Ninth Annual South China Sea Conference

yes I want to welcome you this morning I'm Amy Searight senior advisor and director of the Southeast Asia program here at CSIS and it's my honor to welcome you all to our ninth annual South China Sea conference organized by the Southeast Asia program and the Asia maritime transparency initiative today's conference will provide an opportunity to take a look at and analyze developments in the South China Sea over the past year and possible paths forward on these seemingly intractable issues you know it was three years ago this month that the orbital tribunal at The Hague handed down a ruling on Philippine claims against China under unclose and it was a real victory for the Philippines and laid out some clear markers for international law subsequently to that in the years since ASEAN and China have been negotiating the long-delayed code of conduct and for many stretches of time the waters of the South China Sea have seemed a bit calmer in terms of real tensions but at the same time the United States and many other countries have stepped up efforts to exercise freedom of navigation by sailing through the waters of the South China Sea and in recent months we've seen a flare-up of tensions between China and the Philippines and standoffs with Chinese Coast Guard vessels and vessels of Malaysia and Vietnam mirror oil rigs in their respective Yeezys so even though there are some days here in Washington where it seems like the South China Sea has fallen off the radar the strategic radar here it's never been more important strategically the issues surrounding the South China Sea disputes than it is today and the number of people in this room I think are testament to the need to continue to focus on the issues involved and find a way to move forward so we here at CSIS believe it's critical to keep the South China Sea at the center of the policy conversation here in Washington and we're thrilled that you're here with us today and tuning online today's conference will feature speakers from around the world including from claimant states as well as stakeholders in the region and more globally and we're grateful for all of our speakers who have traveled great distances to be here our panels will cover the state of play in the South China Sea we'll take a look at the history and historiography of the maritime tensions in the South China Sea and we will explore different pathways for dispute management and conclude with a discussion about what is at stake globally and in addition to our distinguished panelists over lunch we will hear from Admiral Scott Swift the former commander of the US Pacific Fleet so before I invite our first panel to commence let me just make a brief housekeeping announcement in the unlikely event of an emergency I will be your safety officer and you can look to me and other members of our CSIS staff who will lead you outside away from the emergency probably across the street to the National Geographic building on M Street and last but not least I want to thank those who have provided financial support for today's invent including the embassies of Australia Germany Japan New Zealand Viet Nam's foundation for East Sea Studies and general support to CSIS the grouping of supporters aptly demonstrates the global importance of the South China Sea and with that it's my pleasure to turn the proceedings over to my colleague Bonnie glazier who will moderate the first panel well we're going to get started talking about the state of play I am the director of the of the China power project here at CSIS and it is a privilege to participate in this year South China Sea conference I want to thank the Southeast Asia program as well as the Asia maritime transparency initiative and their staff of course for putting this terrific program together we always start by looking at what is happening in the South China Sea and although some observers say that the South China Sea is tranquil and the tensions are easing I think what we're going to hear is this situation is rather different there's a lot of activity going on in the South China Sea and it is some of it is more public and transparent than others but one of the purposes today is to have the perspectives from various countries in in the region so we've asked our speakers to talk about their countries and then in the Q&A we can open up the subject a little bit more broadly we have Evan Locke's mana all the way to my right is a senior researcher at CSIS in Jakarta dr. Huang lei too is not here for medical reasons she has sent us a video and we are going to play part of that video it is a bit too long and we do want to leave more time for Q&A so I apologize in advance that we will cut that a little bit but we have the opportunity at least for you to hear her views and she of course she will be talking about Vietnam we have Greg poling who directs the Asia maritime transparency initiative here at CSIS who is going to be talking about the Philippines and then finally to my right lyosha ba who is a certain associate research fellow and director at the world Navy Research Center and the National Institute for South China Sea studies so I'm going to ask each of the speakers to limit their remarks to 10 to 12 minutes and hopefully we will have plenty of time for Q&A to get all of you involved in the conversation as well so we'll start with you and then LOX mana thank you very much and good morning thanks to CSIS for having me I'll just get right to it so there's there's four big themes I think I'll talk about today I'll talk a little bit about the new priorities of the new administration and I'll talk how that relates to the South China policy of Indonesia I'll give a little bit of an update on on Indonesia and China's beldad Road initiative and finally I'll talk a little bit at the end about if and if there's any role for the u.s. to play so let me be clear from the beginning that Indonesia is a non claimant state in the South China Sea so unless there's some major stakes happening for the next five years it's quite unlikely that Indonesia will be involved in in pushing a lot of the agendas except maybe through Isaiah and the code of conduct process so as as you can see these are the five new priorities of the administration and and this was a speech about two weeks ago and you will notice that there's no word of maritime in the speech the slogan of his first term has to do with the global maritime vulgrim and I think that's about to be dead right now the founder of the idea the current ambassador of Indonesia so London Rizal sukma has said that you know the global maritime Volcom that we were so proud to announce five years ago is actually on life support so I think the the focus would be a lot more on the domestic agenda of the less of his last term and it's unlikely that we would be more willing to challenge China on a lot of the stuff in the South China Sea and because a lot of the agenda has to do with domestic economy and infrastructure more engagement with China should be expected so on the South China Sea stuff the point to make is that South China Sea is not high on the agenda of the new administration nor has been in the first administration as you can see there it takes a lot of stakeholders when it comes to the South China Sea for Indonesia so whatever you see with regards to an initial position on this a China Sea we have to take into account the individual actors and agencies who have their own interests and it's not just the South China Sea so for that issue I think the South China Sea as a whole will always be under prioritized by the jakoli administration as far as foreign policy goes jokowi will say the you know we've done all we could we've helped push the COC process we have pushed for the the new Pacific outlook through ASEAN and that's it you beyond that there's nothing much that that will get the administration going so there's no coherent there's no consistent strategic response on the South China Sea specifically it's going to be a lot of bureaucratic response and that has to do with with the president's personal own beliefs that issues that has to do with with foreign policy isn't high on his agenda so you'll see a lot more confusion from an interest response and I can talk more during the Q&A about each of each of the different agencies and their agenda like on maritime policy how it's actually a lot more driven by our concerns with our regional neighbors rather than China so for example in the case of Vietnam so we can talk more about that on the Q&A so this is among the key discussions in the current adman about our participation in the Belden Road initiative so these are the proposed ones that we wanted to present to China as far as opportunities goes as you can see it has a lot more infrastructure in terms of ports and stuff but it's less about resources and the idea is that Indonesia wants our participation in the Belden Road not as a government government project which would burden the budget but more as a private to private enterprise so the idea of to create a special fund has always been there and now whether or not we will actually see it materialized that's that's something that's been ongoing the high-speed rail thing took about four or five years to actually move forward so I'm not so convinced that we will see more practical stuff happening soon but this is the plan that we offered to Beijing as you can see as well it kind of overlaps with the existing patterns of investments that we've seen from China so far which is roughly on the mining and electricity and stuff so that is going to be the key priority to boost the existing patterns of investment along with the new participation so what do we see and what we expect from from our participation I think jokowi will be legacy shopping a lot in his last term so infrastructure economy and welfare will be key and whether or not he wants to jeopardize that by challenging China much more publicly it seems unlikely I think in the past four or five years jokowi has a lot more phone calls decision bank than any other four leaders so I think that's personal report that he's building on and it's it's clear to us that at least when it comes to the bilateral ties it's not defined by single issues so South China Sea will not define as much as the Builder and Road initiative will not define the bilateral ties it's it's a lot more complicated for domestic reasons because China I think is a lot more domestically combustible than China for the key interests at home and again I think the key concern with China for for Jakarta is more about that the conflict or the trade war between us in China that's that's hindering chocos economic agenda if you're more interested in in more of the in-depth analysis of the economic preparedness from Indonesia the report from CSS Jakarta up there will give you a bit of some sense of where things are and finally when it comes to the role of the United States I think given the big picture stuff where Joko is more is much more interested on the economy and much more concerned with the us-china role I think the idea that the foreign policy narrative and communication that's coming out of this particular administration is bit it's a bit pushing Indonesia to take a stance when it's articulated as do you vote or to be with a country that breaks the rules base order once that promotes the rules-based order that kind of forces Jakarta to make a choice and that's something that we're not particularly happy about and if there is an element to improve security relationships it's not just through phone apps and and the provision of arms and equipment I think the human capital element of the security elements both on a maritime domain and the military is too underdeveloped so I think that's a key element that hasn't been discussed a lot and then on the econ side before a lot of the other agenda whether it's security politics or everything else can be restored I think the economic agenda for Jakarta which being much more important and and if that is we start I think there's a chance that Jo koy might actually visit the u.s. at some point in his last admin and with that I think that's it for me thank you all right thank you so much for being brief you leave us more time for Q&A we'll make sure we ask you a tough question or we turn in return will turn to Gregg polling to talk about the Philippines well thanks very much money and thank all of you for coming out for the the ninth annual South Jensi conference I'm pretty sure we promise to solve all of this by number ten so we've got a lot of work to do in the next twelve months I I'm going to talk a bit about where things stand for the deterrent government of Manila since the the signals that we get in the press both the Philippine and the international press can be more than a little confusing when it comes to statements emerging from different parts of the Philippine government so over the last let's say nine months or so the detected government has come under more significant pressure on the South China Sea than at any point since he came to office in 2016 it's not that there haven't been previous instances in which his outreach policy toward China has clashed with realities on the ground there's been a number of incidents over the last three years where low level incidents happen in the South China Sea caused him some heartburn and then disappeared from the press what's changed is that it has been almost a constant drumbeat of criticism of the administration South China Sea approach since late last year and that starts with the situation around the island or PAGASA Island which is the largest of the Philippine held features in the Spratlys occupied by about a hundred civilians and a small contingent of Philippine military personnel now to explain what happened here it's important to talk about the reality on the ground for Chinese power projection in the Spratlys one of the reasons we don't hear about the South's genesee as much in the front page of major Western papers is because Beijing effectively finished Island building by 2016 there is no more coral reefs turning into air bases chyna finished large-scale infrastructure construction by the end of 2017 and so what we see now are deployments increases in the number of missile platforms of troops but especially of surface ships operating from these facilities and that is harder to track it's harder to keep attention on and it feels like it is often a change that is quantitative but not really qualitative but if you are a Filipino Fisher or if