China claims it has always controlled all the rocky shoals, sandbars and reefs within a maritime territory that it has marked with its so-called “nine-dash line.” With this line — which was added to Chinese maps for the first time in 1947 — China claimed ownership of all the islets in 90 percent of the South China Sea. This means China gave itself control of even the James Shoal, an underwater shoal that lies 1,610 kilometers from China’s southernmost landmass, Hainan island, but only 110 kilometers from Malaysia’s coast. James Shoal is so far south it even lies south of the small nation of Brunei.
The 2022 version of the nine-dash line is shown by the red line in the image below, together with the competing claims of China’s neighbors. China’s “nine-dash line” claim means it sees itself as the owner of parts of the South China Sea that are claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei. The claim is also so ambiguous that even Chinese scholars are divided on what it means. Some say that it only gives China ownership of the islands, shoals and reefs in the vast territory that the line demarcates. Critics say China has not been specific about what exactly its claim includes, and that its claims could eventually be interpreted by Chinese hardliners as a firm border that gives China sovereign control over all the waters of the demarcated territory, and all the resources locked up in the oceanic floor underneath these waters.
China released the 2023 edition of its “standard map” on Monday. The new map (see image below) makes a point of including the South China Sea with what looks like a new, even more aggressive version of the nine-dash line. The boundaries of the dash line have been pushed even further, and now it uses ten dashes, so it looks like it might soon be called the “ten-dash line.” It’s hard to tell from the new map whether China really is trying to claim even more maritime territory from its neighbors, but it is clear that it’s not claiming less territory than before.
Even if one were to entertain the idea that China historically controlled all the reefs and shoals of the demarcated territory, one has to ask: How did they control it throughout history? Did they build and maintain guard stations on reefs more than a thousand kilometers from China? There seems to be no evidence of such historic guard stations, and even Chinese scholars agree that China closed itself off from the South China Sea before and after a brief period of seafaring exploration during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644).
According to the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, each country’s sovereign territorial waters extend to a maximum of 12 nautical miles (22 kilometers) beyond its coast, but foreign vessels are granted the right of innocent passage through this zone. Beyond its territorial waters, every coastal country may establish an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) extending 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from shore. Within its EEZ, each coastal state has the right to exploit and regulate fisheries and construct artificial islands.
Yet China claims that almost every reef and landmass north of James Shoal belongs to it, and is currently bullying any of its neighbors who dare to demonstrate ownership of the more strategically valuable of these reefs. In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague ruled that the “nine-dash demarcation” could not be used by Beijing to make historic claims to the South China Sea, saying that it gave China “no legal basis” for maritime claims. Beijing reacted with outrage to the judgment and refused to accept its legitimacy. China also refused to stop building military bases complete with airstrips on these contested reefs.
Today, China has destroyed the coral ecosystems around multiple reefs in the South China Seas in order to build artificial islands on these reefs, with four being large enough to house long runways and expansive military bases. Three of these four large bases are far outside China’s 370-kilometer EEZ. At least one of its smaller outposts is built inside the EEZ of a neighboring country, the small Chinese radar base on Triton island, a contested islet that is only 250 kilometers from Vietnam and 310 kilometers from China’s Hainan island.
Thomas Shugart, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, says that apart from their missile batteries and military capabilities, the islands are “giant information sponges out there providing a much, much better targeting picture of the area than China would have if those bases weren’t there.” Shugart said that when these bases were first being built, a lot of people were “pretty dismissive of those island bases — ‘Oh, we’d be able to scrape them clean with Tomahawk [missiles] in the first hour of the conflict.’ I don’t think people see it that way anymore.”
One of the main purposes of China’s artificial islands is to use civilian and paramilitary pressure to coerce its Southeast Asian neighbors into abandoning their maritime rights. The facilities on these island bases enable hundreds of militia vessels and coast guard ships to remain hundreds of miles from the Chinese coast for months at a time. These engage in frequent harassment of civilian and law enforcement activities by neighboring states, making it prohibitively risky for Southeast Asian players to operate in the South China Sea.
The Philippines made a desperate attempt to stop China’s base building in its maritime backyard in May 1997, when it intentionally stranded an old tank landing ship, the Sierra Madre, on Second Thomas Shoal. The grounded ship became a manned maritime outpost only 184 kilometers from the Philippines coastline and 1,150 kilometers from China’s Hainan island. Although it is very far from China and very close to the Philippines, the rusting outpost lies only 35 kilometers from Mischief Reef, which China has turned into a large military base.
The outpost had been the target of harassment campaigns by Chinese ships and made the spotlight again on August 5, when a large Chinese Coast Guard vessel fired water cannons at Philippine vessels trying to deliver food, fuel and water to Filipino troops stationed on the stranded vessel. Twenty days after the incident, on August 25, a joint force of Australian, U.S. and Philippine units practiced retaking an island seized by hostile forces in a large military drill on the northwestern Philippine coast facing the South China Sea. The troop drills followed a day after Japanese warships joined warships from the three nations in naval drills near the Philippine capital of Manila.
On Sunday, Vice Admiral Karl Thomas, commander of the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet, assured the Philippines that the U.S. will back its forces in the face of “shared challenges” in the region. “You have to challenge people I would say operating in a gray zone. When they’re taking a little bit more and more and pushing you, you’ve got to push back, you have to sail and operate,” Thomas told Reuters. “There’s really no better example of aggressive behavior than the activity on 5 August on the shoal,” he added.
The large-scale Australia-U.S.-Japan-Philippines exercises were also seen as yet another sign that Australia is increasingly committing itself to countering Chinese aggression in the South China Sea. Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles joined Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to observe the drills. Marles used the opportunity to announce that Australia would begin joint maritime patrols with the Philippines in the South China Sea very soon. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will visit the Philippines next week, with maritime issues, defense and security on the agenda.
In May, the U.S. strengthened its 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty with the Philippines by adding new guidelines that spell out under which conditions U.S. military assets would be sent to protect Philippine assets from Chinese aggression. In April, the U.S. military was given access to four additional Philippine military bases under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement that the two nations signed in 2014, bringing the total to nine Philippine bases that it now has access to.
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