As if on cue from my last post on this subject, China has asked the US navy to stop naval surveillance close to its maritime borders. China would like to see US naval vessels not enter its exclusive maritime economic zone, which stretches 200 nautical miles from its coast. The United States, meanwhile, insists that it is free to navigate in waters outside China’s territorial waters, which end 12 nautical miles from the coast. Over the past few years, the US and Chinese navies have had a couple of unfriendly encounters in the waters of the South China Sea. Beijing believes that a change in US policies will end this potential source of friction. Of course, if maintaining maritime stability was Beijing’s primary concern, it would have a very different attitude to its own naval encounters with Japan, the Philippines Vietnam and other countries with whom it has real maritime territorial disputes. In reality, what Beijing is asking the US for is “strategic space”, which it believes it deserves as Asia’s preeminent power. The rest of Asia has no interest in seeing the United States Navy disappear beyond the horizon as they quietly fear that the South China Sea will turn into one big “Chinese lake”. If this were to happen, we may one day be talking about Vietnam and the Philippines forming part of China’s “near-abroad”. For its part, the US understands that withdrawing from the waters of East Asia would be a prelude to further withdrawing from the Western Pacific. It’s not going to happen no matter how much China wants it. Don’t expect this issue to go away.