you're a Vietnamese Fisher the change that you've seen most over say the last two years is that when you sail out from palawan or from Luzon it used to be pretty rare to bump into a Chinese boat now you are more or less guaranteed to run into a Chinese vessel and most of the vessels operating in the Spratlys are not the pla n and they're not the china coast guard they're Chinese fishing vessels at least a majority of whom operate part time in the maritime militia now those conclusions come from a six-months project that auntie I undertook in cooperation with Vulcan which is a operation out of Seattle that monitors remote sensing technologies to determine vessels at sea and what we found is that when you look at the Spratly Islands in AIS which are the signals that all boats are supposed to transmit there don't seem to be any vessels they're all the gray dots there are the Spratly Islands there is no boat transmitting at any given time this is a pretty average month now everybody knows and coadley that that can't possibly be true when you look at it in other spectra the yellow here are infrared images from beer satellites you see a ton of night fishing going on none of whom were transmitting AIS and when you look with the blue which is radar you see a whole lot of metal hulls out there that don't seem to be broadcasting we use these to tip and cue passes of high-resolution optical imagery and what we found unsurprisingly is that the largest numbers of vessels the constellations are Chinese ships that operate primarily from subi reef and mr. Friis the two large harbours that China has built in Spratlys this shot is a pretty average day of subi reef they're about a hundred and fifty boats in that picture on any given day there are at least 300 Chinese fishing vessels operating at suebian mischief and a few dozen more clustered around Philippine held and Vietnamese held features we published these findings in January and it got a bit of press in the region it caused some heartburn for the Philippine government but what really hurt them was in February when the Armed Forces of the Philippines confirmed that these maritime militia had been swarming around the--to Island so in December of last year the Philippines started long delayed upgrade work at the - they've been planning to fix this decrepit runway for years they finally started building a beaching ramp so they could bring in heavy supplies almost immediately about the same day that this work started D - roughly a hundred of those boats poured out of subi reef which is just twelve and a half miles away and they dropped anchor between two and five nautical miles from D - in this photo from December 20th there are 95 Chinese fishing boats every one of them is a tanker only one of them is broadcasting a is none of them have any nets in the water none of them are doing any commercial fishing and they have stayed there for the last eight months the numbers go up they go down some days we only see 20-some days we've seen 85 90 the Philippine government said the Philippine Armed Forces said that in February and March they monitored 295 individual boats on 600 different occasions around the Ditu Island this has been because it is so persistent and because it's so clearly clashes with the narrative that the detective government has put out there about the way that they expected Beijing to react in response to the authorities policy it has become a serious headache that does not leave the papers about a month ago you had the Philippine special envoy to China cheats Santa Ramana say that he had been ensure assured that the Chinese were pulling these vessels out a week later the AFP confirmed that they were still there and they are still there in smaller numbers but they're there constantly it is not just around c2 we see smaller constellations of Chinese vessels that never appear to be fishing the only rational explanation one can come up with is that they're militia vessels around pretty much all of the features occupied by the civil in Vietnam at one time or another these are two other Philippine held outposts north of Tito for all of March in all of April we monitored at least a dozen boats that were anchoring around the features all the time never fishing there are four boats in this image down to the the southern end there you can see they're less than half a nautical mile from the Philippine military outpost so when things like this happen and they persist for months at a time you can imagine the kind of internal pressure from the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the defense establishment that the palace is probably feeling it is unsurprising that the Armed Forces of the Philippines are not thrilled about the idea that they have to pretend this kind of thing isn't happening day in and day out the second headache for the third day government has been a steady stream of bad news about environmental destruction in the reefs of the Philippine Sea easy and most of this emerges from Chinese clam harvesting so about three months ago now abs-cbn the biggest broadcaster in the Philippines sent a crew out to Scarborough Shoal and what they found was active Chinese clam harvesting going on across the shoal which they filmed and broadcast and caused a lot of outrage the Philippines this was surprising because we knew that the Chinese had done an enormous amount of clam harvesting from 2012 to about 2016 they destroyed at least 25,000 acres of reef with their clam harvesting but that had stopped at the end of 2016 largely because Hainan started cracking down on the clam market clam the the sale of endangered clam is illegal within China I give you a sense of what happens when you dig for giant clams in the ways that China does this is a picture of the reef that is surrounded situ Island it's over fished but it is still a healthy reef this is the reef that's a mile and a half away to the east after the Chinese clam harvesters finished once these clam operations finish there is no more fishing at that reef and so you can imagine the outrage that emerges from Filipino coastal communities when this happens in reefs that they have been fishing for generations this is the shot from earlier this year I think it's I'm sorry this is late December you can see dozens of small Chinese clam boats tied up behind these larger mother ships operating around Scarborough for the first time in years all of the yellow there is new scarring from the claim harvesting that happened over the last few months this is the shot of that abs-cbn report I mentioned and what we found that here is that the clam harvesters from Hainan had developed a whole new method to harvest clams they were so successful up until 2016 in digging up all of the shallow areas of the South China Seas reefs that they had to find a way to get to the deeper stuff in the lagoons and they have adapted a method that's usually seen in maritime salvage operations so what you see there is a boat with a large water pump on it and two hoses one hose blows water out creating suction on the other and then a guy gets into the water in snorkeling gear and just holds it down on the sand like a vacuum cleaner just as destructive and lets you dig for clams pretty much anywhere when the abs-cbn crew got into the water this is what they found a devastated reef and dozens of these massive piles of clams so that's headache number two and headache number three that I think's brought all of this to a head has been this incident over the Jim bear one that's a Filipino fishing boat that was struck and sunk all three Bank in the Philippine you see last month's now it is unknown and probably unknowable whether or not the Chinese vessel that struck the Jim bear one was acting part-time in the maritime militia we know it was hundreds of miles from its homeport it had never been seen in that area before its sister ships don't operate there but all that is speculative what we do know is that it struck an anchored Philippine boat and left 22 Filipino fishermen to die luckily they were rescued by a Vietnamese boat and the deuterated government's response was largely to blame the fishermen blame their own fishermen for that operation to say that you know somehow the Filipino fishermen had been negligent they were making a big deal out of nothing this has certainly backfired and so today what we see you know president datura they had to address the issue of fishing in the South China Sea in his State of the Nation Address the big annual equivalent of State of the Union he gives for the first time it has become such a headache that it is now at the center of his public responses to criticism it's also noticeable that in the latest public opinion polls released this week Trust for China has plummeted from a negative I think six to over a negative 60 we are at pre Duterte levels when it comes to the way Filipinos feel about China so I will just end with saying that this is an area to watch I don't know I don't think anybody Philippines really knows how malleable the duty of government is to public opinion but it is clear that outside of the palace frustration with the failure of the three years of policy to deliver real gains is building and I seriously doubt whether or not the administration can continue as if that's not the case thank you Greg well of course the other area where we have seen recent tensions spike is between China and Vietnam and this has just started earlier this month so maybe just in time for our conference but many are describing this as the largest crisis between China and Vietnam in the South China Sea since China deployed its oil rig in in 2014 I mean Vietnam Zizi so although dr. Huang cannot be with us as I said she has prepared a video dr. Huang lei too is a senior analysts and asked me the Australian strategic policy Institute and if our technology is working well then we will start that now good morning thank you for inviting me to participate in CSIS annual South China Sea conference I really regret I can't be there in person but I do send warm regards to all the CSS colleagues fellow presenters and all paths of content participants in my short presentation I will give my view those are my views only I had not representative of any country or organization in my view it has been a state of play where I would call it a continuous and deepening tension the strong underlying concerns despite some appearances of goodwill and friendly cooperation gestures so concerns are about the health of the group space order in general but also continuous and scaling up of Beijing's coercion concerns about increasing numbers of productive incidents but also about the health of us in solidarity in in general from high noise perspectives the South China Sea is getting more dangerous for sure and increasingly unstable the interest because of somehow an a successful neurotic the South China Sea SP is more stable more harmonious and that the claimants are able to solve the issues among themselves without external inputs something that it is hard for Hanoi to play along with a number of goodwill gestures or goodwill has been displayed by demonstrated by read for example reaching this milestone achievement of arriving at a single zero draft for the code of conduct in the South China Sea the code of conduct in South China Sea as we all know it's been a protracted process but and last August Marzian in China as in countries in China arrive at a single draft negotiation text you know cuz 2018 which is still far from reaching any meaningful agreements but it is already being portrayed as a significant progress another apparent sign of positive development between China and Southeast Asian neighbors was for example also first join multilateral maritime exercises conducted in October 2018 a number of other larger scale not only regional but global scale diplomatic gear developments including for example the second bell DeGroat some initiatives summit in May in Beijing and this year where most of the ASEAN countries participated in is have created an impression that china is friendlier to its neighbors and somehow the socialist see dispute are taking less of prominence in the relationships more unstable because of fast evolving developments including the the incidence factor of International intention for example the current standoff in Bangkok Bank that I will speak about in in a minute but also numbers ones that go under the radar because they are so-called brazen operations maritime uniformity maritime militia operations and frequent of fishermen harassment and so on and so forth last year at the South China Sea conference Billiton analyzed the cases of Economic Cooperation that Beijing in which PBT prevented Vietnam from oil and gas explosions that it did in conjunction with foreign companies like Exxon and that this is continued to another level this year and in particular in the case of the banker bank standoff what happened was early July on the 3rd of July a high-end digit aid vessel survey vessel owned by the government ran of a civic corporation started serving around the block of zero six zero one with some accompanied maritime militia vessels as well as Coast Guard vessels these are details of the positions and type of vessels and and really a movement of them and it has been exposed by the Asia maritime transparency initiative which I also draw my analysis from so I think for the for the time constraint I will skip the details because they're much better presented under a MTI website but I will talk about how the respective countries respondent is the first part to the incident so since the early July really there hasn't been much of coverage of the incidents so most of our knowledge are deriving from either IMT I website or Twitter feed of social media one of most active and prominent one was from Orion Martinson from the US for Naval War College who tracked the movement of the vessels and on the 16th of July the first response from the Viet Nam's Ministry of Foreign Affairs was to question about the activities near the block zero 6001 in which the spokesperson reiterated Vietnam sovereign right over the waters and seabed and noted that relevant witness of vietnamese authorities have been exercising those rights in response to that on the 17th of July China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs purged Vietnam to quote respect China's sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the relevant waters and do not take any move that may complicate the matters and quote part of that a Vietnamese Vietnamese from foreign