Advertisement
South China Sea
This Week in AsiaOpinion
Ian Storey
Ian Storey

Opinion | As US-China tensions rise, what is the outlook on the South China Sea dispute in 2020-21?

  • The situation has grown fraught since the onset of Covid-19, with Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam also hardening their stance
  • But China is unlikely to terraform further land features, while Vietnam will also refrain from legally challenging Beijing’s claims or actions

Reading Time:8 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
6
The US Navy aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis transits the South China Sea in 2019. Photo: Reuters
Ian Storey
Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in March, tensions in the South China Sea have surged. This is mainly the result of China’s continued assertiveness coupled with the sharp deterioration in US-China relations over a variety of issues including the South China Sea itself.
Advertisement

Actions undertaken by Beijing to assert its jurisdictional claims, and demonstrate that the pandemic has not undermined its political resolve or the operational readiness of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), have been counterproductive.

These include employing the PLA Navy, China Coast Guard and maritime militia in pursuit of these goals, surging fishing boats into the waters adjacent to Indonesia’s Natuna Islands as well as deploying survey vessels into the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines. China has also created two new administrative districts to cover the Paracels and Spratlys and named 80 geographical features, while also conducting missile tests in the disputed waterway.
In response, the United States has stepped up its military presence in the South China Sea as well as its criticism of China’s actions. Most importantly, in support of the Southeast Asian claimants, Washington has aligned its South China Sea policy with the 2016 arbitral tribunal ruling, which declared Beijing’s “historic rights” incompatible with the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos). On June 1, the US submitted a letter to the UN laying out its stance in that regard, while on July 13 US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a major statement endorsing the arbitral ruling and rejecting most of China’s claims.

On August 26, the US State Department imposed sanctions on an undisclosed number of Chinese citizens “responsible or, or complicit in, either the large-scale reclamation, construction, or militarisation of disputed outposts in the South China Sea”, while the US Department of Commerce blacklisted 24 state-owned companies involved in the construction of China’s seven artificial islands in the Spratlys.

Advertisement

China and the US accuse each other of provoking tensions and militarising the dispute. The Pentagon has increased the frequency of Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs) in the South China Sea. In the first seven months of 2020, the US Navy conducted seven FONOPs in the Paracels and Spratlys, compared with eight in 2019, five in 2018 and four in 2017. The US Navy has also conducted a series of high-profile exercises in the South China Sea, including dual aircraft carrier operations for the first time since 2014,－and increased submarine deployments and maritime air patrols.

Advertisement