AN AGREEMENT between China and 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) to tamp down the Spratly Islands dispute is unraveling as soaring food and fuel prices force nations to step up the race to find new resources offshore and beat a deadline for extended maritime claims under the new United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos).
Protests and counter protests are out in the open again despite the standing “Declaration of the Conduct of Parties in the South China,” signed in Phnom Penh in 2002, that calls on claimants to “exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities that would complicate or escalate disputes.”
This time, a new issue concerns not only land claims but also the flurry of offshore exploration licenses handed out over the past years by various claimant-nations.
Legal experts point out that the granting of offshore concessions reinforces a state’s claim to ownership of a marine area.
With new oil finds in offshore Vietnam and “encouraging” findings from joint seismic studies in the Philippine area, the stakes are clearly rising in the South China Sea—one of the most complex flash points in Asia.
Regional approach
The China-Asean declaration of conduct was applauded as a regional response to stop the escalation of shooting episodes in the ’80s and ’90s over competing claims to all or part of the 170-plus group of islets and rocks that are sprawled across the region’s busiest sea lanes. (See map.)
The signatories include five claimants—China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei—as well as Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Burma, which are closely watching how the dispute will affect their own boundaries and security. The sixth claimant, Taiwan, which continues to assert its independence from China and occupies the largest Spratly islet, is not a signatory to the agreement.
The agreement has all parties reiterating their commitment to peaceful resolutions of conflicts in line with international law, including the Unclos which was opened for signature in 1982. It has set May 2009 as its deadline for the submission of extended claims by member-nations.
The landmark international convention, already signed by 155 countries, sets standard rules and measurements for the territorial sea claims and lists options for dispute settlement. Its provisions for the settlement of overlapping claims, however, are still vague. Regional bodies like Asean will have to play a more effective role.
New posturing
Early this year, China and Vietnam, which have the most extensive claims on the Spratlys, objected to Philippine legislative attempts to formalize its baselines and draw up a new map that includes the Spratlys and Scarborough shoal, both disputed isles. The bill slowly made the rounds of committees through several congressional sessions since 2004, and quietly passed second reading last year.
Just before China made known its objections to the proposed Philippine map, however, it reinforced its own claims by assigning last December a new municipality, Sansha, to oversee the Paracels, Zhongsha and the Spratly archipelagoes.
The Sansha move immediately drew a protest from Vietnam, which had fortified its claims by holding elections for National Assembly representatives from some of the disputed islands mid last year. Vietnamese students demonstrated last December in front of the Chinese embassy in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (Cambodia's former Prey Nokor city). Overseas Viet-namese also threatened to stage more demonstrations to protest not just the Sansha move but also the graphic inclusion of the Paracel Islands on the map China has posted on the Internet for the Beijing Olympics torch relay.
The Philippines—although still smarting from China’s construction in 1995 of structures and baseline markers on Mischief Reef, one of its eight claimed islets—kept quiet about the new reassertions of both China and Vietnam, including their respective tourism plans for the islands. But it joined the other claimants in protesting the visit last February of then Taiwan President Chen Shuibian to Itu Aba island, the largest in the contested island group.
Offshore explorations
Then early this month, after political debates questioned the propriety of a Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking (JMSU) with China and Vietnam in Philippine-claimed territorial waters, the Philippine Armed Forces chief of staff called in the media to broadcast a sudden inspection tour of the country’s claimed islets—the Kalayaan Islands. He later announced that he would repair its airstrip and fortify other military installations there.
The China-Asean declaration of conduct, many academic analysts note, seemed to have kept things quiet on the Spratly front for the first two years.
China’s position
A timeline of events shows that things began unraveling in 2004, the year Vietnam announced its first offshore oil find in the Gulf of Tonkin, waters it shares with China.
The tactic of licensing contested waters had taken off slowly a decade before. But since the beginning of 2004, China’s expressions of “serious concern” over reports of unilateral bidding for oil and gas exploitation in the disputed sea, particularly by Vietnam, have been issued with increasing regularity.
Clarifying its position on explorations in contested waters, China’s foreign ministry stressed in 2004 that it was “ready to actively explore with countries concerned, in a spirit of “shelving differences and engaging in common development.” It also asked international companies to “refrain from doing anything that harms China’s sovereignty and maritime rights and interests.”