ministry called China on the 19th of July to immediately end the value of violation and withdraw all vessels from Vietnamese waters saying quote Chinese service ships hire DJ and Aden it's escort had over the past few days conducted activities in the southern area of East Sea that violated kidnaps exclusive economic zone and continental shelf and quote interestingly the second the day the next day other 20th of July the US State Department issued a statement saying quote the United States is concerned by report of China's interference of oil and gas activities in the South China Sea including Viet Nam's the long-standing exploration and productive production activities china repeated provocative actions aimed at the offshore offshore oil and gas development of other claimant states threatened the regional energy security and undermine a free and open in the pacific energy market end of quote so this incident had really reached international attention and the importance of it is is still developing as we speak but it is certainly not only an issue between Vietnam and China at the moment as China are obviously expressed its displeasure of from the from the US the statement so the vanguard Bank incident has been hailed as so far as the most serious since 2014 Hori crisis hi I'm Sheila ignorant one we're a Beijing deployed and the normally Greek into Vietnamese exclusive economic zone as well that was one of the most serious incidents in between the two countries and have pet lasting impact on the bilateral relations on Viet Nam's foreign and defense policy but also under larger picture of the development in the South China Sea but compared to that incident of 2014 the Vanguard Bank that incident is relatively a lower profile that it didn't had again as much domestic attention so far only as I said started being reported on the 16th of July and the scale of coverage have wrap up since then but only really picked up since around to the 20th of July so right now in the major media major newspapers of Vietnam of their future couple of articles daily on the topic but before that really was very scarce resources and why is that so that this time around reaction has been different there are a number of explanations first of all one of them is that perhaps an attempt to control the anti-chinese sentiment in Vietnam are learning the lessons from 2014 where the protest broke out in the major cities in Vietnam but also turned into a violent protest and included some vandalism and mob activities around and permit the areas of factories belonging to Chinese Taiwanese Japanese Korean and even our own vietnamese investors and vietnamese government and bad consequences of some reputation among damage of a safe environment safe investment environment and also had to pay some compensations for the damages so this time around perhaps it is an attempt to cap the potential anti-chinese sentiment and protests related to that something also that people might have waited and hoped to communicate first with some of its key partners and our key partners and perhaps secure diplomatic support from the US and other and other actors as well according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Vietnam has utilized multiple channels to reach China but also in between 8 of 12 of July Vietnamese national assembly chairwoman when ticking man was in Beijing where she saw President Xi Jinping on and the two parties were said to have common commitment to the peaceful maritime environment but we do not know if the Vanguard Bank conversation was that was really happening in details there also around before the exposure of the incident the 13th ASEAN defense ministers meeting happened between 10 and 12 July but the final joint statement had made no mention about the Chinese vessels in Vietnam is it easy the only mention about such annecy was the hope of peace or environment and early conclusion of the code of conduct sir pretty standard as in language for whatever reasons at this time around the reaction is different than 2014 I think it's not the most critical question the most critical question is what are the new responses that Vietnam and others may have this time around because yes in 2014 the media campaign both domestic and international was one of the key pillars of successful risk under coercion response and actually really this so-called mega megaphone diplomacy was credited for a successful deterrence of Beijing session and the high NGO withdrew from the Vietnamese waters earlier than planned this time around I think the mere the mere media campaign would not be sufficient to repel the genie I said this coercion is not happening just targeted at Vietnam only but it is but Malaysia is facing similar our dilemma at the moment as well so Beijing is scaling up the coercion and is not targeting one at the time but multiple at the time and apparently is not very much a concern about the reputation or damage it is causing despite the peaceful and friendly rhetoric it is putting out there what is interesting this time is the US response that came there fairly early and we're very clear that indeed that statement that US State Department put it out there are three very clear components there that is China's condemning China's action supporting a Viet Nam's easy rise but also interestingly refreshing at least to some is that this means maybe a departure from traditional Washington's approach of not taking signs and it's pretty clear in this in this segment what its position is I'd be interested in learning more about okay again sorry to cut off dr. Huang and I appreciate very much the fact that she did send that video to us from Australia before I turn to our next speaker I just want to say that for all of you who are standing in the back there are I think it looks to be about 15 seats at the three tables over here if anybody would like to if you want to go around come in that door and take a seat we welcome you to do that so we're now going to turn to number of us I think I'm gonna have to turn to our next speaker I don't think it's my goal to sort of summarize what she said but if you want to ask questions during the Q&A I'm sorry sure that members of our panelists can talk about she was she was describing the episode that is ongoing between Vietnam and and and China that is in Viet Nam's exclusive economic zone it is it's near vanguard Bank and so there have been since early July there have been there has been a survey ship that China has deployed and you can go on the Twitter feed she mentioned of Ryan Mortensen who has been tracking the survey operations of a particular vessel of China's that is operating in this area inside the exclusive economic zone what Vietnam says is its exclusive economic zone which I think would be born out under the definition of unclose and so maybe in the in the presentation that mr. Leo she was about to give us he can perhaps mention something about how China views this issue but that is what she talked about you you I would also reference which she did a very important statement that was made she read it by the State Department this past Saturday about that incident so you can you can look at that statement is that that's good enough sorry that the volume wasn't adequate okay lyosha oh boy over to you thank you so much for coming thank you thank you pony and thank you for CSIS to avoid me here and Wow Thank You Gregory a little louder oh yes yes get close to that thank you yeah oh yes and my presentation speakers just a represent myself and not represent my Institute and as I had retired from Navy and two years so I will not speak behind from the Chinese Navy or some Chinese government hyung oh it's behind myself and I want to share 22.0 my will and the freedom of an immigration and militarization of the South China Sea and it's my person view first and when I talked about the disputer and of freedom of navigation between Chinese and China in the US I think and how to interpret the law of the sea but one of the most prominent theory is a different perception of the military use of the sea and I personally think that your China did not oppose the maritime order and they reflected by the freedom of navigation and the what China opposed is a instability caused by the US phone ops and the some of the u.s. phone ops in the South China Sea are meant to challenge the Chinese domestic law specifically on the rich require permission for the war for warship to interpret air Taurasi which is a 1996 Chinese territorial law and since 2015 and the US Navy have conducted follow-up 17 times and the Petraeus policy and the state and unchanged and it remained unchanged and constantly tough and I think if trainers law of the territory conflict erase our Mattamy interest in it either possibility that China will revise it but I think under the pressure of the u.s. phone option that this possibility is likely to be suppressed by nationalism in China and the postponed revisions will be interpreted as a Chinese comment and showing witness to the US and foremost sea power and the freedom of navigation of regions that see reflected its eerie interest and in my wrist which I turned my sank to the UN Navy because the US Navy defends the interest of never maritime powers and this is certainly a school of China's future interests and I personally think that someday in the future and the China would also make a similar statement just like Chinese Navy will fly sail and operate wherever international law allows and we need to find out is that it wants the same freedom of navigation and the US had now when I joined the Chinese Navy at the SEMA in 1996 a3 and the Chinese Navy could not enter the top turn of the world and the Chinese Navy is a strategy ago at that time is maintained the security of the Chinese coast line and the prevent aggression from the sea at that time freedom freedom of navigation what not the priority and the law of this territory was acted at that time but in nowadays and I think the Chinese Navy ranked the second sea power of the world we'd have two aircraft carriers more than 15 new types and destroy and frigates and more than stinking and ocean-going and nuclear energy reapz officer compared sorry thank you computer controlling the Salton Sea and the safety of the strategic sea line of communication is more important the South China Sea is only one part of these slogs and even if China is willing to control the South China Sea and I don't think China has can ability to control all the streets and the Silla in the India Ocean and the Pacific Ocean so I think the security concept of cooperation will be precisely a pragmatic policy for China's strategic security of the sea and I talked about I can talk the Chinese intention of miniaturization and I would like to say in my personal view about the commitment of the President Xi Jinping and the own September and 25 2015 and President Xi even said as the White House and the China that are not intend to pursue miniaturization of Nanjing island in the southern sea but just the one month later and October 27th the USS lassen hand had conducted their first the phone ops in the Spratly Island and another month later and on October 13th the u.s. rise to b-52 bombers and over the Chinese station Island and I think this US military operation had provoked XI and the military leader of the Chinese CMC and so leaders the Chinese military deployment into an irreversible process each time when the Ministry of National Defense of Chinese a command to respond the u.s. phone ops and the spokesman and repeat we will take all necessary measures to maintain our own safety it's not just a verbal slogan I think the China have taken concrete actions the United States believe that the follow-up and the military operations will weaken China's military deployment and forced heiner to with or is military facility but the result is that the u.s. follow operations has provoked China with enough incentive to increase its military deployment because as China irritated that the u.s. follow-ups jeopardized the core interest of the sovereignty and security about the domestic nationalism over China's military deployment had also met the emotional venting of the domestic nationalism and the consolidate is a governmental ruling foundation compared with the pressure of the international public opinion the domestic effect of miniaturization is very positive now the construction of our island have increased and a land area and the zone suffers facility the fact is that the reason ignition of the u.s. of operations China will speed up military deployment in my wield the Chinese Navy is still learning from the US Navy I personally believe that in the future China will imitate the military deployment of the islands just like Guam and the deal will cassia my conclusion is that the US and the China really need to reveal its policy if the US goal is to pressure China to withdraw its military deployment by them straight in the US military strengths I think is a mission impossible oh if you as want to proven to China to control the South China Sea by using military strengths but finally I think it will provoke China to achieve this goal China should also reveal its own policy after all the security order in the startin sea will not be determined by China's unique natural policy the influence of the United States is objectively existing and the United States cannot be simply defined as an extraterritorial country and the security order in the South China Sea would depending on the dynamic between China and the US I think the security concept of the new type of cooperative advocated by China and still need to be concrete implementation that's all loyal attention yeah okay great so we've had four really terrific presentations and we now have I think it is twenty minutes remaining for Q&A so I'm going to ask you to raise your hand please identify yourself please be very brief ask a question so we can get in as many questions as possible and we will start right over there is there a microphone coming yes nope you'll have to wait because this is being webcast live thank you so much sure thank you a piata from sighs and the country formerly known as the United Kingdom well essentially under there the code still exists well incoming PM anyway my question relates to the wider region because the South China Sea is fixed you know incredibly important for countries beyond just that region in question with Chinese and Russian activity increasing my my query is if they're basically forming quite a strong partnership how is the