A small Vietnamese fishing boat putters
along in the dark. A storm has knocked down its radio antenna, and the cheap GPS
unit the poor fishermen use to navigate has long ago stopped functioning.
They're sailing using the stars now, the way their ancient forefathers did, and cast a
westerly course in hopes of hitting the mainland. Suddenly, a bright spotlight blasts the fishermen
in the face, completely blinding them. A massive Chinese destroyer quickly steams in close to the
small fishing vessel- in the dark, the fishermen hadn't even noticed it approaching. Two zodiac
craft full of Chinese marines are tearing through the water at high speed towards the fishermen,
the machine guns at the bow of each boat aimed at them. With frenzied shouts, the Chinese marines
board the craft and push the fishermen to the floor, zip-tying their hands behind their backs.
They will be arrested, interrogated, temporarily held and eventually released back to their
native Vietnam. Their ship will be pulled apart piece by piece in search of secret spy gear, the
fishermen will never see it in one piece again. Their crime? Accidentally sailing too close
to one of China's growing number of illegal military fortifications in the South China Sea. The controversy began back in 2014, as China began
to implement a plan to aggressively expand its military power, and national sovereignty, into
the South China Sea. With the world's largest fleet of dredging craft, China began to build
up seven isolated reefs in the South China Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland China. The massive
ships sucked in sand from the bottom of the ocean and stored it in huge tanks, then released it
onto the small beaches of these tiny reefs, gradually building until the
reefs had turned into islands. The move was immediately met by international
condemnation. Vietnam, the Philippines, and other neighbors have their own, far
more legitimate claims to the region, which China has largely ignored. Citing a
map drawn by the Chinese national government in the 1940s, and dubious claims about
sea exploration during the Ming Dynasty, China maintains that a nine-dash line
extending all the way to Malaysia in the south, the Philippines in the east, and running
along Vietnam's coast is China's true national claim to the ocean. This nine-dash line
encompasses nearly the entire South China Sea, and ignores the economic exclusion zones of
neighboring nations as set by international law. Along with its army of dredgers, China also
deployed a massive coast guard fleet dedicated to the intimidation and harassment of other
nation's ships. Armed with water cannons, Chinese ships ran off Vietnamese,
Malaysian, and Filipino fishing vessels, while escorting its own fishing fleets to
some of the world's richest fishing grounds. In an extremely bold and controversial move, China
even moved an oil drilling platform directly into Vietnamese waters, and began extracting
petroleum and natural gas from the site. China's strategy was twofold- first, it would
build up artificial reefs throughout the Paracel and Spratly islands, turning them into solid
ground and moving Chinese military troops there. Under international law, a country can't
claim the waters around an island feature unless that island has a permanent
presence of that nation's inhabitants. This is also the reason why to counter Chinese
claims, the Filipino navy regularly maintains soldiers stationed on old shipwrecks around
reefs in the Spratly Islands. These soldiers rely on resupply from Filipino navy ships for
everything from batteries to food and water, yet almost immediately the Chinese navy
began to blockade Filipino navy ships from reaching those soldiers in an attempt
to starve them out of their positions. China's second part to its strategy to
illegally claim the South China Sea was to build up a large enough military presence
that it simply wouldn't be possible to remove China from the area. This would be tricky though,
as it would require massive construction efforts over many years until the islands were big enough
to hold large amounts of military equipment. Vietnam and its neighbors in the South China
Sea are too weak militarily to do anything about China's expansion, so they filed a complaint with
the UN. In 2016 a ruling from the international court at The Hauge found China's claims and
island reclamation abilities to be illegal, and ordered a halt to further
expansion on the contested reefs. China immediately ignored that order
and the world did nothing to enforce it. The real question is why is China burning global
goodwill for the sake of a few island bases? The answer to that is threefold, and the
first part of that answer is economic. The South China Sea holds 190
trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 11 billion barrels of oil in reserves,
with much more believed to lie undiscovered. This surplus of energy is worth trillions to
the Chinese, and along with oil and natural gas the region is also home to some of the world's
remaining fertile fishing grounds, worth billions in revenue. By edging out all other nations
from their own legitimate claims to the region, China has positioned itself to amass a staggering
wealth, paying out over decades to come. Secondly, China has long chafed at the United
State's status as regional security partner with its neighbors. One of China's greatest ambitions
is to throw the US out of the South Pacific, and thus bully its neighbors into its own political
sphere of influence, no different than the Soviet Union and its iron curtain post World War II.
Today the South China Sea is the world's greatest trade artery, with hundreds of billions of dollars
worth of trade moving through the region every year. The US Navy guarantees freedom of navigation
for all vessels in the region, yet if China could successfully push the US out of the region, all of
that trade from nations around the world would be subject to China's authority. Any nations China
finds itself displeased with, could soon find their merchant vessels harassed, or even outright
barred from traversing the region- a serious concern for any country that doesn't want to be
subject to the Chinese Communist Party's will. The plan is working, as China continues to build
military infrastructure across the reclaimed islands, it will become increasingly unrealistic
for the United States Navy to remain in the region and expect to survive in case of war. With US
forces effectively pushed out of the region, China's neighbors will have no choice but to
deal with China- something Vietnam is so afraid of it recently held discussions with US diplomats
about potential cooperation with the US military. The third answer to China's wish to establish
itself in the South China Sea is to protect itself from the military power of the United States.
China understands that it cannot challenge the US Navy in a stand-up fight, even with a portion
of US naval forces stationed in the Atlantic. However, the buildup of military
facilities across the South China Sea has officially put China in a position
to not just challenge the US Navy, but to prevent it from operating in
the region outright in the case of war. China has built just under 100 bunkers for fighter
aircraft across its seven artificial islands, and invested billions in anti-ship and
anti-aircraft missile batteries, long-range radar, signals intelligence equipment, and even
missile defense batteries. CWIS (see-whiz) gun mounts protect Chinese radar and missile
installations, and several of the runways China has built are large enough to host Chinese
bombers loaded with long-range anti-ship missiles. All of this firepower has effectively made it
impossible for the US to intervene in the region at the outset of war, and pushed back US forces to
Guam- if they hope to avoid immediate destruction. While eventually US firepower could
level all seven of these island bases, the investment would be extremely costly in terms
of missiles and hardware both- each base would need approximately 100 missiles each to completely
neutralize, and a significant number of those missiles would be knocked out by Chinese missile
defenses. High altitude airstrikes would be a far better option, but even B-2 stealth bombers would
find the environment challenging to operate in, and non-stealth aircraft would have
practically zero survivability. What's more, all the firepower needed
to neutralize these island bases and open up the South China Sea again is much
more desperately needed further up north, in defense of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan- all three of which no doubt would find
themselves under threat from Chinese forces should a regional war break out. The only American
hardware that could operate within the contested sea space would be American submarines- Chinese
anti-submarine capabilities are still lacking. However, these subs would be focused on
sinking Chinese ships and subs, and wouldn't be risked just to undertake largely ineffective
missile attacks against the island fortresses. China's successful strategy to claim the South
China Sea has been an incremental war of inches, with President Xi Jinping correctly guessing
that the United States would never risk a full-blown war as long as China's aggressive
expansion was done very incrementally, just a few inches at a time. Now, in 2020,
not only has China won the war of inches, but guaranteed that in a future US-Sino conflict,
freeing the South China Sea once more will require incredible amounts of American blood and resources
both- a price we may simply not be willing to pay. In the end, it's the rest of the world
that ends up losing as China wins big. Now go watch US vs China 2020 Millitary
comparison, or click this other video instead!
