In Asia, China’s increasingly assertive acts prompt unity among opponents
BEIJING China is showing itself to be a unifying force in Asia – uniting various countries against Beijing’s increasingly assertive actions in the South China Sea.
On Monday, Malaysian officials announced they would register a complaint against a Chinese coast guard ship that ventured into their country’s territorial waters north of Borneo.
On Tuesday, Japan and the Philippines announced plans for a joint search-and-rescue exercise involving military aircraft later this month. The announcement followed a trip by Philippines President Benigno Aquino III to Tokyo last weekend, which could pave the way for Japanese aircraft and ships to refuel at Philippines military bases.
Last week, Reuters reported that Vietnam – amid tense relations with China – was talking to U.S. and European military contractors about possibly purchasing fighter jets, maritime patrol planes and unarmed drones.
Over the last several months, China’s expansion of artificial islands in the South China Sea has widely been seen as a blow to U.S. foreign policy, which seems unable to keep Beijing in check. Yet increasingly, China’s actions are prompting its neighbors to explore new security arrangements with each other, which Chinese leaders have long sought to avoid.
“For China, it could end up being a Pyrrhic victory in the long run,” Denny Roy, a security analyst at the East-West Center in Hawaii, said in a telephone interview Tuesday. Beijing’s hopes of extracting concessions from other Asian countries could be thrown into doubt “if the result is improved security cooperation, with China as the unstated adversary,” he said.
Colour me sceptical, but it'll be interesting to see how this pans out. The US has a stake in this fight, as does the rest of the international community, if for no other reason than maintaining freedom of navigation in international waters, but if China's neighbours won't stand up against the PRC building military outposts out of open ocean off their shores, then hegemony of the PRC throughout the region seems inevitable.
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