United States going to respond to this you know these two so-called revisionist say it's there's increasing ties with India could that be a potential route or about Japan and South Korea as well thank you I took I think maybe what I'll do is I'll take three questions and then we'll let the panelists respond to them and if you want a particular panelist to answer then please identify that person will go to this side of the room this gentleman over here to the right with the glasses yes so thank you for very a sending the panelists on that I have to question one for quick polling the first one we see a series of assertive also aggressive action on the part of China's not only against Philippine also Malaysia and Vietnam as well and recent development that the China will move the the survey ship really deep into Vietnamese II and we see that the legal order of the sea willing be undermined by the activity so what is a driver for the series of Tyre sir tip and also aggressive action on the part of China and the second one too a new sample I mean the the say the South China Sea often described from the action reaction cycle but how you perceive it from the international point of view because you perceive the legal and low for actively up other countries at a trigger so you lose actually you will lose you know the sense about how the law that allow activities there so how you perceive you know the the rise interest will add the smaller country in the region thank you okay and we're gonna take one more we'll take one right here from this woman yes please identify yourself go ahead yes good morning my name is Sarah Hughes Baga from Kiel and Germany and my question is for even lakshmana when if I understood you correctly it sounded as if Indonesia doesn't consider itself to be in any way involved in the sovereignty disputes and not so much a state that is in any sort of conflict with Chinese behavior so my question would be what about the net tuna Islands it seemed I'm not an expert on that but it seemed that Indonesia has been a bit nervous about possible Chinese ideas of looking into the Natuna issue and has stepped up its fortifications of the Natuna Islands so what's your view on that and related also to that what about the policy of Indonesia of sinking and filming the sinking of fishing vessels that operate illegally in Indonesian waters have there been any incidents involving Chinese fishing vessels thank you okay great we'll start with you Evan you want to respond to those questions sure really quickly on the first question about the original environment and and the regional powers I think it's it's clear for a lot of original policy makers that the environment is deteriorating but I think the domestic realities of each of these countries in the region I think necessitates that they put more priority on on domestic stuff especially with regards to the economy so the the appetite for geo politicking isn't as high across the region as we would like so no matter how much the military or our civil society groups are trying to push a much more originally the driven engagement I think the the pressures of domestic policy is still high not to mention the fact that transnational threats like terrorism is also still high on the agenda so if the regional environment is getting worse I think it won't hesitate a much more focused response from the regional countries I think the response will still be quite muddy on the part about the non claim and opposition and and and this relates a little bit about with the first questions with regards to the original environment I think the position from Jakarta has always been that with the Natuna there is no dispute with China because up until today every time we try to ask China what is it exactly that you're claiming and where we never get a response so we don't really know what they're claiming other than some vague idea of what the nine-dash line was and I said was because with the pca ruling it's it's null anyway so our position has always been as long as there's no specific claim what are we to negotiate and right now Indonesia official does not recognize any disputed parts with regards to with regards to the EZ now of course the issue has to do with maritime law enforcement which I think in Jakarta is mine is a law enforcement problem of our easy rather than a dispute over which part belongs to China and which part belongs to us we obviously don't recognize the idea of traditional fishing rights but our problem is that we also have a very uni lateral and strong interpretation of what we believe to be ours and hence that's our problem with Vietnam and other countries and I think jakarta's response has always been that if the South China Sea is a key issue of regional order then the solution has always been multilateralism and and this is why I think ASEAN has always been sort of the go-to response and when it comes to the China I think a stronger response on the maritime domain is further complicated by the fact that we don't have a single Coast Guard so a stronger response might sometimes come from the fisheries their own task force and their own version of a Coast Guard and sometimes with the Navy it's less of a stronger response so it depends on who gets to patrol at that particular point in time so that's why you see sometimes some inconsistencies in in how we respond and we regards to the sinking of the fishing vessel again this is the interpretation of the maritime ministry and and not necessarily the foreign ministry so the foreign ministry's position has always been that in the disputed parts so let's say there's a disputed part it's in US and Vietnam and if there's an incident we don't really solve it by arresting them and sinking the fishing ships but the problem is that we we take a sweeping view of any ship that falls within what we claim to be our fishing waters to be falling under our jurisdiction so when we try to provide a deterrent effect and we can debate about whether or not it creates the Internet effect but the idea of creating the deterrent effect is is by blowing them up and unfortunately we thought it was going to last for just the first year but it has continued on until today and it's the only way that they can have enough political backing domestically to pursue more expansive agenda for fishing reform so it's it's unfortunately that's been the case thank you all right so you know why now why it's trying to decided to behave this aggressively toward Vietnamese oil and gas operations part of the answer is simply that it can write the the construction of military facilities in the Spratlys has allowed Beijing to forward deploy and replenish ships in a way it couldn't until just a few years ago it can now maintain both Navy and Coast Guard also militia presence 24/7 throughout the entire nine-dash line and so it is able to persistently harass these kinds of operations in a way that would have been impossible in 2015 more approximately while we talk about the the survey activity because it's easy to track and because there's so many vessels you know half a dozen at least from each side out there it raises the risk of escalation of somebody bumps into each other but I think we're putting the cart before the horse it seems to me the reason that China has engaged in this survey is because of its anger over the Vietnamese drilling operation of a vanguard Bank so last month Ralston EFT began drilling on a new production well in block six one at Vanguard Bank despite China having made very clear - relson FN Vietnam last year that that would be unacceptable the same Coast Guard ship that's harassing the real staff to rig at six one now was harassing a Malaysian rig off the coast of Malaysian Borneo in May in both cases it becomes clear that China has decided that now is the time when it can firmly say no new production it will allow Southeast Asian claimants to continue to produce in existing wells but just as we saw with its threatening force against Vietnam over the Repsol drilling in july 2017 and again in 2018 it is now making clear that it will not accept new production wells the other lesson though is that it's going to continue to use non-military means to do that it is Coast Guard and maritime militia it is trying to get in the way of survey vessels it is harassing the operations but it is not actually using force and what we've seen was Malaysia is that the Malaysians didn't back down and the Chinese seem to have left in the case of Vietnam that rig has been operating for a month now it will probably be done its work in a few weeks at which point presumably the Chinese will again leave these operations bring a certain amount of risk obviously but what we were seeing I think is that Beijing is still not willing to use force is trusting and threats and intimidation to convince the Vietnamese and the Malaysians and the Filipinos that there is no point trying to operate in their a disease and that will become more and more effective as more and more training ships operate out there 24/7 I'll just touch quickly on I'm not going to discuss broad russo-chinese partnership in the Asia Pacific that's a whole other conference but you know it's interesting to me that at the same time the China is harassing a Rosneft drilling operation off the coast of Vietnam Russia and China are launching a joint military exercise over the East China Sea and yellow sea it seems that Moscow is quite happy to hive the South China Sea off of its broader cooperation with China in the indo-pacific Russia's position on the South China Sea is complicated yes it wants to poke the West in the eye over maritime law but at the same time it values its relationship with Vietnam and so it is not willing to publicly line up with China on this issue pretty much every other issue is happy to but I think it will remain on the margins of the South China Sea for the foreseeable future okay great finally cowboy I think that question to you is about the interests of other countries and whether they matter oh yeah responded the question about the international order and I think the core issue of the South China Sea issue is a territorial dispute of the island and reefs and the jurisdiction dispute of the metronomes in the sub chauncey until right now the what I have a presentation in this freedom of navigation and the miniaturization is nothing about it's at Eastfield of the territory and the true addiction and here right now I think the Chinese policy just suspended this dispute of the territory and Joy Division and to seek the way and try to solve this division dispute by negotiation and the peaceful way definitely it's and until right now I don't think China have a intention to use the force right now so you had talked you asked me the international order and Chinese seeking and what's the Chinese view on the internet order in the South China Sea I think the Chinese policy have a sort of your question is very clear that might be all right we're going to take one last round of three questions and please each person limit yourself to one question so that we can get them all answered here all right we'll take this woman up French sorry I forgot your name thank you the young reporter from The Voice of America we know the president of the Philippine president Detroit said on Monday I think you said China is in the possession or control of the waters in the South China Sea so he cannot drive China away and mr. polling just mentioned that why China acts so aggressively because China can so my question is China really in control of the South China Sea and if that is a case what the the United States and its allies can do thank you okay we'll go over here bill Hayden thank you very much my question is to captain Lou at the very beginning of your talk I think you said if Chinese law conflicts with international obligations we will on freedom of navigation we will change Chinese domestic law if but you're saying if the US continues with the phone ops this will create nationalism and China won't change the law without what you were saying in which case how'd you get out of the conundrum you're saying you're prepared to change the law but only if the US doesn't say off if the South China Sea but China but the US wants to sell to the South China Sea to point out that your law is incompatible with international obligations how do you resolve that okay and lastly yes wait for the microphone please up front thank you I'm Tom reckford with a foreign policy discussion group a question for Greg in the Philippines the press is very lively and very critical of the government and the Senate tends to be very critical of the government - how are they reacting to all of these issues involving China ramming vessels from etc okay Greg you want to start sure so it's trying to in control the South China Sea no apparently not the Malaysians decided in May that China's not control the South China Sea Vietnam is a certain right now the China's not control the South China Sea China may or may not be in control of large parts of the Philippine EEZ but that's only because Manila has decided it's willing to allow China to be in control of large parts of the Philippine you see Beijing it it does seem that Beijing's goal is to effectively control the water and air space of the South China Sea in peacetime that is the goal of these artificial islands that is the goal of Historic Register of the nine - line if that's the goal that hasn't been accomplished nobody with the possible exception of the current resident of Malcolm Yong in the Philippines has agreed that China has historic rights throughout the nine - line or controlled substance II but China's ability to do that to make that reality is growing and so China is far more control now than it was five years ago and if US policy doesn't change and if the policy mostly claimant doesn't change China will be in far more control a few years from now I don't know exactly when we decide that we've lost if it's five years from now or ten years from now or 20 years from now but if things don't change we will inevitably come to the conclusion that Chinese control is a fait accompli and then on on public and press opinion in the Philippines yeah you're right the Philippine press with the exception of of maybe one major paper that I can think of that I won't name is broadly critical of the doTERRA to government's policy in the South China Sea public opinion is extremely critical of the deterrent government's opinion of the South China Sea I mentioned the abysmal numbers for Trustin in China