China looks to redraw Asian airspace

      

By Demetri Sevastopulo in Hong Kong

When China created a controversial “air defence identification zone” last Saturday, it sparked alarm about the rising risk of Sino-Japanese conflict over the Senkaku Islands.
But while the focus has been on the Japanese chain, China also said in the same statement it “will establish other air defence identification zones at the right moment after necessary preparations are completed”, raising the spectre of tensions spreading across the region.

The Senkaku spat has attracted much attention over the past year because of the potential for war between Asia’s two biggest economies.
But China is engaged in a number of equally contentious territorial disputes with Southeast Asian nations – particularly the Philippines and Vietnam – over the resource-rich South China Sea.
Ian Storey, a security expert at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, said the most obvious candidates for any new Chinese air defence zones were the northern part of the South China Sea and the Yellow Sea.
Chinese maps often include a controversial “nine-dash line” that loops the South China Sea, running close to the coasts of Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia, and stretching south to Indonesia.
It first emerged in a 1947 Republic of China map that was later used by the Communist government of Mao Zedong when it came to power in 1949.
While some Chinese scholars say China does not claim the entire South China Sea, the use of the map has sparked concern among Southeast Asian nations.

China last year started issuing passports that included an image of the “nine-dash line”, provoking angry responses from Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Mr Storey said China would probably not create an ADIZ for the whole South China Sea, saying it would be “absolutely outrageous” if they included the whole area inside the “nine-dash line”.
Instead, he said China was more likely to establish a zone in the northern part of the sea, and particularly surrounding Hainan Island.
Hainan hosts the Chinese navy’s South Sea fleet – one of its three naval fleets – and also a new generation of nuclear submarines that are an increasingly important part of China’s naval capabilities in the South China Sea.
But Mr Storey added that creating an ADIZ over even some of the South China Sea would be “unnecessarily provocative” at a time when China is trying to reduce tensions with its Southeast Asian neighbours.

In October, Chinese President Xi Jinping took advantage of the absence of US President Barack Obama at the Apec summit in Indonesia to launch a charm offensive with Southeast Asian countries, including by floating the idea of creating an “Asian infrastructure bank” to promote development in the region.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang then embarked on a tour of Southeast Asia that was widely seen as an effort to repair relations.
The creation of an ADIZ over the South China Sea would be unlikely to generate the same kind of military response that occurred this week when the US flew B-52 bombers near the Senkaku without alerting China – mainly because, with the exception of Singapore, most Southeast Asian nations have limited air power.
But Gary Li, a senior analyst at IHS maritime, said a Chinese ADIZ in the northern South China Sea would be “very, very sensitive”.
He said it would almost certainly overlap with Vietnam’s ADIZ, which reaches north to about 100km from Hainan Island, and includes the disputed Paracel Islands.
Mr Li said the Yellow Sea was also a contender for a new Chinese ADIZ.
China has repeatedly criticised the US and South Korea for holding joint military exercises in the Yellow Sea, which lies between east China and the Korean peninsula, and particularly so when the US sails its aircraft carriers through the area.
Wu Shicun, president of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies in Hainan, a think-tank that advises the Chinese foreign ministry, said that while China had the right to create new zones, it would take its time.
“We cannot rule out the possibility of setting up new ADIZs, but not in the short term,” said Mr Wu.
“Given the strong reaction from the international community to the East China Sea ADIZ, China will further evaluate when and how to set up new ADIZs. But it will happen sooner or later, since it is related to its national security.”
Shi Yinhong, an international relations expert at Renmin University, agreed that China was unlikely to create a zone in the South China Sea anytime soon, mainly because Beijing does not see the same urgency, but he said that could change if “confrontations in the South China Sea escalate”.
China and Japan had for decades put the Senkaku dispute to the side.
But Beijing reacted angrily last year when Japan bought three of the islands from their private owner, in a move that sparked anti-Japan protests across China.
Mr Li said China probably decided to create an ADIZ – which other countries such as Japan and the US did long ago – because Tokyo has routinely pointed to the number of Chinese incursions into Japan’s zone as a way to rally public support.
“That caused the Chinese side to say we need to get one too. There is a huge PR war here,” said Mr Li.

