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Version 1 Version 2
China to Halt Its Building of Islands, but Not Its Projects on Them As Tensions With U.S. Grow, Beijing Says It Will Stop Building Artificial Islands in South China Sea
(about 7 hours later)
BEIJING — China announced on Tuesday that it would soon halt island-building projects around some reefs and shoals in disputed waters of the South China Sea but that it would continue constructing military and civilian facilities on those outcroppings. BEIJING — By declaring Tuesday that it would soon complete its contentious program of building artificial islands in the South China Sea, Beijing hopes to diminish tensions with the United States but still reassure its nationalistic home audience that it has delivered on its pledge to resist American military pressure, experts said.
The announcement may have been intended to ease tensions with the United States, which has strongly criticized the building of the islands and has sent surveillance flights close to the sites, to the chagrin of the Chinese military. The construction of facilities, though, would further establish the sites as islands that China could claim as its territory. Leaders from the United States and China are set to meet next week in Washington at a major annual conference, the Strategic and Economic Dialogue. A topic of the talks there is expected to be the Obama administration’s opposition to China’s building in the disputed waters, including the construction of a runway capable of handling military aircraft.
In the announcement on the website of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Lu Kang, a spokesman, said that “relevant departments” in China had decided to go forward as planned with completing land reclamation work on some reefs and islands in the Spratly archipelago in the “coming days.” After those talks, China’s leader, Xi Jinping is scheduled in September to make his first visit to Washington as president.
He added that the sites in the Spratlys, which the Chinese call the Nansha Islands, would be used for “military defense needs” as well as “civilian demands,” including maritime search and rescue efforts, disaster prevention and mitigation, scientific research, meteorological observation, navigational safety measures and fishery services. “We need to find some way to let this topic not become so prominent, and China wants to head off the activity,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University and an adviser to the Chinese government. “We have a lot of other things to do.”
“After the land reclamation, we will start the building of facilities to meet relevant functional requirements,” Mr. Lu said. Professor Shi said China wants the Washington summit to go smoothly ahead of Mr. Xi’s visit, where he may be confronted about South China Sea expansion, cyber theft and trade.
He also reiterated earlier remarks defending the building of islands, saying that it fell “within the scope of China’s sovereignty,” was not targeting any other country and would not affect freedom of navigation or overflights allowed by international law. China said in a statement posted on the Foreign Ministry’s website that it would confine its island building to seven reefs and shoals in the Spratly Islands.
Mr. Lu used the word garrison to describe some of the islands. In April, another Foreign Ministry representative used the same term and said military defense would be one of the uses of the sites. This was a small concession because the mammoth dredging operation to build the artificial islands is virtually complete. All that remains now is to build whatever military installations Beijing has planned, experts said.
In recent months, American officials have said that China’s land reclamation at seven sites in the region far outpaces similar efforts by other nations. The United States says China has built 2,000 acres of land around reefs and shoals over the last 18 months. American officials and leaders of Southeast Asian nations began criticizing the moves in early 2014, but that has done little to deter China, which foreign officials say has in fact been accelerating construction. “The dredging is almost finished but construction of military facilities is not and I would guess that the Chinese will accelerate those after the September summit,” said Bonnie S. Glaser, a senior adviser at the Center for Security and International Studies in Washington.
China, Taiwan and several Southeast Asian nations make territorial claims to the South China Sea. The United States has said it does not take sides in the sovereignty disputes, but it insists that all nations must refrain from interfering with freedom of navigation and from raising tensions. The statement by the Chinese Foreign Ministry said as much: “After the land reclamation, we will start the building of facilities to meet relevant functional requirements.”
Vietnam and the Philippines have built on pieces of land, but that has largely consisted of putting up buildings rather than land reclamation. Much of it also took place before 2002, when China and several other claimants to territory signed a nonbinding agreement in which each vowed not to act provocatively. The United States accuses China of building 2,000 acres of land on the outcroppings in the last 18 months and creating a runway at Fiery Cross Reef long enough to accommodate fighter jets.
Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing, said on Tuesday that China’s announcement “could greatly reduce its strategic conflicts with the United States, at least at this stage.” He added that it could also “generate an amicable atmosphere” before Xi Jinping, the Chinese president and head of the Communist Party, visits the United States in September. At a security forum in Singapore last month, Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter called on China to stop construction, and warned that the United States would “fly, sail and operate” in the South China Sea to ensure freedom of navigation and flight as permitted by international law.