Many private analysts took this to mean that China would tolerate explorations in contested waters only if the joint agreement was with them, and that they could be denied access to China’s vast market if they did not toe the line.
With its phenomenal growth, China emerged in the mid ’90s from a net exporter of oil to a net importer. Fueling the dragon meant a daily consumption of huge quantities of oil. By 2003, China was importing over 30 percent of its oil requirements, more than half of it from the volatile Middle East.
Vietnam stands ground
Vietnam initiated many moves to smooth its relations with China, its biggest trading partner.
But on the issue of conducting independent bidding, it stood its ground.
Le Dzung, the spokesperson of the Vietnamese foreign ministry, in answer to a question from the press in October 2004, confirmed that PetroVietnam had opened an international bidding, but asserted that the blocks in question “are located totally on the continental shelf of Vietnam within the sovereignty right of Vietnam.”
That same month, a partnership of oil companies led by Petronas Carigali Overseas Sdn. Bhd of Malaysia, American Technology Inc. Petroleum, Singapore Petroleum Co. and Petroleum Investment and Development Co. of Vietnam, announced they had struck offshore oil for the first time off northern Vietnam, about 70 km east of Hai Phong. With Vietnam’s go-signal, they began drilling on the Yen Tu field on Sept. 17 and estimated a yield of between 700 million and 800 million barrels of oil.
Enter the JMSU
China issued a statement saying it “feels seriously concerned and strongly dissatisfied” with Vietnam’s action.
It was during this running standoff between Vietnam and China over the latter’s right to partner with parties other than China, that President Macapagal-Arroyo, on a state visit to China ( Sept. 1-3, 2004) agreed to a joint seismic survey of Spratly waters.
Vietnam immediately bristled at the new development and expressed its own “deep concern” that China and the Philippines concluded an agreement on its East Sea without consulting it. “We have requested China and the Philippines to inform us of the agreement’s content,” the official spokesperson said.
About a year earlier, it was reported on the online oil and gas industry monitor, rigzone, that China had proposed joint explorations of the contested Spratly Islands but “other claimants such as Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam insist on sorting out the sovereignty issue before doing anything else.”
The report quoted Chinese parliament chair Wu Bangguo in September 2003 as saying the Philippines was “now getting practical” and discussions were ongoing with his counterpart, then Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. and Malacañang on joint explorations.
Limits of survey
After the China-Philippines JMSU was announced, Vietnam put forward a more vociferous stance: “Any act taken by another country at these two archipelagoes—Paracels and Spratlys—without Vietnam’s approval is a violation of Vietnam’s sovereignty and sovereign rights to these areas.
But on March 14, 2005 Vietnam apparently decided it was better to just join China and the Philippines. It gave PetroVietnam permission to sign on with Philippine National Oil Co. and China National Offshore Oil Corp.
The survey area, however, did not include any waters claimed exclusively by Vietnam or the area where its overlapping claims are with China only. The JMSU survey area, according to the Vera Files, includes the area around six islands claimed by the Philippines. The trilateral survey area also does not include any area where Malaysia or Brunei has overlapping claims.
Military factor
Exchanges of diplomatic protests continued through 2006 and 2007. China objected to an oceanographic survey between Vietnamese and Philippine scientists. Vietnam protested the launch of a Chinese study on the coral reefs around the Paracels (This archipelago is not being claimed by the Philippines). China called reported plans by Vietnam to set up a cell site on contested islands as “illegal.”
Recently, Vietnam protested China’s holding of military exercises near contested waters.
The Pentagon, in its 2008 report to the US Congress, said China’s expanding and improving military capabilities, which now include intercontinental-range missiles and antisatellite weaponry, were changing the military balance not just in east Asia but throughout the world.
Joint development
Many academic and diplomatic papers say joint development ventures may actually be the best way to settle the South China Sea dispute.
News of the Philippine JMSU with China and Vietnam, however, was greeted with surprise and skepticism.
An “interesting twist,” wrote Clive Schofield and Ian Storey in an article on energy security and its impact on maritime boundaries and territorial disputes. They said that it was “too early to tell” whether the Philippine venture was a positive step toward peace or an ill-timed, if not ill-fated journey through turbulent waters. Caution was advised. |
