Andrew Carr has distilled an important question out of our recent paper on maritime security in Indo-Pacific Asia: what accounts for Beijing's ambivalence about maritime confidence building, something which seems so conducive to Chinese interests? After all, such confidence building measures could allay regional concerns and impose greater predictability on maritime interactions along China's periphery.
Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Liang Guanglie meets with US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore during the 10th IISS Security Summit, 3 June 2011.
Andrew raises the possibility of a tactical ploy, an attempt on China's part at establishing a strong bargaining position by raising the diplomatic buy-in cost to the US. There may be something to this. Anyone who's had diplomatic dealings with China can attest to its reputation for driving a very hard bargain.
It was Chinese diplomats, after all, who achieved the impressive feat of bringing Australia's otherwise indomitable foreign minister, Kevin Rudd, to tears in Copenhagen. Chinese diplomats double blind-sided Washington for years at the Six-Party Talks, ratifying Pyongyang's de facto nuclear status under the guise of an attempt at disarmament. And, despite their country's weakness at the time, they extracted a cracking deal from Nixon and Kissinger in the 1970s which paved the way to a wholesale transformation of China's economy and decades of success.
So yes, Beijing knows how to play its diplomatic hand very well, indeed.
And yet there's something deeper, more fundamental, at the heart of China's reluctance to negotiate limits on its own maritime conduct in the South and East China Seas.
One reason, among others, involves a potent historical narrative that militates against any inclination to compromise. For China, the prospect of sitting at a table with a militarily dominant US, accepting limits, however modest, on its own prerogative and in its own backyard, echoes the most painful episodes in the Chinese national consciousness.
The legacy of China's 'century of humiliation', so called in part because of the imposition by Western maritime powers of unequal treaties that circumscribed Chinese sovereignty, is to be divested as China grows stronger, not reprised. For many in China, particularly the military, the enduring and inherent inequality in its dealings with the US makes such talks a non-starter on principle.
This is a principle that, deep down, the US understands well. In 1812 Washington acted even more extremely on the same rationale. As the Napoleonic wars raged in Europe, the US went to war against Britain in the western hemisphere to preserve its own sovereign prerogative in waters that it considered vital to American security, prestige and economic well-being.
In the face of British maritime dominance, and in the context of increasing diplomatic tensions arising out of an asymmetric balance of power, negotiation (though almost certainly a better option for the US, given the outcome of the war) was deemed unbefitting of an ambitious maritime nation.
China is unlikely to make the mistake of deliberately initiating war before it's ready — and that won't be for a another decade or two yet. In other important respects, however, Beijing is reading straight out of Washington's very own geopolitical playbook.
Beijing's stance critical in resolution (Korea Times 29-6-11) --Bài Ian Storey
-- Biển Đông – Vùng biển nguy hiểm nhất châu Á: Explainer: South China Sea — Asia’s most dangerous waters (CNN).- ASEAN sống trong môi trường nguy hiểm ở Biển Đông (Nghiên cứu BĐ).- Tổ chức 6 cuộc tập trận trong tháng Trung Quốc kêu gọi hòa bình cho biển Đông — (RFA).- Trung Quốc che giấu thông tin tàu sân bay (PLTP). Trung Quốc thử siêu tàu lặn ở Thái Bình Dương--
Nếu Trung Quốc có thể sản xuất được các động cơ tương đương với động cơ F100 của Mỹ , họ có thể xây dựng một phi đội máy bay ...
Báo Nga: "Sóng" trên biển Đông ngày càng dữ dội! VIT - Việt Nam phản đối hành động đơn phương của Trung Quốc trong vùng lãnh thổ tranh chấp. Chính phủ Philippines đã cáo buộc Trung Quốc phá hoại hòa bình và .
-- KS Doãn Mạnh Dũng: Thời khắc im lặng trước khi tiếng súng Biển Đông bùng lên! –(boxitvn).
- Đứng lên chống lại kẻ bắt nạt – Trung Quốc -INQUIRER – Global Networking--Rodel Rodis Ngày 29-6-2011
