archaeology and relish the prospect of learning more about sites in China's waters.
But they are concerned that a political agenda might be driving China's choice of sites, its exclusion of foreign archaeologists and its relative lack of openness about its research.
"There's this strong sense of nationalism that flows through the Chinese program," says Jeffrey L. Adams, an anthropologist at the University of Minnesota who has written about Chinese archaeology.
Foreign archaeologists mostly agree that Chinese-built ships and cargo account for many of the sites in the South China Sea because of the international trade in Chinese porcelain and silk.
But many of the wrecks lie far from the Chinese mainland, around the reefs and rocks off the coast of Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines, because ships used to hug those shores to help with navigation and avoid bad weather.
Even if a wreck isn't in a disputed area, tracing its national "ownership" is often complicated. 

A ship, its owner, its cargo and its crew all may have originated in different countries.
Internationally, the trend in recent years has been toward acknowledging "common heritage," pursuing joint excavation and sharing results among academics from different nations. 

A 2001 Unesco convention on underwater cultural heritage encouraged states to cooperate when they had a shared interest in a site, but offered no guidance on jurisdiction and no mechanism for dealing with sites in disputed areas.
"If there's a disputed site, what we recommend is just get together and don't get into a fight over it," says Ulrike Guerin, who oversees protection of underwater cultural heritage at Unesco, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. 

"If you look around the world now, the majority of projects are multinational ones."
None of the countries involved in the South China Sea disputes have ratified the Unesco convention. 

Only China has the resources to enforce its claims to wrecks in the area and to excavate them.
China did little to enforce those claims until March 2012, when the government announced its first-ever crackdown on illegal salvage and archaeological work in China's territorial waters.
The incident at the Scarborough Shoal occurred less than a month later.
China says the standoff stemmed from an incident that April when a Philippines navy ship detained some Chinese fishermen near the Scarborough Shoal. 

But Chinese officials also have made it clear they regarded Mr. Goddio's project as illegal.
The Chinese marine-surveillance ship that approached the archaeologists was one of three Chinese vessels that took turns monitoring them over the next week or so, according to two people on board the archaeologists' ship and accounts in Chinese state media.
A Philippines coast guard ship was sent to the area but kept its distance. 

A tense standoff ensued as Chinese and Filipino officials accused one another of violating territorial boundaries.
Eventually, on April 18, the archaeologists' ship was forced to leave, prompting a formal protest from the Philippines' government. 

China has had effective control of the area since then.
The team abandoned its project. Mr. Goddio declined to comment.

Neither he nor the National Museum of the Philippines has a track record of using finds to justify territorial or ownership claims. 

"We don't really care who owns the ship," says Sheldon Clyde B. Jago-on, the head of underwater archaeology at the National Museum of the Philippines. 

"It's our shared heritage. It should be about collaboration. We care about the trade patterns, the trade routes, the cargo, the boat building."
Some experts say the overlap between politics and archaeology is neither surprising nor unique to China. Vietnam is expanding investment in its state-run archaeological program, and this year its Institute of Archaeology opened an underwater-archaeology department.
One of Vietnam's first projects has obvious political resonance—excavation of the site of a naval battle in which Vietnamese forces defeated a Chinese army in 938 A.D., bringing an end to centuries of Chinese rule over Vietnam. 

That site is on a river inside Vietnam.
The Scarborough Shoal incident, by contrast, marked the first time a country in the region used force to stop another nation's underwater archaeological project, experts say.
"China has the largest navy and the ability to chase people off, and then follow up with archaeological work," says Mark Staniforth, a marine archaeologist at Australia's Monash University who is working with Vietnam's Institute of Archaeology. 

"There's no sense they want to cooperate or collaborate with anyone."

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