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Japa Looks for Asian Allies to Say No to China

By Bruce Einhorn
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reviews a guard of honor with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Nov. 16

Two of the poorest countries in Asia suddenly were front and center over the weekend in the growing battle for influence between Japan and China. 

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Laos and Cambodia, the first trip by a Japanese leader to the two Southeast Asian countries since 2000. 

Abe left with some modest achievements, such as agreements to help fund road, bridge, and rail infrastructure.
The point of the trip, though, was more about sending a message to Beijing. 

Abe took office less than a year ago and has already visited all 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. 

That’s a first for a Japanese leader. 

With Japan and China continuing to squabble over islands in the East China Sea, Abe is looking to win support among countries in Southeast Asia, even such places as Cambodia and Laos that traditionally have been close to China. 

Meanwhile, Abe has yet to sit down with Chinese President Xi Jinping or Premier Li Keqiang.
Since many ASEAN nations have territorial disputes of their own with China, Abe no doubt sees an opportunity to build Japanese influence with countries that can agree on the threat posed by their common rival. 

Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, for instance, are all facing challenges from China, which claims nearby islands.
As he tries to solidify ties with the Southeast Asians, Abe has gotten a boost from China’s clumsy response to the tragedy in the Philippines. 

Angry at President Benigno Aquino over the Philippines’s unwillingness to recognize China’s claims for some South China Sea rocks, the Chinese government initially offered a measly $100,000 to assist in the recovery from Typhoon Haiyan. 

While the Chinese government later boosted the amount to $1.6 million, the assistance is still peanuts compared with the $10 million from Japan, not to mention the even more generous offers from Japanese allies: The U.S has pledged $20 million and Australia $28 million.

Japan could hardly have asked for a better reminder that China may not be the friendliest of neighbors. Countries like the Philippines are especially open to Abe’s message, since their economies and militaries are tiny compared with China’s. 

Japan is providing ships for the Philippine coast guard and considering selling vessels to Vietnam, too. 

Japan is also conducting counterterrorism exercises with Indonesia.
The Japanese aid should help combat another common enemy—pirates in the Indian Ocean—and perhaps help ASEAN’s member states withstand heat from their giant neighbor. 

“Some Asean member countries are very much vulnerable to China’s economic and political influence,” says Tetsuo Kotani, research fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs. 

By boosting military cooperation, “we are giving assurance we will stand by those ASEAN member countries,” he says. 

“As China’s neighboring countries develop their own capability, China needs to think twice before taking assertive actions.”
China’s official media is not amused. 

“Abe is trying to hijack some countries that are not contending parties to the South China Sea issue, forcing them to take sides,” Lu Yaodong, director of the department of diplomacy at the Chinese Academy of Social Science’s Institute of Japanese Studies, told the official China Daily newspaper, in a story headlined, “Abe busy in ASEAN blitz aimed at Beijing.” 

According to the China Daily, experts in China believe the Japanese have been “hyping South China Sea tension to gain popularity in the region.”

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Southeast Asia ponders what is going on in China

By Fareed Zakaria

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- Visiting Malaysia this week, I was expecting a volley of complaints. 

The country was one stop on President Obama’s planned trip to Asia this month that was canceled because of Washington’s manufactured budget crisis. 

“We were disappointed, but we understood the situation,” Prime Minister Najib Razak told me.
Others were less diplomatic, pointing to the cancellation as evidence of America’s dysfunctional political system and general decline. 

But many in Malaysia — and across Southeast Asia — told me that they were puzzling mostly about what’s happening not in Washington but rather in Beijing.
This is partly the product of power. 

