(President, Kawamura Institute and Professor, Hiroshima Shudo University).
China will be able to turn the South China Sea into a Chinese lake only if the maritime powers allow it to do so. Fueled by a drive for power and resources, China' extensive territorial claims in the South China Sea are turned on and off at will. 1 These claims represent the greatest challenge to strategic stability in the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) area. Based on dubious history, China's territorial claims also press on the vital straits that connect the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
The Clinton administration's misguided pursuit of multilateral approaches to regional security, the primacy afforded to economics, and dubious 'strategic partnership' with China have blinded it to America's strategic stake in the South China Sea, and so to the risk that China will gain hegemony there. Rightly, the United States takes no position on who owns these scattered reefs. But America is closely linked to issues of strategic contention in the South China Sea―because it is the global maritime power, and because of its responsibilities for the maritime security of Japan, which is a matter of great convenience for both parties. The Philippine security treaty also connects the United States with the strategic balance in the South China Sea.
Twice during the Cold War China, although weak at the time, made a determined bid to gain a foothold on the straits off Singapore.2 Now China is a rising power enjoying a strategic latitude unprecedented in modern times. It has a strategic presence in Burma, at the western end of the Malacca Straits. 'Yunnan to Rangoon' being Beijing's version of the 'Berlin to Baghdad' railway, China is busily tying up mainland Southeast Asia with its road and rail projects. In broad strategic terms, China also stands to benefit from the current crisis in Indonesia, hitherto the bulwark of resistance to Chinese pressure in the South China Sea.
Until 1998, Indonesia was the Southeast Asian country most inclined to resist China, by virtue of size, distance and visceral instinct. Non-aligned Indonesia, a country with the largest Muslim population in the world, had even been willing to go into strategic alignment with Australia, a US ally. But America saw the 'dictator' Suharto merely as Marcos or Mobutu writ large. Policy makers in Washington did not comprehend that Suharto, while no democrat, had presided over one of the largest poverty alleviation programs in the third world. He had done much to underpin stability in maritime Southeast Asia.
