The South China Sea: Seize the Day and Contain the CCP

The Chinese regime’s latest reef grab at Sandy Cay may not be the last.

A China Coast Guard ship (R) is seen past the Philippine Coast Guard ship BRP Cape Engaño (L), as photographed from the BRP Cabra during a supply mission in disputed waters of the South China Sea on Aug. 26, 2024. Jam Sta Rosa/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

In mid-April, China Coast Guard (CCG) sailors landed on a tiny sandbar in the South China Sea. They unfurled China’s flag to claim the reef, called Sandy Cay, as China’s territory. However, the reef is within the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines, so attempting to seize it should be considered a form of aggression.

Three days after the CCG landing, which included the unfurling of China’s flag, Philippine personnel deployed to the reef and unfurled their own flag. The relative lack of global reaction to the CCG’s incursion serves the goal of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of normalizing its territorial aggression in the South China Sea and elsewhere.

Sandy Cay is not just a pile of sand, as some who advocate appeasement will claim. The reef is significant because its elevation exceeds the high tide line, giving whichever country owns it a territorial sea of 12 nautical miles, according to international maritime law. The location is strategic in the South China Sea, critical to the oil, gas, fish, transport, and military sectors of not only the United States, China, and the Philippines, but also to Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei. Sandy Cay is no exception.

The dueling flag stunts increased tensions in the region. They could have escalated militarily during the Balikatan military exercises led by the United States, and participated in by the United Kingdom, Australia, Philippines, Japan, France, and other countries. For the first time this year, Poland, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands joined as observers.

The annual U.S.-led exercises took place from April 21 to May 9. They have pushed the military envelope against the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) with some firsts, including live-fire defensive exercises against amphibious landings on the Philippine island of Palawan, deployment of a new U.S. Marines anti-ship missile system, the NMESIS, and the participation (rather than just observation) of the Japan Self-Defense Forces.

While U.S. analysis implies relatively low value estimates of total hydrocarbon reserves in the South China Sea of up to $8 trillion, Chinese sources have significantly higher estimates of up to $60 trillion. On March 31, CNOOC reportedly discovered an additional oilfield of up to 100 million tons in China’s exclusive economic zone. Taiwan also claims this zone and the entire South China Sea—better that it’s democratic Taiwan, than China, because one would expect Taiwan to be far more reasonable in backing off its claim once the CCP is removed from power in Beijing.

The region’s hydrocarbons are more important to the CCP than to Washington, as China has fewer such resources than the United States. In the event of war, the PLA would have difficulty securing its global oil and gas supply chain, including in the South China Sea. Most likely, China would be dependent on Russian oil and gas delivered via overland pipelines.

Beijing has ignored a 2016 international arbitral tribunal’s ruling against its claims in the South China Sea. So the PLA Navy’s use of force there is arguably a violation of the United Nations Charter. Little has been done to roll back China’s gradualist approach to territorial gains around the South China Sea and elsewhere on its borders, and so it now looks further afield for vulnerabilities.

The CCP is using a similar incrementalist strategy against Japan and South Korea, for example, to impose its claims on maritime territory between these two countries and the Chinese mainland. This includes installing buoys in Japan’s exclusive economic zone near its Senkaku Islands, as well as an old French oil rig and other such structures in maritime territory claimed by South Korea. Beijing claims the rigs near South Korea are fish farms, which is widely disbelieved. They include helicopter pads.

In an unstable world and amidst a cacophony of international events, the CCP continues to slowly expand its claims in the South China Sea. The CCP’s strategy of incrementalist military gains has continued since 1931, when it captured its first territory in China. The CCP called it the Jiangxi Soviet. In 1949, the PLA captured Beijing. Then, it took the massive Aksai Chin from India in 1962, and the Paracel Islands from South Vietnam in 1974.

Since the 1980s, the CCP has taken more and more of the reefs and sandbars of the South China Sea, including from the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei. The CCP then turned them into military bases capable of accommodating China’s largest aircraft carriers, submarines, and bombers, in what was previously a free sea the size of India for the entire region’s fishermen to roam and enjoy.

The latest grab of Sandy Cay was short-lived enough to discourage much retaliation or resistance on the part of the Philippines and the United States, which are bound by a 1951 defense treaty. But history indicates that the CCP will continue to expand its territory until it is stopped. It gets more powerful with each new conquest.

The United States and allies must contain the CCP and stabilize global geopolitics, or aggressive authoritarians everywhere will continue to take advantage of smaller neighboring states, steal their territory and seas, and start small wars that lead to additional public numbness to the CCP’s global crimes against humanity. That risks a downward spiral into yet more chaos.

So seize the day. Contain the CCP now, before it is too late and we can no longer do so.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.