which of implementing all through this year from an already low position over 90 percent of Filipinos and poles say that the government should assert its claims in the South China Sea over 80 percent support the u.s. alliance over 70 percent support a forward deployed US military presence in the Philippines none of these are consistent with declared a government policy but just as with the US and every other country Filipino citizens don't generally vote based on foreign policy and so to date the government has been relatively immune from the effects of anger over foreign policy there have been you know individual cabinet members have been scapegoated there has been changes below the radar right so the the Armed Forces and and the Department of Defense for instance have been allowed to get the u.s. alliance back on track we're doing the same number or more of exercises of visits and we were before to tear day you know we've had a guest had the bilateral Fugit dialogue last week in which we've I think set the groundwork to see the Alliance grow tighter but all that has to happen below tutor pays attention I as I said at the end of my talk I don't know how much there they can be moved by public opinion he has been remarkably unmovable to date although I do think he's found the outer limits of what's politically acceptable right he has found kind of where the cliffs are and step back from them if he keeps operating in this space I suspect that unless they're unless the next time the Chinese Ram a Filipino boat the 22 fishermen die he probably doesn't move all this position okay the last word to you yeah I have a responses of your Hatton's and question about the territory's revision and it's all my personal review and about that revision and I think and this religion may be fit for our Chinese and the increase right now and when the Chinese enacted that law of the territorial sea in 1990s and the priority in order freedom of navigation in China so the protector coastline protected the territory maybe the strategy occurring in China in 1990s right now and I think when the Chinese they have a very strong Navy and just the ocean-going so we think maybe it's this religion will reflect our infants is also April or my personal view and I don't think it have a very relation between Chinese region and the international obligation I don't think so there's a only domestic law and the domestic right and you know we have a many country and the world have religion his thematic law ought to feel his domestic interests just like in 99 88 and the Black Sea and collision and Soviet Russia Soviet Union have changed it the magical law about the foreign warships and to internet also request the permission and the there are many many daily in the world and just Sweden and changed the law about that of all the foreign territory a foreign warship to inter territory and even the Vietnam has changed that and to the foreign to prior permission and the change to the prior notification and just like the South Korea South Korea is the same and the Indonesia just I know and yeah but right now it also my personal view I don't think we will change the very very faster maybe just my my thinking yeah all right great this has been a terrific first session I'm sorry didn't get to the questions of many of you but we do have the rest of the day I'll have many of opportunities to ask your questions later on we do not have a break at this particular moment so I'm going to ask you all if you can to stay in your seats we have a very long extended break for lunch but we're going to quickly swap out our panelists we're going to move to our next session which is on history and historiography how did we get here so please join me in thanking all of our panelists [Applause] you settle back down in your seats sorry we don't have a coffee break scheduled because we do have a long long lunch break coming up but we're gonna go right into our next panel in in just a moment as a few people settle into their seats we wanted this year to have a panel that took a step back from the current understanding of the conflicts and and take a look at the origins take a look at how different countries and players have viewed their historical rights and have just have viewed their understanding of the territory territories and the issues over time so we've put together a really terrific panel that will take a look at history and historiography from different perspectives I'm gonna introduce everyone and then we'll just sort of go down the line with their presentations all the way to my right we have bill hatin who's an associate fellow with the Asia Pacific program at Chatham House and has worked as a journalist for BBC since 1998 and he has focused a lot of his work on South China Sea disputes and current affairs in Southeast Asia and and he will be sharing a lot of his his work and his thoughts with us today next we have stein tonnison dr. tonnison is a research professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo his research mainly focuses on Vietnam nation-building in Southeast Asia and disputes in the South in the South China Sea and he leads a research program at the University of Upsala on the East Asia piece and is a regular contributor to Norwegian the Norwegian weekly morgen blot debt then we have Mary toss Vito who's the editor at large of Rattler and prior to that she was at a edited Newsbreak magazine and she has authored a book called shadow of doubt probing the Supreme Court which has exposed critical weaknesses in the Philippines High Court and she has her recent book called rock-solid looks at the Philippines maritime dispute with China and she's going to share with us how that unfolded through the arbitral tribunal process and then finally we have Cowie Changi Taborn who's a senior fellow at the Institute of security and International Studies at chill Longhorn University and as a columnist for the Bangkok Post his research focuses on u.s. foreign policy toward Southeast Asia especially with Thailand the future of the Indo Pacific and the regional security architecture and he has done a lot of work on looking at ASEAN and he's going to share with us a view of the the way that accion has has dealt with these disputes with China over time and the current discussions under the code of conduct so with that let me turn it over to bill thank you very much it's lovely to be back here and it's great to see a full room for people who want to learn about history fantastic why why should we care about the history well I think the reason is that there are ways of looking at the South China Sea which tend to prioritize a Chinese point of view and that's partly because the first people out of the blocks to write about the history of the South China Sea generally came from a Chinese background as in literally you know citizens of the PRC or the Old Republic of China and that has skewed a lot of the interpretation and the writing history ever since but I think that it's very important because as we heard from Captain Liu he was talking about China's core interests and territory as being part of it so therefore when we see China behaving in certain ways in the South China Sea it's predicated upon this view of the light fulness of China's territorial claim this sense of entitlement to all the rocks and reefs that lie within the u-shaped line and if other players in the South China Sea only talk about freedom of navigation or exclusive economic zones and miss the underlying territorial dispute there fail to understand what is driving China's actions and you will end up with a collision we need to therefore address this problem so for example at the shangri-la dialogue in June this year you saw the Chinese Ministry of Defense saying that China has never invaded another country forgetting of course 1974 when it invaded the Paracel Islands 1988 when it fought over the Spratly Islands plus of course the 1979 border war the Vietnam and India and so and so the only way that this view can make sense is if you accept a Chinese point of view that all of these bits of territory rightfully belong to China and it was the other countries that were violating China's sovereignty that's the only way that that statement can make sense if you need to understand that position I think to understand this sense of right righteousness that certain lies behind a lot of China's actions the result is didn't is this ridiculous situation that what you're looking at in that picture is officially the southernmost point of Chinese territory and what you'll notice is there isn't actually any territory there it's a screw-up which came from the 1930s which I will try to explain shortly the Xingu and Shah and as a little clue you need to understand that the xingwu is simply the Chinese transliteration of the word James JM Singh more you know it's nonsense if you really want to deep dive into this nonsense history and how a lot of the bad writing that has emerged in the academic literature since the 1970s I really recommend this paper by Johannes Kurtz a German scholar at the University of Brunei who has really been through a lot of the original classical Chinese documents to see whether they actually say the things which advocates of the Chinese claim say they do and surprise surprise he finds out that sentences have been twisted translations have been distorted words have been inserted in order to make Chinese claims look solid when you go back and look at the original classical Chinese texts words like South China Sea are not there words like foreigner have been omitted and so on and so forth I really recommend this I'm happy to share this this piece of work with anybody it's also my twitter feed if you want to loaded it all kicks off freely in the South China Sea not until 1909 and the motivation was guano bird poo at Japanese guano entrepreneur lands on HS island and known in Chinese as Dong Ha and it's only when William Taft later president of this country happens to pay a visit to Shanghai in 1907 that he brings this to the attention of the Chinese authorities and that's really when Chinese interest in the South China Sea first takes off but it does take them a very long time to to respond well over a year suggesting that at that time offshore islands were far from being a primary concern of the Qing authorities it's at the same time that an expedition is launched to the Paracel Islands in 1909 a three-day expedition upon which all the subsequent claims and santiana sea really hang nothing really much happens for at least a decade after that I'm going to skip out a lot for time reasons but it's really France makes a claim to the Paracel Islands in 1931 and ends up in a diplomatic dispute with China and while that dispute about the Paracels is still raging France makes a separate claim to the Spratly Islands on Bastille Day in 1933 14th of July and they've juste then published in the newspapers here and what is very clear from the very beginning is that the Republic of China government has no idea where the Spratly Islands actually are and confuses them with the Paracel Islands and you can see that in this telegram here which is a Republic of China telegram from the foreign ministry so from the Navy to the foreign ministry in which the Navy says I don't know what you're talking about there were no Islands there this is 1933 okay these are these are the islands which have been sacred to Chinese territory since ancient times if you believe the current day propaganda and here we have proof that they didn't know where they were in fact he was only in 1933 when the Chinese consul in Manila went to see the American colonial authorities there and ask them for a map the Republic of China learnt that the Spratlys and the Paracels were in fact in different places so what then happened was that the Republic of China went about a process of creating knowledge trying to divine devise Chinese names for the features in the South China Sea and we know that they simply copied a British list this list here the 1906 China Sea direction we know this because there are mistakes in the Chinese list and the only other document which has exactly the same list of mistakes is this document which I put on the on the screen there the South China Sea directory of 1906 now this committee holds various meetings 25 meetings in between June 33 and late and late 1934 and agrees these Chinese names and the first version of all these names are simply the translations or transliterations of the English what the names which are found on British maps hence James become Xing mu and so forth and ironically some of those are still in use today so if we sample in the Paracel Islands in Chinese Jeanne endow money Island is named after William Munny who was a British imperialist manager of the year of the East India Company Lin Yangzhou and so low grief is named after a ship of the East India Company which surveyed it and still to this day known by those names in Chinese and then along comes an entrepreneur entrepreneurial retired geography professor by the name of by Mae Chu who makes his own atlas based upon these these names and he adds some innovations notably a whole known number of islands which don't actually exist as you'll see from this map so there's a James shoal it doesn't exist but it's drawn as an island there's the Vanguard Bank doesn't exist drawn as an island this is seahorse shoal and the names are simply the translations of the British names why is it important well this is where the Philippines wants to develop gas on the reed Bank this is where the Malaysia has just been threatened by Chinese Coast Guard ships this is where Vietnam is currently being threatened by Chinese Coast Guard ships okay the history is alive now the only reason that this line was drawn in the way it was was because this man who was not a very good geography professor drew this line on this map back in 1936 around these non-existent features okay that's why we're in conflict today that's why South China Southeast Asian governments are having these problems right now why did he do that I think it's because he copied this bad this this good map drawn by a British man of course okay and you see James show Vanguard Bank seahorse Bank are drawn as little dotted lines as in they are not above the water and bye mate you just went in colored the moon and quartum islands and became the southern part of the Chinese territory and then two of his students these two guys here were hired by the Republic of China Ministry of the Interior straight after the Second