As China has grown in importance, its neighbors have become increasingly attentive to the Middle Kingdom. In the past, the only politics they followed outside their country was in Washington. 

Today they feel they must also understand Beijing.
And there’s much to understand. 

China is in the midst of great political change. 

Last month, the country watched on national television as President Xi Jinping sat in on a meeting in Heibei at which senior Communist Party officials publicly engaged in “criticism and self-criticism.” 

It is part of the party’s “mass-line” campaign, designed to address concerns that the party is out of touch, elitist and corrupt.
The campaign also includes a strong anti-corruption drive, most visibly involving the humiliation of Bo Xilai, the former party boss of Chongqing. 

Many in China have worried that anti-corruption is a mechanism to eliminate political opponents. 

“There is so much corruption in China that whom you choose to prosecute is really a political decision,” a Beijing businessman said to me, asking to remain anonymous.
More surprisingly to many, the new leadership has begun a sweeping crackdown on dissent. 

Chinese media and human rights groups say that hundreds of journalists, bloggers and intellectuals have been detained since August, charged with the crime of “spreading rumors.” 

Recently this group has included prominent businessmen, including Wang Gongquan, one of China’s best-known billionaires, who has advocated political reform and was formally arrested on Sunday.
Last month, Chinese television aired a tape of Charles Xue, a businessmen and blogger, who confessed to his crimes and welcomed China’s new restrictions on Internet freedom. 

This month, Peking University fired Chinese economist Xia Yeliang, who had helped draft “Charter 08,” a pro-democracy petition that helped to win its principal author, Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize .
China scholars have noted in recent years that the Communist Party is deeply concerned about its legitimacy and grass-roots appeal. 

That led many to believe it would address these issues by opening up its political system, with political reforms that would accompany economic reforms. 

Instead, it appears that the party is choosing older, Mao-era methods of crackdowns, public confessions and purification campaigns.
Over the past 30 years, the Chinese Communist Party has extraordinary accomplishments to its credit.

In the past decade alone, the average person’s income has close to quintupled, and the country now has the world’s second-largest economy.

But perhaps because of this success, many of the challenges China faces are ones in which economics cannot be separated from politics. 

Addressing concerns about pollution, for example, means slowing industrial growth. 

Moving toward a more sustainable development model means taking money from state-owned — and politically connected — companies.
The people I talked to in Southeast Asia were not approaching these issues from the perspective of human rights activists. 

They were really just trying to understand what was going on in China. 

Above all, they wondered what the internal changes mean for Beijing’s foreign policy. 

“China is being very friendly with us these days, more so than it was a few years ago, but it still pushes its own interests very strongly,” one Asian leader told me. 

Diplomats have worried that China has been circulating new maps of the region in which a previously dotted line demarcating Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea now appears as a solid line. 

Last month, China’s foreign minister denied any such change in its claims when publicly asked about it at a Brookings Institution forum by former defense secretary William Cohen. 

Yet the concerns highlight the nervousness felt in the region.
The United States washes its dirty linen vigorously and in public. 

When Washington messes up, it does so in prime time, with politicians, journalists and commentators describing every gory detail with delight. 

China has an opaque political system, which makes it far more mysterious. 

But China, too, has its share of crises, controversies and change. 

And because of the country’s newfound clout, the world is watching and wondering what to make of the black box that is Beijing.

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Relations with South-East Asia: Being there

With the superpower otherwise engaged, China makes hay in South-East Asia

The Economist

HUNDREDS of thousands lined the streets of Vietnam’s capital on October 13th as Li Keqiang, China’s prime minister, arrived for a three-day visit. 

They were not there for him, though. 

It was a state funeral for Vo Nguyen Giap, a legendary general, second only to Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam’s pantheon of national heroes. 

Indeed, many Vietnamese found the timing of Mr Li’s arrival rather offensive and thought that he should have postponed it to avoid intruding on their grief. 

