The Colossus Stretches Its Sea Legs

"[China has created] over four square kilometres of artificial land mass; a great wall of sand."
U.S. Admiral Harry Harris Jr., commander, U.S. Pacific fleet

A March 16 satellite image from the CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative shows one of China's artificial islands in the South China Sea.    CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative/DigitalGlobe

Admiral Harris intimates that Beijing's intentions in the area are unknown but certainly suspected and there may be serious consequences; certainly serious questions exist to which serious answers have not been identified. Speculation, however, is rife, and the threats emanating from China's actions are making its neighbours extremely alert to the very real potential of their own territorial integrity under threat.

As it is China has laid claims to some 85 percent of the South China Sea. And since it has recognized, unilaterally, that those areas as China's alone to do with as it will, Beijing is in the process of building artificial islands based on stony outcroppings, atolls and reefs in the Spratly Archipelago. Seaborne dredges of immensely monstrous size are scooping sand and coral from the ocean floor, bulldozing it to surface lumps of geology.

Six of these outposts, part of a chain of over 700 islets rising four metres above sea level, have so far surfaced. Those promontories are closer geographically to the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei than they are to China, but for the disadvantaged neighbours of China's bellicose claims to ownership of areas traditionally linked to them, what they are viewing is a loss whose cause and outcome they may be helpless to respond to.
The submersible Jiaolong

Admiral Harris's comments represent intolerably obnoxious meddling, according to Beijing, comfortable in its neighbourhood, resentful of a foreign presence interfering with the giant country's rights, with no obligations on their part to consult with neighbours. As for those areas that appear to be contested; wrong, China has always conceived of them as belonging to its sovereign territory, close proximity to the shoreline of Philippines regardless.

And it has the proof, in ancient Chinese maps and scrolls artfully showing where Chinese vessels have sailed and landed historically, long before the uninvited European powers "discovered" the region so far from their own geographical locations. That its neighbours claim their own ancestors long used these same islets and waters is irrelevant. They are mites to China's might.

Areas clearly within the 200-mile exclusive zone of the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam, clearly must surrender to the ages-old truism that 'possession is nine-tenths of the law'. Which law that represents is also crystal clear. Maritime law itself is unclear about when or if a bit of rock rising above the ocean's surface can be viewed legitimately as part of a country's sovereign territory by artificial expansion.

What else? Beijing has plans to build the world's largest amphibious aircraft, no fewer than sixty of them. The Jiaolong has a range of 5,500 km, enabling its operation above and in the South China Sea and certainly much beyond. So why such a push for territorial expansion; who, after all will live on these new Chinese possessions? Who could live on such isolated islets?

As it happens, the Spratly Archipelago, the Paracel Islands and Scarborough Shoal represent a colossal pool of oil and gas, ripe for exploitation, surrounded by teeming fishing waters right on the world's busiest shipping lanes. What potential...! In 2013, the Philippines' President Benigno Aquino, sent a warship to defend the Henderson Shoal whose nearby hydrocarbon resources were viewed as critical for the country's expanding economy.

A two-month standoff ensued when that lone warship was surrounded by Chinese patrol vessels. So that's the South China Sea. And then there's the East China Sea, parts of which are claimed by Japan and South Korea. Where Chinese warplanes ply reconnaissance, and where China had declared in 2013 its "air defence identification (no-go) zone". Further attracting the intense admiration of its neighbours. Those oceanic plenitudes are named, after all, "China".

Chinese scientists onboard the Xuelong takes samples of the Antarctic atmosphere. Zhang Jiansong / Xinhua

China's Xue Long (Snow Dragon) icebreaker showed up off Tuktoyaktuk in Canada's Arctic. Hello there, could you give us prior notice next time around? The very same ship appeared in Antarctic waters where China has established four research facilities. Australia also wonders why its coast is so attractive to China. But China's "sphere of influence" has expanded from Hawaii to the Gulf of Aden and the Mediterranean Sea.