See the Pacific from China's Perspective if you were a PRC strategists, would you see anything different? CDR SALAMANDER JAN 25

When trying to understand a problem on the global stage, never forget - get yourself to a globe, map, or googleearth…in that order, and then start to ponder. With the People’s Republic of China (PRC), traditional maps do not give justice to how they view the Pacific. This perspective will cure that problem. They have exactly the opposite maritime view as the United States. We have broad, open access to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The PRC, on the other hand, is facing what from a distance is a series of barrier islands held by unfriendly powers. Of course they want Taiwan - that secures the center and opens the door to the rest of the world where all they have to worry about are their flanks. When I saw Charlie’s reference to this chart in Peter Alan Dutton’s article in Britain’s World titled, Oceans under pressure: China’s challenge to the maritime order, I figured it was worth the read. It seems like an UNCLOS brief, but besides the nice map, there are a couple of important points worthy of your time. The PRC upends completely the rules and principles of UNCLOS for claiming and delimiting maritime zones. To begin with, the PRC’s nine-dash line claim in the South China Sea (see Map 1) is entirely divorced from the cardinal principle that the land dominates the sea. Based on this line, the PRC asserts historic rights to roughly 2.7 million square kilometres of water space. This staggering claim was considered and rejected fully in 2016 by the panel of international law judges and experts which formed the arbitral tribunal in a case against the PRC initiated by the Philippines. These experts determined that Beijing’s claim has no basis in international law, and yet since 2016 the PRC has escalated its use of coercion to force acceptance of its claims. The effect is to deny Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia the resource rights which international law unambiguously allocates to them. … As a state with substantial power and influence in the international system, the PRC is inherently, and inescapably, a rule-maker. In breaking down the careful tradeoffs in UNCLOS, the PRC creates room for others to follow its approaches and threatens to reverse historical advances in maritime order. The United States supports UNCLOS but frustratingly remains outside it. Push back inside the convention’s institutions therefore must come from the UK, Australia, Japan, India, France, and others with substantial maritime interests. Otherwise, rather than being a century of maritime tranquillity, the years ahead will see a detrimental reversion to maritime instability. The penultimate paragraph … there’s the rub. The “international system.” Another name for the international rules based order everyone likes to be so concerned about, well, the PRC has never cared much for it as they had no say in creating it. They want something else … and you don’t have too look hard to see how they’re building it. CDR Salamander is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell CDR Salamander that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments. © 2024 CDR Salamander 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 Unsubscribe Get the appStart writing