“Disrespectful” and “arrogant” were two adjectives used. 

“Typical” was another.
Unperturbed, Mr Li (pictured above, left) was able to portray his meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart, Nguyen Tan Dung (above, right), as a “breakthrough”. 

It capped a fortnight of high-level Chinese diplomacy in South-East Asia, intended to repair ties frayed in recent years by China’s extensive and disputed territorial claims in the South China Sea.
Xi Jinping, China’s president and leader of the Communist Party, visited Indonesia, Malaysia and the summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum (APEC). 

Mr Li attended a summit in Brunei with leaders of the ten-member Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and went on to Thailand. 

That Barack Obama was due at both APEC and ASEAN, but withdrew because of the budget stand-off in Washington, gave the Chinese leaders’ tours even more prominence.
Vietnam is the ASEAN country where suspicion of China is strongest. 

After centuries of animosity and a brief, bloody war in 1979, a territorial dispute still simmers, the most extensive of the four China has with ASEAN members in the South China Sea (the others being Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines). 

Not only do both China and Vietnam claim the Spratly Islands to the south, but Vietnam regards itself as having been illegitimately evicted from the Paracel islands to the north, when China seized them in 1974 from the dying regime of the former South Vietnam. 

Confrontations over fishing and oil and gas exploration are frequent.
Yet in June, during a visit to China by Vietnam’s president, Truong Tan Sang, the two countries signed a new “strategic partnership”. 

China is Vietnam’s largest trading partner—not even counting a flourishing illegal trade over the border—as it is for ASEAN as a whole. 

Mr Li’s breakthrough was to go further in parking the territorial dispute so that it does not get in the way of other business. 

He even agreed to a “maritime co-operation” work group.
In China, this helped smother unpleasant memories of 2010, when, at a meeting in Hanoi, Hillary Clinton, America’s secretary of state at the time, waded into the South China Sea dispute, declaring an American “national interest” in it. 

China blames American interference for emboldening Vietnam and the Philippines to stand up to it over the sea. 

Now China Daily, an official newspaper, has quoted a Chinese analyst: “Hanoi has already realised that it is unrealistic to count on Washington to give public support to its claims on some islands.”
That analysis is a stretch. 

But Mr Li’s tour, like Mr Xi’s, was a reminder of how big a regional power China has become, and of how absent Mr Obama was. 

Everywhere they displayed their economic clout. 

In Thailand, for example, Mr Li delighted the government by offering help in two areas of self-inflicted economic harm, by agreeing to buy more rice and rubber. 

Mr Xi had already floated the idea of a Chinese-led “Asian infrastructure bank” to help meet one of the region’s most pressing needs. 

In Brunei, Mr Li had earlier proposed a new treaty with ASEAN, to realise his vision of a “diamond decade” in its relations with China.

Not that alluring
If this was a charm offensive, however, one ASEAN country still gets the offence without the charm. 

China is incensed that the Philippines is challenging its ill-explained, expansive claim in the South China Sea at the international tribunal of the United Nations’ law of the sea. 

It suits China to try to isolate the Philippines. 

Vietnamese scholars, however, say their government is fully aware of this—and has not ruled out joining the Philippines’ legal action.
A few weeks of diplomatic activity have not changed the fundamental reality—that South-East Asia looks to China as its main trading partner and America as the prime guarantor of its security. 

They have, however, heightened a perception that power in the region is shifting. 

A commentary in the Jakarta Post, an English-language newspaper in Indonesia, argued bluntly that “it is China, not the United States, who is the leader of the Asia-Pacific region in the 21st century.” 

Pointing to Mr Obama’s no-show and the government shutdown, it concluded that his “much touted ‘pivot’ to Asia feels more like a pirouette with an overemphasis on military engagement.”
The Chinese press is happy to foster the impression of a power shift, taking the argument beyond South-East Asia.

Its official news agency, Xinhua, published a commentary calling for a “de-Americanised world”.

