Eyes on Crimea, China makes its move

http://atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/SEA-01-170314.html



Eyes on Crimea, China makes its move
By Donald K Emmerson
Mar 17, '14

While much of the world was busy watching Russia swallow Crimea, few realized that an also dangerous territorial tit-for-tat had begun to unfold earlier this month more than 5,000 miles away in the South China Sea.

At Second Thomas Shoal, a handful of Philippine marines have long been stationed and re-provisioned on the rusting deck of the BRP Sierra Madre, a Philippine naval ship half-sunk into the reef in 1999. Ever since, the vessel and the marines have served to embody Manila's claim of sovereignty over the shoal. More recently, China has tried to raise the salience of its own claim by intensively patrolling the area.

On March 9, 2014, China made a move to end the status quo at the shoal. For the first time in 15 years, Beijing stopped Manila from delivering supplies to the Sierra Madre. The Chinese Coast Guard forced two Philippine ships to turn away. Manila answered the blockade by successfully dropping food and water to the marines by air. It was then up to Manila whether to send in another supply ship or plane, and up to Beijing whether to leave it alone, chase it away, sink it, or shoot it down.

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Beijing's argument for historically based rights cannot be dismissed in advance. If it were ever fully clarified and impartially appraised, China's case might even hold more water, as it were, than the arguments of China's rivals. No equitable and lasting solution to the problem can ignore Beijing's position, however presumptuous it may be. In the meantime, by unilaterally creating facts on the sea, China is trying to implement its dominance as a "new normal" to which all of the other claimants, and outsiders including the United States, must defer.