World War in 1946 and they took his map in fact the very first map that was officially drawn by the public of China government in 1946 which has a nine dash line it's called the location sketch map has exactly the same features marked on it seahorse Bank James shoal and Vanguard Bank and he and this dude was drawn by the guy on the left here and then he also goes down to the Spratlys in 1946 on the on the claiming expedition the very first time December 46 with any Chinese official ever landed on the Spratly Islands and you can see this even in official Chinese publications this is the Republic of China's official handbook the first edition published in 1943 says the southernmost point of territory is the Paracel Islands as you can see up there but the second edition published four years later the Chinese territory has expanded 600 miles south to include border birthing called the twenty islands which are now known in Chinese as and then sha the Spratly Islands so this is so you know critical for critical years between 43 and 47 that's when China claimed the Spratly Islands for the first time as I've said this before the Chinese claim to the Spratly Islands is younger than my parents and then this finally is the map that was published in early 1948 and you can see some of the names are still there some of the names were changed to make them sound more Chinese at this point so for example Laconia Shoals which is initially located near transliteration simply becomes kang lo kang near they just take the word kang which means health but it's it's derivation is from the english here's the solution so if the International Court of Justice can decide that the pedra branca when the foreground belongs to Singapore and middle rocks in the background there belongs to Malaysia and it should be entirely possible to divide up the various rocks and reefs of the South China Sea on similar grounds who actually has the right of who can demonstrate occupation and administration standard classic international law arguments yeah ot pasa DTS et Deus the Latin as you possess so who shall possess so the question really how do we get this and I think there's a critical role here for Taiwan Taiwan has the archives Taiwan has a political atmosphere where you can have a discussion and a debate all of the archives to do with the occupation the South China Sea features are in Taipei Taiwan I think has what really could be a nuclear option it could completely destroyed the PRC's claim to areas of sea to islands that were never occupied or administered simply by making clear what's in its archives the PRC would presumably be extremely unhappy about this and try to impose costs on Taiwan for doing so so the question is what would other claimants Philippines Vietnam Malaysia Brunei be willing to offer to Taiwan to ameliorate those costs you know I think this is a critical role for the future of the South China Sea and I think Taiwan could play a very central role in it but I think so is your nationalist concern about your Chinese identity more important than your practical security concern that by legitimizing PRC occupations are in the Spratlys that you are facilitating the encirclement of Taiwan you know that my filling in the strategic space to the south and west of Taiwan is that more important to you than your nationalistic one China position so I think this is a choice really that Taiwan has to make and it's of choice with profound internal and external consequences but I really think it's a one it's a way that we can make clear the partial nature of the various claims in the South China Sea the fact that they can be in my view divided up by asking States to prove actual occupation rather than making blanket statements based on out-of-date and inaccurate maps we can actually find a way forward to resolve the South China Sea territorial disputes thank you thank you bill dr. Thomason can we leave the microphone here in case as a historian I would warn against history actually all ancient or modern pre-modern history I would argue that the critical dates for deciding sovereignty to islands in the South China Sea are fairly recent the definition of critical date you can see here and it requires that all material facts have been put in place it's said by legal scholars that the critical date should neither be too early nor too late but the parties the relevant parties must have been given a chance to mark their points make their claims the first possible critical date that I can see is 1909 and that is valid for the Paracels because for a long time in the 19th century Vietnam had made claims to the Paracels China got there through an expedition in 1909 so that could alter things so it might be a critical date but I think it's still much too early because Viet Nam's interests were very badly defended by China by France of the French colonization France was actually like Britain and also Japan interested in seeing the Paracels being under Chinese sovereignty because China was so weak so they believed that if China controlled the Paracels they could themselves make use of it if time be so for this reason France did very little to promote the interests of Vietnam in the Paracels in 1933 which was referred to by Bill hatin France proclaimed that it had occupied six named islands in the Spratlys you see the MA up there because in the first I read nine but it's actually when I also looked at the Journal official it's six one important thing here is that France made this acquisition on behalf of itself not on behalf of Vietnam while the Paracels were considered by the French to be either on the Chinese sovereignty or on their enemies that is Vietnamese sovereignty the Spratlys were taken by France on behalf of itself the only real protest that came came from Japan and what changed things in the 1930s and made France finally decide to promote the Vietnamese interest in the Paracels was the Japanese threat they wanted to defend it against Japan Japan and France then kept a shared a common they were both present in the Paracels until March 1945 when the French were driven out by Japan but 1933 not a good critical date oil 1947 a much better critical date for the Paracels because there was then a race between China and France for occupying the Paracels in late 1946 France came too late when they arrived in January 47 Chinese fleet and garrison was already there in woody island the result was that France established itself in pattle island of the Crescent group while leaving the Amphitrite route to China so if it were to be sided on the basis of 1947 it might well be said that the parecer should be divided between China and Vietnam and this was actually a division that lost it until 1974 1951-52 could be have been a critical date if the San Francisco conference had managed to resolve the issue China was keen to get recognition that Japan surrendered desperately and Paracel Islands to China but neither the Republic of China nor the People's Republic of China were invited to the San Francisco conference so the PRC had to be defended by Soviet Union which tried to get recognition of Chinese sovereignty to the Spratlys and the parallel cells none of the other countries won't do that the UK wanted to keep its own claim and did not want anyone anything to be said about who should have the Spratly Islands France also wanted to keep his own claim and did not really sympathize with the new state of Vietnam's demand for sovereignty to it and the result was that this was left completely open then the Republic of China contacted Japan and negotiated a peace treaty of its own in the court in the following year 1952 where seemingly Japan conceded that his practice and spare peril cells were ceded to China the French discovered this and then sought diplomatic contact with Japan and got Japan to confirm that the agreement they had made with Japan with Taiwan in no way had changed the status that was in the San Francisco treaty so for this reason the San Francisco conference did not resolve anything then we get to the first real critical date that could be chosen for the Spratlys and the catalyst here was the proclamation of a Philippine freedom land by the cloner brothers and backed up by the vice president of the Philippines but not official Philippines policy and this led to a stream of claims from all the relevant countries at that time in a kind of diplomatic exchange that would be ideal for resolving issues but still the problem was that there were still countries that were not represented in this and that's Malaysia and Brunei so I would recommend against that - when we get to 1973-75 we get a number of of issues that bring things up and you get from this stage a series of occupations the beginning of occupation china takes control of the second part of the sells through force and by using force its makes an invalid sovereignty claim you cannot gain sovereignty through conquest after the UN Charter of 1945 so 1973-75 brings a lot of change but still I find it difficult to resolve the Spratly issue for these reasons one problem that was resolved now was chose Viet Nam's unification since 1976 Vietnam has been able to act as one unit but China has not so China and Taiwan are both representing China you the one China's interests but are not coordinating their policies much a number of things happened in the 1980s and 90s and 2000's that for several reasons do not really make it make it into critical days but my best candidates tentatively is 2009 where you had the submission deadline for extended continental shelf claims and with China finely officialized it's u-shaped line and also explained it in a short text in an official letter to the UM this led to a lot of claims and counterclaims and reactions and protests from the countries around and now also Malaysia and Brunei where part of it and the Philippines had officialized these claims before that so all the relevant parties were there so if I wear on an arbitral tribunal or a court I think I would go for 2009 as the critical date I have you know I was asked to say something here about Viet Nam's claims and I see several weaknesses also in the Vietnamese claims of similar kinds to work bill Haydon pointed out in the Chinese one the first is I don't I find it unconvincing that the Yuen dynasty's claims in the 19th century included this practice I think it was only about the Paracels and the court of the UN Dynasty used apps that were clearly copying old European Maps placing the Paracels in a very wrong position and making it much bigger than they actually are then you see the other weaknesses is that France did such a bad job for its protected colony and even after Vietnam had been given independence France continued to claim this practice for itself I have seen no evidence although this is repeated in all kinds of statements from Vietnam that France ever ceded this practice to Vietnam so there is not the case for such for session which is one of the criteria that you can use for gaining sovereignty and then there is a problem that North Vietnam or the Democratic Republic of Vietnam failed to protest a new Chinese law in 1958 that mentioned the Spratlys and the Paracels and as under Chinese sovereignty this may have stopped that's the term Viet Nam's claims but there are arguments that can be used by Vietnam also to counter that then for the Scarborough Shoal my suggestion for a critical date is simply 2012 because there had long been a condition where the Philippines was seen to control them now that was a changed change where China took over through an operation using swarms of boats but not direct provoking armed force that's the the year that you could resolve who had the best claim to sovereignty before that but still you have impediments that I mentioned here and here I think I should end ten minutes have gone I believe we can we can perhaps address some of these in the Q&A session let's move to Mario's thank you for the big picture to my two colleagues I'll tell you a bit of the Philippine story and the Philippine claims so we began the Philippines actually began occupying some of the features in the 1960s under President Ferdinand Marcos who ordered a clandestine mission of soldiers who reported directly to him to occupy certain features they began in 1968 to 1971 that's the first wave and then this included preparations for the takeover and then the second wave 1977 to 2 1980 and the last came in 1999 which was under President Joseph Estrada who only had ruled for a year and a half and we we never knew we knew little that he ordered the occupation of the last feature and this was this was done by running a ship aground near a young in Sheol or some second Thomas shoal and it was a deliberate move by the Philippine Navy and the ship still stands there today but it represents the Philippine government because it continues to be in the list of commissioned ships so during all this time when I was doing my book in my research all of the Navy officers and soldiers whom I interviewed said they never saw a single Chinese soul in all these waves of occupation and it was only much later as discussed that China started to protest these actions of the Philippines and Marcos issued to decrease which declared this area part of the Philippine territory and called it Kalia and and clayey and means freedom became part of Palawan province the other decree established the Philippines e-easy which extended 200 nautical miles from the baselines today this was shown earlier this is the runway of Tito island PAGASA which is undergoing repair as informed by the Department of National Defense and I visited this during my research for the book and as of 2015 we have only a sprinkling of a few Filipino soldiers guarding this island and here it's like an open-air museum this was built in the 1970s under Marcos and it's no longer used today and we also have the amphibious assault weapon also unused and this is a secret of peat or PAGASA if it could be developed into some government official saying to a resort it could rival those of Malaysia also and this is the civilians there are only about 300 civilians in t2 or PAGASA and their subsistence is under subsidized living there because it's a very difficult to plan but they get a lot of fish so timeline just a short timeline which showed China's creeping occupation of these parts so 1988 was when the Philippines recorded occupation of some reefs 1995 is major because the China grabbed appropriately-named mischief reef it's panel eben reef in the Philippines and the Asia maritime