It argued that, with the possibility of a sovereign default by the superpower, “such alarming days when the destinies of others are in the hands of a hypocritical nation have to be terminated.”
That notion attracts some sympathy in South-East Asia but few would want an American-led international order to give way to one dominated by China. 

Some Vietnamese officials thought the criticism of the timing of Mr Li’s visit to Hanoi was unfair. 

After all, he was there in time to offer condolences at a time of national grief. 

But it is not just in Vietnam that many are prepared to think the worst of Chinese motives.

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Abe Shunned by China Gets Warmer Welcome Southeast Asia

By Isabel Reynolds and Kyoko Shimodoi

Shinzo Abe, Japan's prime minister, gestures during a news conference at the prime minister's official residence in Tokyo on Oct. 1, 2013.

Shinzo Abe, Japan's prime minister, left, prepares to shake hands with Benigno Aquino, Philippines' president, in front of a map of Mindanao island, after reading their joint statements at Malacanang Palace in Manila on July 27, 2013.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, beset by festering ties with China that have barred a bilateral summit since he took office, is overseeing an unprecedented expansion in ties with Southeast Asia as a counterbalance.
Abe, who heads to Indonesia next week for a gathering of Asia-Pacific leaders, has already visited Southeast Asia three times since taking office in December. 

His administration is building on Japan’s economic links with the region by developing security relationships, offering coast-guard vessels to the Philippines, conducting counter-terrorism exercises with Indonesia and considering the provision of ships for Vietnam.
The broadening relationship comes two generations after Abe’s grandfather, Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, reopened ties with the region following the turmoil of World War II.

The initiative provides China with an incentive to dial back its aggression in pressing maritime-jurisdiction claims in the region.

“Japan’s power is being eclipsed by China’s and it needs friends and allies beyond just the U.S.,” said Michael Green, who served on the National Security Council and is senior vice president for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. 

“The new element with Abe is that he is now prepared to help them on the defense side” in Southeast Asia, rather than focus just on economic ties.

Abe’s efforts to broaden the interpretation of Japan’s constitution -- which bans an official military and has until now been regarded as barring defense of an ally -- raise the possibility of further security links with Southeast Asia. 

Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party is discussing the adoption of so-called collective defense, though no deadline has been set for a decision.
“If we say we can’t expand our military, we can’t carry out collective self-defense and will only act behind the scenes, then we can’t gain the respect of other Asian countries or have a proper relationship with them,” said LDP lawmaker Hiroshi Imazu, a former deputy defense chief who serves on the parliamentary security committee.
“We caused trouble for them in the war, but now we are saying we will make the international contributions appropriate for a major economy.”

APEC Summit
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum leaders’ meeting in Bali next week gives Abe the chance to meet his counterparts from across Southeast Asia. 

He pledged in July to help provide 10 coast guard vessels to the Philippines, one of the countries at odds with China over waters in the South China Sea rich with oil, gas and fish. 

Japan is discussing a similar arrangement with Vietnam, Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera told reporters during a visit to Hanoi in mid September.
Philippine Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin has said he’d be happy to see Japanese involvement in Philippine military bases and last December Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario told the Financial Times the Philippines would “welcome” a rearmed Japan as a “significant balancing factor” in the region.
“I think it is very helpful for the Japanese to be out,” Admiral Samuel Locklear, Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, told reporters in Seoul on Oct. 1. 

“They are in many ways a great power. They’re a very credible military defense capability. They understand the region through all aspects of economics and culture”, he added.

Japan’s Foreign Ministry held its first-ever seminar on building marine security last month, involving Indonesia, Thailand and Myanmar, as well as the Philippines and Malaysia.

Containing China
Japanese Marine Self-Defense Forces ships paid their first ever visit to Myanmar this week. 

