The South China Sea (16 page)

Captain Joefel Alipustain was the first person to suffer the consequences. He and the rest of his crew aboard the fishing boat
Analita
were going about their usual business on 10 January 1995 when they made an unusual discovery. Sticking several metres out of the sea, raised above the waves on giant stilts, were four large platforms, each supporting three or four octagonal bunkers. During the typhoon season, in the crew's traditional fishing ground, a horseshoe-shaped rock formation submerged at high tide had been occupied. And the occupiers were far from pleased to have been discovered; the
Analita
’s crew quickly found themselves surrounded by hostile boats. To their astonishment, they discovered the interlopers were Chinese, 114 kilometres closer to the Philippines than they had been only a few months before. The crew were held for a week before being freed
on condition they didn't tell anyone what they'd found. But that commitment lasted only as long as it took the
Analita
to reach home, and the world quickly learnt the apt name of the place where they'd been detained: Mischief Reef (Meiji Jiao in Chinese, Panganiban in Filipino).
³⁸
And the location of Mischief Reef? Almost exactly in the middle of the area being surveyed by Alcorn Petroleum.
³⁹

The Philippine authorities went into denial. ‘It couldn't be true’, they maintained. The government had other things on its mind. Manila was hosting the largest Christian gathering in history: 4 million people watched Pope John Paul II celebrate Mass. (The region was also somewhat distracted by the Kobe earthquake in the same week.) It was only after the pontiff had left town that the Ramos administration could turn its attention to the sea. A navy plane was sent out but apparently failed to find any evidence of bunkers on stilts. The Chinese went into a different form of denial: there'd been no incident at all with a fishing boat, they said, and there was no base on Mischief Reef. But by 9 February the Ramos government had photographic proof to show the world's press and the Chinese story changed too. Yes, there were structures, they admitted, but they'd been built by the fisheries administration, not the navy. However, that didn't seem to explain the presence of satellite dishes on the huts or the eight armed navy transport vessels around the reef. Then they told the Philippine authorities that the base had been built by ‘low-ranking’ naval personnel without proper authorisation.
⁴⁰
But the idea that hundreds of tons of wood and steel, prefabricated housing units, communications equipment and all the men and materials required to set up the four bases could be transported hundreds of kilometres without official permission was ludicrous.
⁴¹

The reaction in Manila was furious, made worse by a sense of impotence. Following the fall of President Marcos and the end of the Cold War, the public and politicians had assumed the country did not face any external threats and voted accordingly. In 1989 Ramos, as Secretary of National Defence, had proposed a 15-year $12.6 billion military modernisation plan. He tried to prioritise it again after becoming president but it remained firmly on the shelf. It wasn't until a fortnight after Ramos demonstrated that Chinese naval forces had managed to build a base 209 kilometres offshore without anyone noticing that Congress finally found
the time to debate the plan.
⁴²
The Modernization Act was approved within days but the resolution to actually implement it wasn't passed for almost two further years.
⁴³
(In 1997, as a result of the Asian financial crisis, most of the funding would disappear anyway.) In February 1995, because of the delays, Ramos had no military option. He was being lied to by Beijing. The United States, still upset about the termination of the bases agreement and more worried by events in Bosnia, wasn't rushing to help. He turned instead to his neighbours.

It was a turning point. Up until January 1995, Chinese expansion in the South China Sea had only really affected Vietnam – and at times when Hanoi was internationally isolated. The features China had seized were all either in the Paracels or along the western side of the Spratlys, far from the other claimants. But by taking Mischief Reef on the eastern side, China had, for the first time, encroached into waters claimed by a member of ASEAN. After the Chinese move, not just the Philippines but Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia all felt directly threatened. Vietnam, due to join ASEAN that July, was also lobbying for a firm stand. Even Singapore, usually keen to keep on the right side of Beijing, was concerned. In a memorable interview with the BBC, its former prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, later compared China's actions to ‘a big dog going up to a tree and raising its leg and marking its presence, so that smaller dogs in the region will know that a big dog has been past and will come back’.
⁴⁴