transparency initiative shows a current slide as images of this as they have it has been thick it has metamorphosed into a base of China in 2004 2005 was the Philippines and China under Gloria Arroyo entered into a joint marine seismic undertaking Vietnam protested so it became a trilateral agreement till today this is being questioned in the Philippine Supreme Court and there has been no decision yet more than ten years ago I mean the case was filed more than 10 years and the next timeline I also mentioned earlier was 2011 China stopped the Philippines from explorer exploring for oil and gas in Reed Bank erecto Bank and 2012 this was when China took over Scarborough Shoal after two months of tense standoff over fishing rights and then 2013 and 2014 China attempted to prevent Philippine ships from delivering supplies to second Thomas shoal so to 2011 and 2012 our crews were crucial in the decision of President Aquino to pursue arbitration against China before the permanent Court of Arbitration so when he was making the decision a number of people openly opposed it saying it do it would do more harm to the Philippine to our relations with China rather than good so Aquino reflected on this but 2011 and 2012 have left their imprint on him and he said that in an interview he said that he remembers what one ASEAN senior leaders said that there are big countries and there are small countries as the way of the world and he said that there should be an equalizer which is the rule of law and that was his anchor when he decided to take China to court with approval of past to past president's cabinet and leaders of Congress and I think this will be discussed later but Phillip the Philippines did not consult with his ASEAN neighbors because it wanted to keep this a secret for fear that China would learn about it from some of its our neighbors so anyway January 13 was when the case began mainly to show that the nine - line was illegal in which bill hate and actually showed in his book and to define the status of the features of in some some features in South China Sea so it was quite an impressive submission of the Philippines 3,000 plus pages of text first time that the Philippines made public confidential documents submitted by reports of the Philippine Navy Philippine Armed Forces confidential communications between Beijing and Manila all about such dispute over South China Sea for almost 20 years so quite impressive submissions of the Philippines to the permanent Court of Arbitration and for someone like me a journalist so skeptical about governments I was quite impressed with the amount of research in the submissions included maps more than 600 maps were submitted as part of the Philippine case and just to get briefly introduce you to the main characters in this epic case a former foreign affairs secretary del Rosario who presided over this and this is the lawyer who heads who headed the team of the Philippines is from Foley Hawk based here in DC has won similar cases of smaller countries against bigger countries and this is the Supreme Court justice it was his idea to pursue arbitration and these are the judges who decided the case took them three years they're all men well it was a unanimous decision they hailed from different parts of the world and it took them more than three years to resolve the case and this is where the hearings were held is the biggest hall in the Peace Palace and as you can see the other side is empty because China refused to participate in the case so well the Philippines want to sustaining victory we we were supposed to celebrate this in July 2016 but we had a different president so the story changed and apart from declaring the nine-dash line illegal the Philippines earlier said that if the Philippines just won this point of the nine dash line being claimed as illegal and it would have been a great victory but apart from that we also learned that of course a nine dash line was the greatest fake news of at that time now we also warned the other arguments like none of the Philippines and teittleman's were overlapped by any of China so it gives exclusive enjoyment of this resources to the Philippines and those are the other items that we warned and the impact of course is the Philippines gained a maritime area larger than its land area rich in resources and it has shrunk the disputed area and well as we know today this has been shelved the victory has been shelled under the presidency of the 30 but that's a story for another day thank you thank you very much well thank you very much from Thailand I must say that we don't have any claim and I will not state one the only claim I have is that Thailand has a civilian government having said that my presentations the only reason I'm here is that Thailand is the chair of ASEAN this year and it has done a miraculous job trying to hold together as you can see I'm not going back history of 100 years 50 years my history only 34 years it will start in 1995 the so-called Sen in China tassel COC and game where I will live in the Marvel comic con so have to be a little bit modern the timeline so we all have comm line but my timeline we have three critical time in 1995 I was fortunate at the time I was a note taker this was the first time the reason why I have to mention this 1995 the first informal senior official discussion between China and as in in Hangzhou April 5th at 8 o'clock it was historic for me because I was a note taker and the person who was in the room was Vice foreign minister Zhang Jian he was a bit a bit red-faced and at the time he drank too much in because this was after dinner and in the room the other nemesis of him from Sen this person was other than Kishore Madhubani the reason has to mention this because Kisho was the first person to raise that in order to establish trust and confidence in relation between ASEAN and China China has to be for the first time used the worst tons parents so the worst transparency was used in 1995 by mabu Bonnie I overheard the young translator who translate this to Tang Jiaxuan she used the word Qing Qiu you know that is mean clear but at that time she did not use the word Tomy which mean transparent the was transparent used a lot by China after in the year 2000 when China negotiated to become member of World Trade Organization that's where the word governance and other related multilateralism come into play and tangiest one at a time I would sit opposite him he was angry the phrase was red I almost turned green and he responds and said that well I understood Chinese a little bit but understood enough he said that all the time Chinese policy to what South China Sea is very clear tinting - - and that's it the meeting broke down at that moment on in 1995 the question of transparency and Trust become the key word in negotiating in the next thirty four years and I will not go into details I think all the three panelists has mentioned in great details but what make different was the whole development how I see and realized that after all this you have to engage with China in 1995 you have to remember as I enter start the so-called as in Regional Forum as in regional forum as you know was a new so-called regional platform to engage the major power in the beginning nobody trusts that China would be able to join after the joy nobody realized that China one day will be able to engage the rest of the so-called as in Regional Forum member of the 27 so it was that time that a.cian thought that we need to engage and that we need certain form of court of conduct and that's the idea so it take the next 34 years long long long discussion between ASEAN and China of course I will focus on the table or the diplomatic texture the ups and downs of the negotiation but for me the most critical point which we took mentioned which will not duplicate with Stan which focus on 2009 but for me is 2014 wins Philippine as a cowboy without consult with a Sein decided to go to permanent Court of abrogation and that really piss off us in and I'm sorry I have to say that because the respond by that time Aslan was very weak especially some of the non Clayman Thailand Myanmar Laos Cambodia but I think the outcome did have a positive impact that it's pressure China to move on and enter deep into negotiation with us yet and it was unfortunate at that time when Philippine decided to go to the application installation with the overall essence a scheme of cooperation has been weakened tremendously I think I think Philippines decided to divorce from ASEAN and it weakened as an common position on negotiation with China that was that as you can see when Duterte came back embraced as yet as he and suddenly solidarity also increased and you can see after 2016 as in China relation negotiation over the DRC and COC has progress I would show you the next slide this is a very important I have only four slides but this one is important because in the past the negotiation of South China Sea only focus on two things there are always two session the DRC things that have been agree in 2002 and then the code of conduct so there is two sessions separately it's only in the past few year after the arbitrator and decision that China start to talk about joint cooperation and country like Thailand country likes non claimant is trying to engage the China is now trying to focus on maritime cooperation which mentioned succinctly in the DRC this series of activities that country involved in ASEAN and China should do so the maritime cooperation has been introduced as the third component so from now on until while Premier Li Keqiang mentioned this in November last year for the first time give the timeframe of three years that COC will be complete at the moment I'm not so sure but I think since China has shown association to complete the COC by the 2021 we will have to watch carefully what China will do from now on until 2021 but suffice to say I think Thailand as chair in Philippines now as the coordinator which has behaved rather well normally coordinator will have a lot of things to raise issue to put on the table but so far Philippines and Thailand Philippine as chair and know Thailand as chair Filipinas coordinator working very well so there's a lot of progress so in the last meeting in Hangzhou just a couple of weeks ago the first word has been used substantive progress has been used after three decades so Sen in China concatenate them sell their after all you know despite all the our friend goings chronically mentioned jot down the activities in South China Seas and all these as in and China continue to talk and help talk and talk and talk and talk and they will continue to to talk so from now on the discussion will focus on the maritime cooperation to ensure that it will create the two point I made that so called trust because I think as an in China trust deficit still high especially on the intention of China and I think China has now become more forthcoming in the detail of discussion with with Sen so the so-called maritime cooperation as you know I think in the futures both ASEAN and China will agree on certain action for example which is non-lethal of course is on the Maritimes conservation maritime protections and also examine of tuna life stocks in in South China Sea that kind of thing that would increase the trust and if the trust increase I think there would be a serrated negotiation on the code of conduct as you can see Thailand as a chair expect the first single text negotiation to be complete this year and Vietnam as the next Sen chair will start the second reading the second reading will be very important because for the first time they will have all the input from all the as a member in China and now they were starting in detail agree to not agree hopefully hopefully by the end of next year all in Brunei the most sensitive issue that in everybody mind is whether the whole negotiation will be binding or not and then this I think will be a big issue and I think is very hard for me to to predict but I am sure now that Lee kichan has set the three-year time frame and I also think that there is a good reason for China to conclude the COC and also for ASEAN I think China has been held hostage by the discussion by the development in South China Sea for too long it has tiny China rise to so-called peaceful rise and I think the Chinese government now especially under siege in pain would like to express show demonstrate the new approach to its neighboring country particularly South Asia placing priorities in ASEAN and as you can see if you notice that a Chairman's statement of late the past three year there is caused core both I want to turn maritime dispute into the CEO please a peace prosperity and sustainability I think this is a way to frame the Chinese behavior in the future to make sure that the area will be peaceful and finally I think China wants COC very much and it will be biting that's my take why I think China is rising and next year China for the first time will achieve the so-called see how come the modern prosperous society and it would all go well with the overall Chinese approach as the country that can live peacefully with ASEAN so I think that's what China aim thank you thank you very much well we've heard four very interesting presentations on China's claims in the South China Sea on China's and Viet Nam's claims on the Paracels on the Philippine claims to their features and how the kind of approach they have taken bilaterally with China through legal mechanisms and subsequently walked away from that and then Kylie's presentation on how ASEAN Southeast Asian claimants collectively through their membership in ASEAN have approached China and and sought a code of conduct which Kali you sound relatively optimistic that it will be concluded and will be relatively substantive and and binding so let me open it up for questions we have about 20 minutes I will start with the gentleman here could you wait until the microphone arrives and then please introduce yourself and ask just one question thank you Augustus all zona Filipino by birth American by choice subscribing to the neorealists foreign policy view viewpoint but then I've had to sort of readjust it given the recent elections the question is this basically it isn't this basically sort of like a modern-day rehash of the Greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere that term from from the last century and sort of that you combine that with the idea of gunboat diplomacy and I think to quote a famous Chinese leader of about the power that flows from the barrel of a gun and you just throw