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Maritime Security Cooperation Is China’s Best Bet

29 Jun 2016
By Captain (retd) Sukjoon Yoon
South China Sea: Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Mustin. Photo credit: U.S. Pacific Fleet (Flickr) Creative Commons

The Indo-Pacific region has long been dominated by Western concepts of security based on alliances, military strength and balance of power politics. It is time for China to play a more positive role in implementing active maritime security cooperation in the region by revitalising non-traditional security cooperation.

Since the end of the Cold War, China has faced a huge task in dealing with the so-called non-traditional security or trans-national threats, many of which have a distinctly maritime character or at least some maritime aspects. Such issues are perhaps less dangerous but are also less predictable than the Cold War threats and many have already had a significant impact on the Indo-Pacific region.

China’s approach to maritime security and its littoral domain is a crucial issue for the whole Indo-Pacific region. However there are some grounds for optimism as China has demonstrated its willingness to play a leading role in dealing with these threats and their direct or indirect effects. Hopefully, China’s maritime policies will restore the Asian international order in a way that demonstrates its goodwill and a readiness to cooperate with its neighbours. China’s proposals for a China-ASEAN Maritime Cooperation Fund and a China-Indonesia Maritime Cooperation Fund support this possibility.

It is also time for China to play a more positive, indeed a leading, role in implementing active maritime security cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region. The region has long been dominated, both nationally and regionally, by Western-oriented concepts of security based on alliances, military strength, economic interdependence and the balance of power politics. But the European kind of balance-of-power approach is fundamentally unsuited to the Indo-Pacific region because the political situation is too difficult. This is a particular issue for China which wants to see a new regional maritime order and has been striving to implement a regional security template for Asia that is informed by Asian values and an Asian understanding of identity. Unfortunately there is a profound mismatch between the Chinese and the US visions of maritime Asia. The US is overly focused on naval strength with its “Rebalancing to Asia” strategy but has yet to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and China on the other hand is obsessed with the restoration of its historical regional hegemony, essentially adhering to a Middle Kingdom mentality despite being a full member of the UNCLOS.

China’s emergence as a maritime power, which has been accompanied by some volatile and assertive behaviour, has disrupted other regional actors as well as the extra-regional superpower, the US, causing serious problems. The situation presents five key aspects for the future disposition of maritime security in the Indo-Pacific region.

First, rather than perceiving the maritime domain as an important medium to enhance regional peace and prosperity, China has treated it as an arena for conflict and confrontation involving both state and non-state actors. Second, China’s heavy-handed interactions with neighbouring coastal nations in the sensitive East and South China seas have generated great distrust. Third, in forcefully striving to become a true maritime power China has often employed unnecessarily harsh words and deeds, the ultimate purpose of which remains opaque.

Fourth, China’s approach to customary international law and especially to the UNCLOS is problematic: China has refused to participate in the case brought by the Philippines to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague fearing this could affect China’s nine-dash line jurisdictional claims in the South China Sea. Indeed, China’s naval forces and coastguard agencies are primarily used to enforce China’s own interpretation of its national maritime jurisdictional rights and interests.

Fifth, despite the prevailing distrust, which is a major obstacle hindering maritime cooperation among regional nations, China has proved ready to join many multilateral initiatives and forums designed to build confidence in maritime issues and to mitigate deep-seated suspicion. China has instigated or been involved with many practical and useful maritime confidence-building measures (MCBMs), both military and economic in nature, including various goodwill-oriented interactions between maritime forces. These include the Regional Maritime Security Initiative, the Western Pacific Naval Symposium, agreements on maritime and aerospace search and rescue, the implementation of the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea for official vessels, and China’s 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative.

China has also reached agreement with its neighbours and its potential adversaries to implement various operational and functional measures intended to deter the worst scenarios. Such measures include strategic and policy dialogues, military hotlines, the exchange of rules of engagement and consultations about areas of operation amongst others. There is also the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea and the corresponding Code of Conduct still under negotiations.

The criticism of China has recently grown sharper with its neighbours now focusing on building up their military capabilities in the disputed seas. In this regard, many countries continue to rely upon the traditional security approaches through alliances and military interactions. This only highlights the huge gap between what the region wants from China and what China is actually doing both on traditional and non-traditional security issues.China’s aspirations to establish a new maritime order will only succeed if it is genuinely rules-based requiring an honest willingness to cooperate. Indisputably, China has the most to contribute to enhance regional maritime security through non-traditional security cooperation (NTSC) and can also expect to benefit the most from a general effort to increase information sharing. China should also provide the bulk of the necessary human and material resources for implementing the appropriate MCBMs and for cooperation on non-traditional security threats.

Existing multilateral mechanisms intended to build trust or confidence include the East Asia Summit, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the ASEAN Regional Forum, ASEAN Plus Three, and the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia, besides a variety of other initiatives from individual countries such as the Northeast Asia Peace Cooperation Initiative promulgated by South Korean President Park Geun-Hye. These forums have proven very helpful in addressing the non-traditional security challenges. The spirit of commonality fostered by these efforts builds confidence which can then be leveraged to cope with intractable traditional threats. China has played a very proactive role in the current multilateral MCBM mechanisms but must do more to stabilise the maritime security of the region.

In order to increase regional cooperation and thereby lay the groundwork for lasting peace and prosperity, China needs to address the following questions: How does NTSC differ from the MCBMs put forward by various organisations and entities in the past? How can NTSC facilitate improved security in the Indo-Pacific region compared with the existing MCBMs? Is NTSC in China’s best interests considering the current strains in the traditional security relations between countries in the Indo-Pacific region?

For China, pursuing regional maritime confidence-building measures through NTSC offers the prospect of a new era for regional security promoting peace and reconciliation in the Indo-Pacific region by replacing mistrust and conflict with trust and cooperation.

Dr Sukjoon Yoon is currently a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for Maritime Strategy (KIMS) and is a retired Republic of Korea (ROK) Navy Captain. This article is published under a Creative Commons Licence and may be republished with attribution.