But ASEAN didn't have a military option either: none of its members were prepared to risk hostilities with China. Sanctions were out too, so instead, on 18 March, it issued a strongly worded statement expressing its ‘serious concern’, calling upon all parties to ‘refrain from taking actions that destabilize the region and threaten the peace and security of the South China Sea’ and specifically calling for an ‘early resolution of the problems caused by the recent developments in Mischief Reef’. This was pretty tough talk by ASEAN standards but it had no effect out at sea: the bunkers remained on their stilts. China kept stonewalling. In April, at the first ever ASEAN–China Forum, which might have been the obvious place to discuss the matter, Beijing simply refused to have it on the agenda. Instead it was raised, and by all accounts quite forcefully, at an informal meeting beforehand. The Philippine government said it was pleased with the support, but still the structures remained on the reef.

Beijing refused to discuss the issue at the official regional meetings that Ramos would have preferred. The refusal obliged Ramos to agree to China's preferred channel – bilateral discussions – instead, and in August the two sides agreed a ‘code of conduct’ to avoid future incidents: more statements, more paper, but still no practical change. From the outset, China offered the Philippines joint development of the oil prospects in the areas it claimed – asking the Philippines, in effect, to recognise its territorial rights in the Spratlys. This policy – which has been termed ‘occupy and negotiate’ or, more pithily, ‘take and talk’ – is something that none of the other claimants have been prepared to accept.

So why did China occupy Mischief Reef in late 1994? The initial trigger may well have been the Philippine announcement of plans for oil and gas development. But there were internal reasons too. The Singapore-based regional analyst Ian Storey argued that it was the result of jockeying for power within the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist Party as Deng Xiaoping's faculties diminished.
⁴⁵
Deng's chosen successor, Jiang Zemin, was not a military man and needed support from the PLA leadership and more nationalist factions if he was to reach the top spot. In 1994, Deng's other protégé, Admiral Liu, was a key member of the Politburo Standing Committee and Vice-Chair of the Central Military Commission – the two key bodies in Chinese politics. It seems highly likely that he would have seen the occupation of Mischief Reef as a key part of his ‘green water’ strategy and that an astute politician like Jiang would have fully supported it. The move was clearly a success. Chinese forces occupy Mischief Reef to this day and the repercussions have been minimal.

The Philippines’ neighbours learnt lessons from the crisis. In April 1995, the Indonesian government revealed that China had made a claim on waters near the Natuna Islands, within Indonesia's claimed Exclusive Economic Zone. Alarmed by the events at Mischief Reef, Jakarta decided its best option was deterrence. In August 1996, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei held joint military exercises in Borneo, on the southern fringe of the South China Sea. The following month, Indonesia held its largest-ever naval manoeuvres – around the Natunas: 27 ships, 54 aircraft and almost 20,000 personnel took part in war games, climaxing with an amphibious assault on the island where Exxon's multi-billion dollar natural gas project was due to be based. The Chinese Navy sent five ships
to observe the exercises but just to make sure that the message was received in Beijing, the chief of China's General Staff, Fu Quanyou, was invited to Jakarta for meetings with President Suharto and his defence chiefs.
⁴⁶
China still maintains a claim to the northern part of the gas field but, until very recently, took little action to assert it. (A few incidents since 2012 have given Indonesia renewed cause for concern, of which more later.)

After months of Indonesia talking softly but waving a big stick and the Philippines doing the opposite, the situation in the South China Sea stabilised in time for the annual meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group. By coincidence the November 1996 meeting, involving 21 heads of government, was being held in Manila. It gave Jiang Zemin the opportunity to make the first ever visit to the Philippines by a Chinese head of state. Once APEC was over, he spent three days meeting and greeting the country's business and political leaders. At the start of the second day, President Ramos treated Jiang and his delegation to an early morning boat trip around Manila Bay. As they breakfasted, a Philippine Navy band struck up a series of numbers from a specially produced songbook entitled
Sailing Together to the 21st Century
. The two leaders took to the floor and performed a duet of Elvis Presley's ‘Love Me Tender’. As the 60 or so guests applauded, the enmity of Mischief Reef seemed far away. But out at sea, nothing changed. Almost exactly two years after the karaoke cruise, the Chinese Navy turned their stilt platforms on Mischief Reef into concrete blockhouses with wharfs and helipads. China had talked and taken.