all that in and that sort of at least to me it explains what's going on here so I've wanted if any of the panelists had any any thoughts on that I'm going to group three questions together and then we'll turn to our panelists so pooja here in the blue the woman in the blue here hi thank you my question is to copy I I'm very intrigued by your analysis where you say that China would want COC if we follow the SN DT that was leaked last year the single negotiation does text it the the entire crux of the document if you see there were three of them that won the China does not want any you know binding document second was that it wanted extra regional power countries to be out of the COC negotiation third was that all the maritime delimitation case issues would be not a part of the COC document given this kind of document if we come across like if we finally get it there would not be any teeth to the document so even if it becomes binding later on what is the use of such a document can you help me understand that even it what do you want to try to push it okay given the three condition that the single negotiation draft text has that the maritime tea limitation issues would not be a part of the document it the document would not be legally binding and third the extra regional powers would be out of the COC negotiation given that kind of context but even if a COC comes into picture tomorrow it doesn't have any relevance what is your take on that one more question over here nothing - the diploma Academy of Vietnam so I have one question photos to stain and also one for for Bureau stain I have it correct me if I'm wrong you will use you we show in the history the long history that and that you know different type actors happen is aspera cell in Vietnam stat from 17th century and and French come and China come and also the rules of the international law is that you cannot allow - you forced to gain you know territory rights and also the effective occupation and agenda use force in 1974 and the choice chose to choice of the critical date at to deny is that to make sure is that you allowed that to legitimize the use of force to gain you know the the Paracel at that time you know that china is late comer from both europe our sentence badly and also the choice of critical aid there will be very security in the way that would would not matter helpful to to understand the nature's of this view there and one to bill they won't have the wicked fix knew what the history now I mean with the night - lie and how we should communicate with the China's on that to make sure that Israel will be understand across robot that the history could not be used you know as a pretext for I mean the the force to be evil on the ground thank you when we go in reverse order and I'll start with Cowie to answer the code of conduct I must tell you I don't know the details of the discussion but all the issue that you discuss have not according to my view discuss officially that's the important thing I think it will be discussed as its proceed by incremental II taking the less sensitive area less sensitive issue the one that you mentioned will be I think the last a lot of things has been leaked out saying that it has been in add up or this list but it has not yet been discussed as all this is why I cannot say my associate some of China was based on the desire of China trying to present itself as a nation that respect international rule beloved in the context of South China Sea and I think judging from the reading judging from the past two years I think China has changed attitude toward as into a COC so we still have to see because the the trust I think as yen and China at the moment does not have the same level of trust like in the first cycle of diamond relation 25 years now if you watch carefully as in determine the status of the relation with China on the day to day basis on the reality on the ground and China notice this is why the strategic action plan this time the language is not as strong as before Mary just do you want to take the gunboat diplomacy question oh you don't okay okay will say that I bill might want to tackle that along with the other question he was asked dr. Tennyson the return to the Greater East Asia greater Asia co-prosperity sphere and Karen both diplomacy not not quite yet but the power in the South China Sea has changed many times in modern history in the 17th century it was quite dominated by China and that was between the Dutch and the Portuguese period and in the 19th century it was the European century with Britain and France and then the United States and then you got the kind of condominium in the 20th century where Japan was held down with limits to its naval forces and Japan had it short short period where it was creating the South China Sea as a kind of Japanese Lake and then after that there has been a u.s. domination which has lost it until recently and this period has at the same time allowed the institution of international law through one fantastic progress which also China took part in which was to agree on the law of the sea convention in 1982 which has been ratified by all the countries around the South China Sea what is despicable to see now is how China does not respect basic tenets of that convention and for this I think that the arbitral tribunals award was also detrimental because it caused such a defeat for China legally that it severely reduces any chance that China would even after political change in Beijing if that should happen would come back to a solution that would be based on the law of the sea if China could argue will Taiwanese help that eat to ABBA is the only island in this in the Spratly group that can have an exclusive economic zone with zone then China would be able to get a reasonable part of the South China Sea as its exclusive economic zone in the northern part because it would in a way unite Moodie island in the Paracels with it wobba with a capacity to generate such a zone so they'd be really disappointing thing about the arbitral tribunal was that it took up into Abba and decided as law that Ito Abba cannot generate such a zone then there is little fallback position for China so now you see China using illegal means to force a use of the u-shaped line which is completely in violation of the law of the sea that makes me fear that we will end up with just power deciding for the question about about Vietnam my basic argument is that no single country can have sovereignty to all the Spratlys when France in nineteen thirty first declared its sovereignty claim in the Spratlys in a diplomatic message to the UK it drew a line like this around the Spratlys and said everything inside is ours the British government told the French that you can't do that this is not how you make international law and how you claim sovereignty you must name the islands and claim just the islands not everything within a line and France listened so in 1933 it demanded sovereignty to six named islands and the UK more or less accepted it this by letting its own claim to some of those islands from 1877 letting that dormant later on the Philippines made the same mistake as France by when it created freedom land drawing them up and say the everything inside here is our freedom land and it took a long time for the Philippines to discover that this was not the way you can do international law and then start claiming islands and then China has done exactly the same mistake with the u-shaped line reinterpreting as demand to everything that is inside it which is completely in violation of international law and sooner or later China must give up that but as long as you as long as it has growing power and does not see any chance of getting something that is satisfactory for it through international law and has this problem of the division with Taiwan it's unlikely that it will happen final word the base the main basis for resolving sovereignty claims in the South China Sea is permanent occupation and I think the only pragmatic solution is also to recognize sovereignty for those countries that currently occupy them and that have not taken them by force so therefore the Western Paracels in 1974 the conquest of the Western Paracels from the Republic of Vietnam was illegal and should not give China any title thank you Bill you can play sweep up on this round thank you and building on that I mean I generally agree exactly with what stan has been been saying that the only way to resolve this is to disaggregate the claims is to rather than talking about claims to entire archipelagos or every single feature you break it up and you say what about this one what about this one and actually because the states have been fairly active in putting out versions of their claim into the public domain we have most of their evidence available to us because we have documents from embassies and so forth and we can actually assess a lot of the rival claims even without going to a big international tribunal what I've what I want to argue in terms of answering highest question and I gave a talk at Fudan University in Shanghai last year I wanted to argue that China's overall strategic interests are in collision with its territorial claims its overall strategic interest as cavy was saying are in peaceful constructive relations with Southeast Asia and so therefore the feeling that Southeast Asia has that China is being an aggressive expansionist power goes against its wider strategic interests and when you look at China's situation in the Spratlys it occupies seven features is China's material security strategic strength going to be enhanced by occupying a eight feature I would argue not there is nothing to be gained from it that it doesn't already have from controlling the seven three large for small basis that it currently does so why can it not therefore publicly say that we are prepared to accept the status quo Southeast Asia we are not going to occupy any of your features we will all live with what we have you know you tipo City artists you know because the nationalist agenda is to keep on pushing and pushing and pushing because this is rightfully Chinese territory which then leads us back and I think to the question of the East Asian co-prosperity sphere all of this stuff comes from Chinese reformers and revolutionaries in the late 19th and early 20th century drinking from the cup of European nationalism and they're still drunk on it okay Europe has given up and decided that war is not the way to solve the alsace-lorraine question yeah East Asia is still living this nightmare I mean who the eff gives a damn about some of these islands okay to quote Bill Murray in meatballs it just doesn't matter all right you get a few fish but frankly you can buy them on the open market yeah for cheaper than building a massive concrete installation yes okay you can you know you need your surveillance systems yes yes yes yes yes but we're there we're done now just stop it okay if I could persuade China of that then I think I would get the Nobel Peace Prize okay we have time for one or possibly two more questions so I will go back out there's a gentleman in the back I'll go to him first good afternoon my name is Julie Joaquim I'm from Georgetown University what is the predicted impact of the upcoming ASEAN u.s. maritime exercise for overall situation in the region what should it do or demonstrate to be successful from ASEAN view from the bilateral view of each of the claimants and from international perspective thank you okay thank you that's also an excellent question for Admiral Swift our keynote speaker so we'll see if anyone wants to take it but we might save it for him as well this this gentleman here microphone the plaid shirt Zack haver Center for Advanced Defense studies this question is for Bill I'm wondering on in your conversations with Tony's counterparts is there any appetite for reforming the Taiwanese claims what would that look like in practice and would it accomplish anything seeing as you know China lost the arbitration to the Philippines and has continued on anyways thank you we have only five minutes so let me see if does anyone have any remarks about the us-asean exercise that's planned in the Thailand year of the mm+ yeah I think this is a very positive development if we've received by coverage and I think as Ian would like to push a China a United State would like to push us into put a stronger word in the joint statement related to increase US commitment in South China Sea I mean with the joint exercise yes I think yeah that would be bill do you want to take the last question I suppose yeah and I think the answer is obviously it depends which Taiwanese people you are talking to I mean there's to be no Taiwanese politics is hugely divided and this you know kind of won China independence autonomy divide cuts through absolutely every single issue I got the impression from the few people I've spoken to who are mainly I guess probably from the green camp that they personally would be in sympathy with it that it would make things simpler that it obviously plays into their wider agenda of separating the island from from the PRC but you know on the other side I think that the emotional connection to a one China position in it is quite strong and this you know and and the idea of asserting a single Chinese claim is is an emotional part of that claim and so and I get you know discussions for example say that the prospect foundation or something you know you get people dropping hints and things but I just think the actual the the potential costs are so great if you go to the National Institute of sociology studies in high cult and Hainan Island and PRC you will find a display of historic documents all of which came out of the Taiwan archives yeah under the old MA administration there was a fair degree of you know cross-strait cooperation on this issue obviously now there isn't yeah okay I have one announcement to make before we close this panel we have lunch waiting for you outside so I ask that you move to the buffet and grab a plate and come back we are going to launch our keynote 15 minutes earlier than is on the schedule so we will begin at 1:00 o'clock instead of 1:15 so you still have a half an hour to take a break grab some lunch come back in here and we'll start back up at one o'clock so now please join me in thanking our panelists [Applause] you

Channel: Center for Strategic & International Studies

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Length: 155min 41sec (9341 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 24 2019