China’s coastguard staking claim to contested reefs in South China Sea

by Laura Zhou in South China Morning Post, April 24, 2017
Near constant patrols by China’s coastguard at Luconia Shoals off the coast of Malaysia are a signal from Beijing that it plans to maintain a maritime presence within its contested claim to most of the South China Sea, analysts say.
Three different Chinese vessels were patrolling regularly in the first two months of this year near the shoals, some 1,600km from China but only 145km north of Borneo, according to data from the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI).
A report by AMTI said there was nothing unusual about China’s heavy coastguard presence at the shoals this year. It said up to 11 coastguard vessels, including a 5,000-tonne ship, have been in regular rotation in these waters since early last year.
Administered by Malaysia, the shoals are also claimed by the mainland and by Taiwan. The coastguard presence there “speaks to Beijing’s determination to establish administrative control throughout the nine-dash line”, the report said.
Beijing claims almost 90 per cent of the waters of the South China Sea, based on a map from 1953 that demarcates this region with a nine-dash line.
The AMTI report said the Chinese activity at the shoals had not attracted much media attention. It added that the coastguard vessels left the contested waters in late 2015, right before Malaysia hosted two high-profile summits, but returned soon after.
Coastguard vessels in South China Sea need code of conduct amid increasing risk of clashes in contested waters, say analysts
China in the past decade had increasingly turned to using its coastguard to establish a presence and assert sovereignty over disputed territories in the East and South China seas, said Lyle Morris, a policy analyst at the RAND Corporation.
“Not only has China’s coastguard adopted tactics that might be considered a deviation from established standard operating procedures of safety and good seamanship, such as ramming and using water cannon against civilian vessels, they are now deploying larger cutters with bigger guns,” Morris said.
“China has banked on its ability to intimidate and coerce claimant vessels from disputed maritime territory with its coastguard in the South China Sea.”
Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman said last month that Kuala Lumpur did not acknowledge Beijing’s nine-dash line. These South China Sea claims were also denied by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague last July.
Still, the presence of Chinese vessels at Luconia Shoals was “Beijing’s way of reminding Malaysia that it is determined to exercise jurisdictional control within the nine-dash line”, said Ian Storey, a senior fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.
David Han, a research analyst at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said it was unlikely that Malaysia would be very confrontational with Beijing over the issue, given its economic dependence on China.
China has been Malaysia’s largest trading partner since 2009 and is now its biggest foreign investor.
Last year, bilateral trade was worth more than US$50 billion. Meanwhile, Malaysia is seeking Chinese investment to fuel its sluggish economy, which has been hit severely by the oil price slump in the past two years. Behind-the-scenes diplomatic protests over China’s actions were more likely, analysts said.
Although China appeared to be following a policy of tactical forbearance in the South China Sea, as in the case of withdrawing its ships from the Luconia Shoals ahead of the summits in Malaysia at the end of 2015, “strategically nothing has changed”, said Dr Euan Graham, an international security specialist at the Lowy Institute in Sydney.
“The real story is the rise of China in Southeast Asia, and nobody knows how to deal with this,” said James Chin of the University of Tasmania. “The US is supposed to play the balancer but [US President Donald] Trump has not indicated he is willing to confront China over Southeast Asia, and many suspect he is more interested in North Korea than the South China Sea.”http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2089962/chinas-coastguard-staking-claim-contested-reefs-south