The desire to grab islands in the South China Sea began with nationalist flag-waving and ended with a rush to claim potential oilfields and fishing rights. None of the occupations has yet delivered the hoped-for rewards. Instead they have created chronic insecurity, blocked development of the sea's resources and forced politicians into rhetorical battles and jingoistic gestures at times when they might have preferred to seek regional cooperation. China was a latecomer to the Spratlys party but each time it has occupied a feature, Beijing's negotiating position has become stronger. What practical benefits has it gained though? Only the negative effect of preventing others from making gains. Beijing clearly sees this as a long-term strategy that will eventually oblige other states to share sovereign rights. But will they? Is there an alternative to ‘might is right'? Could the rule of international law provide an alternative?

CHAPTER 4

Rocks and Other Hard Places

The South China Sea and International Law

O
N
29 M
ARCH
1843 the crew of the sailing barque
Cyrus
was hunting for oil in the South China Sea. Sadly for them, the oil was getting away. Five days before, the
Cyrus
had lowered its harpoon boats and come close, but the whales had escaped, heading off fast between the reefs. It was tough and perilous work. The ship was navigating an area known only as the ‘dangerous ground’ – from the warning printed on the first maritime charts. Despite the new charts the sea off the northern coast of Borneo remained a risky prospect for whalers – and whales – alike. But on this day the weather was fine and a steady breeze allowed the
Cyrus
to make good progress in pursuit of its prey.

Extracting oil from the blubber of a dead whale was a noxious process. As Ishmael complained, aboard the
Pequod
in
Moby Dick
, ‘It has an unspeakable, wild Hindoo odor about it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of funeral pyres. It smells like the left wing of the day of judgment; it is an argument for the pit.’ But once safely barrelled up, whale oil was prized cargo and the 281-ton
Cyrus
could carry tens of thousands of gallons of it. This was the prize its captain, Richard Spratly, was seeking. He'd left London 16 months before and wouldn't return for a further 17. It took nearly three years of hunting to fill the hold with enough oil to satisfy the ship's owners. Add in whalebone, whale ivory and ambergris and the trade was lucrative. In all, Spratly would make four long voyages as master of
the
Cyrus
. Each one was marked by the birth of another child – though he never saw any of them before their second birthday. By the time each arrived, he had already departed on the next expedition.

The sea had been Richard Spratly's destiny from an early age. Born in the shadow of London's docks to a boat-builder father he was apprenticed to a whaling ship at 16. He transferred to the corrections industry, transporting British and Irish prisoners to Australia, and by the age of 30 had command of the convict ship
York
. Two years later, in 1834, he returned to his first vocation: chasing cetaceans through the South Seas.

As one of the most experienced captains in the fleet, Richard Spratly could weather the difficult conditions better than most. After years on deck he knew the treacherous waters well and would occasionally write to the authorities with discoveries of dangerous rocks and shoals he had encountered. He'd often learnt the hard way: in the spring of 1842 he told a fellow captain that in the many voyages he had made in the seas around what is now Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines he ‘had been aground on nearly all these reefs and shoals’ at some point. Even a decade later he would write to the
Nautical Magazine
complaining that he ‘never yet could find one chart of this intricate Archipelago to be in the least depended upon’.

So it is somewhat ironic that this entire intricate archipelago now bears his name. At 9 a.m. that Wednesday, 29 March 1843, there came a shout from the masthead of the
Cyrus
. The lookout had spotted a low, sandy island: 12 miles to the southeast. Captain Spratly believed that it was uncharted. Others disagreed, saying the island had already been recorded by the East India Company's surveyor, James Horsburgh, but perhaps in deference to his long experience, the Royal Navy's Hydrographic Office chose to honour Spratly and since 1881 its charts have marked ‘Spratly Island’. It was a fitting honour for an old sea dog, but perhaps in view of later developments, Horsburgh's original name of ‘Storm Island’ might have been more appropriate.