India shares the concern of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) in ensuring that the South China Sea, home to the hotly disputed Spratly Islands, remains open for trade.
“South China Sea is one of the most important routes for trade. It is India’s desire that it continues to retain that basic precepts,” Foreign Minister SM Krishna (picture) told a group of Asean journalists in New Delhi.
He said trading routes, traditional and non-traditional, have to be honoured.
“Nobody can own a particular sea, there are international conventions. They demarcate certain maritime boundaries. Beyond that, international conventions come into operation,” he said in response to a question on the overlapping claims on the Spratlys.
Krishna met the Asean journalists covering Delhi Dialogue IV, the fourth edition of the engagement between India and the region that began in 2009. Malaysia was represented by deputy foreign minister Senator A Kohilan Pillay.
The two-day dialogue themed "India and Asean: Partners for Peace, Progress and Stability" ended yesterday.
Malaysia is one of the six Asian nations that have staked a claim on all or part of the Spratlys, which are believed to be rich in natural resources. The others are Brunei, China, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam.
In the recent past, it has been reported that the Philippines and Vietnam have accused Chinese vessels of repeatedly intruding into areas they claim and of trying to sabotage oil explorations in their territorial waters.
On its part, China has denied the allegations and claims its sovereignty over the area. Krishna noted that at an earlier Asean meeting, Asean ministers had "pointedly" raised the issue with China.
In one meeting, he said the China side had assured Asean that it was in China’s interest also to see that the routes should remain uninterrupted.
The just-retired US Navy’s top commander in the Pacific had voiced his concerns that local arguments in disputed oil rich waters near the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea could escalate into larger, more serious confrontations.
Admiral Patrick Walsh said there’s potential for an incident in the South China Sea to intensify much the way tensions between China and Japan spiked after ships belonging to the Asian powers collided near the Senkaku or Diaoyu islands claimed by both nations in 2010.
On India-Asean relations, Krishna said: “Our relations, both as a group and bilaterally between nations, have been going on well.”
Dipetik dari - The Malaysian Reserve
China's Benign Foreign Policy Image at Odds with South China Sea Stance
Beijing for years has relentlessly projected a benign image in its foreign policy, but as its maritime neighbors are discovering, China’s pacifist representations do not extend to energy issues, most notably in the disputed South China Sea.
Now, Chinese “imperial” overreach may bring U.S. naval forces once again into the western Pacific, as Beijing’s southeast Asian neighbors feel increasingly threatened by China’s overarching territorial claims in the South China Sea.
China currently contends sovereignty of the Spratly islands’ 750 islands, islets, atolls, cays and outcroppings with the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, bolstering its claims with ancient Chinese maps, despite the 2002 "Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea," designed to ease tensions over the archipelago.
At stake?
Resource-rich waters surrounding the islands, teeming with fish and possibly massive hydrocarbon reserves. As regards the latter, the U.S. Geological Survey calculates that the South China Sea may contain roughly 28 billion barrels of oil, while the Chinese government calculates that the South China Sea region contains nearly 200 billion barrels of oil but no one knows for sure, especially as the Chinese Navy harasses and chases off foreign survey vessels.
Citing historical precedence, China is not above even using data from its “renegade” Taiwan province to assert its claims. A 16 February article in Hong Kong’s Ta Kung Pao the PRC-owned daily newspaper commented, “Soon after World War II, China's central government, the Kuomintang (KMT), dispatched a small fleet, composed of the warships presented to them due to America and Japan being at war, to the South China Sea. As a result, there were surveys taken of the surrounding islands, along with establishing emblems of China's sovereignty, as well as the defining of national boundaries in accordance with the field surveys done.”
Despite Taiwan’s and the KMT’s ongoing “renegade” status the article continues, “ In 1947, in support of China's advocacy, the Department of Territorial Administration of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the KMT government published an atlas of the South China Sea. Since these South East Asian countries were still ‘western colonies,’ their governments raised no objection to China's territorial claims… Since establishment of the People's Republic of China, the new central government inherited the territorial assertions of its predecessor…”.
So, the Chinese Communist Party is not above citing the government that it overthrew in 1949 to further China’s territorial claims.
Other maritime disputes?
Besides the Spratlys, China occupies some of the south China Sea’s Paracel Islands, which it seized in 1974 but are still claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan, while, finding further common cause with its “renegade” province, both China and Taiwan continue to reject Japan's claims to the uninhabited islands of Senkaku-shoto (Diaoyu Tai) and Japan's unilaterally declared equidistance line in the East China Sea.
Adding fuel to the fire, China is also embroiled in a territorial dispute with Indonesia over the South China Sea’s 272-island Natuna archipelago, 150 miles northwest of Borneo. In 1993 China presented the Indonesian government with a map of its "historic claims" on the Spratlys, which included not only nearly the entire South China Sea but a portion of Indonesia's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) off the Natuna islands as well. The Natuna islands are hardly worthless, as its offshiore natural gas reserves are among the largest in the world, estimated at 210 trillion cubic feet.
Even more striking, China even has disagreements with North Korea over several islands in the Yalu and Tumen rivers, and it was only last year that China and the Russian Federation finally demarcated the once disputed islands in the Amur and Ussuri rivers, over which they fought a brief but vicious border war in 1969.
But in the end, the Spratlys may not prove to be a great a bargain as Beijing apparently thinks. Quite aside from questions about the actual amounts of hydrocarbon reserves, a second factor is the potential cost for developing them. Given the relatively high “lifting” costs involved, some analysts project that the price of a barrel of oil from South China Sea deepwater wells could be as much as four times that of a barrel produced from conventional reserves like those in the Middle East.
But the end result of China’s ‘big stock” policy may be to reinforce a recently announced policy of the Obama administration to shift its focus to Asia, as both the Philippines and Vietnam are inveigling the United States to intervene in their disputes with China. Both have attractive military assets to offer Washington – the Philippines, Clark airfield and Subic Bay, which the U.S. military used until 1992, while Vietnam has Cam Ranh Bay, the finest deepwater port in Southeast Asia, a prime staging post for the U.S. Navy until 1975.
So, potential “bottom line” for undisputed Chinese sovereignty over the South China Sea?
Economically, an expensive development program that may produce far less than the Chinese government hopes.
But the possible diplomatic fallout is worse - bad relations with fellow Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries.
And last but not least, aggrieved Southeast Asian nations are as a result of Chinese pressure avidly welcoming the return of U.S. military forces.
All considered, not much of a bargain. For a nation lauded for its economic acumen, at present China is curiously tone-deaf to the concerns of its South China Seas neighbors. If the politicians in Beijing can overcome their nationalist xenophobia and negotiate creatively with their ASEAN partners for joint sovereignty and production-sharing agreements, then they might yet forestall one of their unsettling visions – a return of the Stars and Stripes to the waters of the southwestern Pacific, this time by request.
Dipetik dari - Oilprice.com
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