Indonesia has agreed to increased military cooperation, state news agency Antara reported on Feb. 2, and Japan sent maritime personnel to give the Indonesian Navy a seminar on marine meteorology in February.
The moves by Japan have drawn concern in Beijing. 

Abe’s policies amount to a “plot to contain China,” the official Xinhua news agency said in June.
“It is in our interest to get allies lined up against China,” said Clarita Carlos, a political science professor at the University of the Philippines, who has studied Philippine politics for 50 years.

“The enemy of your enemy is your friend.”

Code of Conduct
The Philippines, whose defense budget was about $3 billion for the 2012 fiscal year, compared with China’s $166 billion, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, asked the United Nations in January to rule on its dispute with China. 

Beijing took effective control of the Scarborough Shoal, a fertile fishing ground, a year after a standoff between ships from the two countries.
China has agreed to talks on developing a code of conduct for ships operating in the South China Sea, while making advances to Cambodia and Vietnam. 

Premier Li Keqiang called for better ties during a meeting with Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on Sept. 2, Xinhua reported. 

President Xi Jinping is visiting Indonesia and Malaysia this week while Li plans to attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting and then make officials visits to Brunei, Thailand and Vietnam later this month.
Xi today signed a new pact aimed at increasing bilateral trade with Malaysia to $160 billion by 2017, and arranged to exchange army and navy personnel.
Last year the Asean countries failed to release a final communique from their summit for the first time, after a split over the maritime conflicts with China.

‘Same Situation’
In some places Japan is breaking new ground. 

Onodera told reporters on Sept. 17 he was the first non-Vietnamese defense official to see military areas of the Cam Ranh naval base during his visit earlier in the month. 

Vietnam took part in a submarine rescue training exercise in Japan at the end of September, he said. 

Vietnam’s relations with China have at times been strained by the countries’ competing claims to the Spratly Islands and the Paracel Islands.
“In a sense, Japan and Vietnam are in the same situation, one in the East China Sea and one in the South China Sea,” Onodera said on Sept. 17.
Japan is mired in its own dispute with China after it bought three uninhabited islets coveted by China in the East China Sea last year, triggering violent demonstrations and damaging trade ties between Asia’s two largest economies. 

Since then, Chinese and Japanese patrol boats and aircraft have tailed one another around Japan's Senkaku islands.

Scarborough Shoal
“The strategy is if China were to place pressure on Japan in the East China Sea, Japan can try to defuse it by putting pressure on China in the South China Sea, by backing up Vietnam and the Philippines,” said Dr Lam Peng Er of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore, who has written a book about Japan’s ties with the region.
China last month denied starting to build a structure on the Scarborough Shoal. 

The Philippines protested in June what it called the “massive presence of Chinese military and paramilitary ships” around territory it claims. 

In March China fired on a Vietnamese fishing vessel, sparking a protest from the government, and it has used patrol ships to disrupt hydrocarbon surveys by the Philippines and Vietnam.
The rocky relationship with China is reflected in a redirection of Japanese funds. 

Direct investment in Asean countries roughly quadrupled in the first six months of this year to 998.6 billion yen ($10.2 billion), more than twice the 470.1 billion yen that went to China. 

Japan’s big banks such as Mitsubishi UFJ are seeking new markets by investing in Vietnamese counterparts, while Japan agreed in May to give Myanmar 51 billion yen in development loans and about 2 billion yen in grants.

Japan’s Image
Japan’s image in Southeast Asia is more favorable than in China. 

A Pew survey including about 9,400 people in eight Asia-Pacific countries in March and April found Japan was viewed positively by about 80 percent of respondents in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, compared with only 4 percent in China.
Seventy-eight percent of respondents to the survey in China said Japan had not sufficiently apologized for its war actions, compared with 47 percent in the Philippines.
“There’s a lot to be gained for the Japanese in doing this kind of thing,” said Daniel Sneider, associate director for research at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University in California. 

“I think Abe is very happy to go around Southeast Asia in a very visible way.”

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