But Mr. Shi said the announcement did not necessarily mean that China was permanently ending land reclamation efforts and that in any case the United States would remain unhappy with China’s behavior in the South China Sea. Mr. Carter’s pointed remarks, as well as flights by American surveillance planes close to Fiery Cross Reef, may have forced the Chinese to at least slow the pace of military installations on the new islands, a senior Asian diplomat said. One of the flights carried a CNN crew that recorded and broadcast the Chinese Navy repeatedly warning the plane to go away.
“Despite the fact that China has suspended building on the islands and reefs, the U.S. still sees China’s actions as trying to establish a new status quo, which the U.S. does not intend to accept,” he said. “The works underway will not stop – too politically damaging to do this – but whatever other things they may have in mind must now be rethought very carefully,” said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order not to offend the Chinese.
In late May, the United States military sent a P8-A Poseidon surveillance plane over Fiery Cross Reef, one of the sites of the land reclamation. The Chinese Navy warned the plane eight times to turn back as it approached the reef. A news crew from CNN on the plane recorded the exchange. The Chinese have rushed to finish the military installations before the 2016 presidential elections in the United States in order to remove them as a potential issue in the campaign, the diplomat said. The Pentagon’s reaction had forced the Chinese to pause sooner than they had planned, he said.
Then on May 30, the United States defense secretary, Ashton B. Carter, said at a regional security forum in Singapore that all nations should halt island-building in the South China Sea, but he singled out China. A senior Chinese colonel, Zhao Xiaozhuo, a researcher at the Chinese Army’s Academy of Military Science, publicly rebutted Mr. Carter on major points and said that if anything, “the region has been peaceful and stable just because of China’s great restraint.” The Chinese did not want to risk an air or sea confrontation with the United States in the South China Sea that could potentially rattle the grip of the Communist Party at home, the diplomat added.
Song Guoyou, a professor at the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, said in an interview on Tuesday that “China has accelerated its reclamation in the South China Sea the last couple of years because the new Chinese leader is much more willing and resolute in safeguarding China’s sovereignty.” Still, the risks of military clashes between China and the United States in the South China Sea were unacceptably high, said Ms. Glaser. “There is a pressing need for a dialogue between the U.S. and China on the application of the Law of the Sea to the artificial islands and associated maritime rights,” she added.
Professor Song continued, “China’s reclamation and patrols are based on its own strategic judgment and needs, and it will not budge to U.S. pressure.” The Chinese are sending a specialist maritime lawyer from the State Oceanic Administration, the state body that has a large voice in China’s policies in the South China Sea, to the conference in Washington next week, a sign that the Chinese were prepared for tough discussions, Ms. Glaser said.
American officials have also said they are concerned that China will try to declare an air defense identification zone over a portion of the South China Sea, as it did in 2013 over part of the disputed East China Sea. At the Singapore forum, Adm. Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of staff of the People’s Liberation Army, said that China could choose to do that based on an assessment of aerial threats and the maritime security situation. One of China’s most outspoken officials on the South China Sea, Wu Sichun, who heads the influential South China Sea Institute, said China had been “forced” to create the artificial islands as a way of defending itself. That view is popular among the Chinese public.
In the statement on Tuesday, Mr. Lu, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said that China would continue to try to settle disputes with “relevant states” through “negotiation and consultation on the basis of respecting historical facts.” For years, China has said it will negotiate with nations over the territorial disputes in the South China Sea only on a bilateral basis and not in a multinational setting. “China is forced to do the reclamation,” Mr. Wu said in a recent interview in Beijing. “Because we feel insecure. If you look into the security situation, the United States enhanced the defense cooperation with the Philippines, and that could last for 10 years.”
Last month, the Chinese military released a broad policy document saying, among other things, that China was placing the projection of naval power in the open ocean on the same priority level as coastal defense. The United States was also involved in strengthening Japan’s new military rules that allow more robust joint patrols with Japan in the South China Sea, presenting another challenge to China, he said.
Foreign analysts of the Chinese military have said for years that one of China’s main aims in modernizing its armed forces was to create a navy capable of carrying out operations far from the mainland. The May paper, the first such policy document in two years, was also the first significant formal statement by the Chinese military of that goal. But Mr. Wu also expressed concern about the impact building the islands could have relations between China and the United States. It was unlikely, he said, that China would declare an air defense “identification zone” over the South China Sea as it had done over the East China Sea in 2013. Such a zone provides an early warning system to assist a country in detecting incursions in its sovereign airspace.
United States military analysts, however, have said they believe that China’s militarization of Fiery Cross Reef was aimed at establishing an air defense zone as soon as possible.