Diplomatic Relations Between China & ASEAN / Japan / DPRK & RoK : News, Discussions & Analysis

Why Doesn’t China Deploy Fighter Jets to the Spratly Islands?
On August 4, China’s Global Times reported that SU-30MKK Flanker fighter jets belonging to the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) had conducted a 10-hour patrol over the South China Sea, breaking the air force’s previous record of 8.5 hours.

Although the report suggested only one SU-30 had made the 10-hour flight, an online video showed five to six fighter jets had been involved in the mission.

The fighter aircraft departed from an air base in southern China and were refueled twice by Ilyushin-78 aerial refueling tankers. The Global Times described the operation as “technically and mentally” challenging for the pilots, noting that they had “consumed rations to keep their energy levels up.”

The mission came at a time of heightened tensions between the United States and China over the maritime disputes in the South China Sea. Over the past few months, both countries have increased the tempo of naval exercises and air patrols in the South China Sea. On July 13, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared China’s jurisdictional claims in the South China Sea to be unlawful and accused Beijing of bullying the Southeast Asian claimants.

While the video was designed to demonstrate China’s growing power projection capabilities, one expert noted that it may have inadvertently revealed the PLAAF’s weaknesses. The Flankers were either lightly armed or unarmed, and the use of two Il-78s would have consumed two-thirds of the air force’s heavy tanker fleet. It suggests that in a conflict over the South China Sea the PLAAF would not be able to send large numbers of aircraft into the battle space and sustain them.

While the Global Times would only say that the fighter jets had been dispatched to the “most remote islands and reefs” in the South China Sea, the video clearly showed the aircraft flying over Subi Reef in the Spratly Islands.

Subi Reef is one of China’s seven artificial islands in the Spratlys and hosts a 3,300 meter-long runway. Fiery Cross Reef and Mischief Reef also support long runways.

The mission begs an important question: Why didn’t the SU-30s land and refuel on Subi Reef? Surely one of the main purposes of the artificial islands is to enable China to project air power into the South China Sea to assert its territorial and jurisdictional claims, including the possibility of establishing an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the Spratlys?

In the past, China has deployed fighter jets to Woody Island in the Paracels (including eight aircraft in July). In January 2016, two commercial aircraft landed on Fiery Cross Reef soon after the runway had become operational. And over the past two years, the PLA has flown transport planes and maritime patrol aircraft to the artificial islands, including most recently in April. PLA Navy (PLAN) warships, China Coast Guard (CCG) vessels, and Chinese-flagged survey ships are also frequent visitors to the man-made islands.

Yet, as far as we know, no PLAAF fighter aircraft has ever landed on Mischief, Subi, or Fiery Cross Reefs. Given the United States’ interest in publicizing China’s military activities in the South China Sea — both countries have accused each other of militarizing the dispute — it seems implausible that the Pentagon has evidence of fighter jet deployments to the Spratlys but hasn’t released the imagery.

Let’s assume then that no Chinese fighter aircraft has ever landed on any of the three artificial islands. Given the vast costs of reclaiming the seven features and then building military infrastructure on them - including fuel and ammunition depots, hangars, and radar and communications equipment - why hasn’t the PLAAF ever flown combat jets to the artificial islands?

There are three possible reasons.

Diplomat Brief
The first is political: China does not want to inflame tensions with the Southeast Asian claimants by deploying combat jets to its artificial islands. Given that over the past few months China has doubled down on its claims and provocatively sent survey ships and CCG vessels into the EEZs of Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines, this seems unlikely. As China seems unperturbed by the reputational damage its activities in the South China Sea have caused since the beginning of this year we can probably rule out this possibility.

The second is aircraft maintenance issues. Operating fighter aircraft at sea poses problems due to salt in the sea spray and high humidity, both of which can cause metal corrosion. However, U.S. aircraft carriers deal with this issue all the time and in any case China has constructed large hangars on its artificial islands, some of which are probably air conditioned. Besides, a few days’ deployment to Fiery, Subi, or Mischief Reef would not impose much wear and tear on PLAAF fighter jets, which could quickly be washed down with fresh water.

The third possible reason, if true, poses a more serious problem for Chinese defense planners: that the structural integrity of the facilities on the artificial islands, including the airstrips, is suboptimal and the PLAAF is therefore wary of using them.

Reclamation work at Subi Reef began in early 2014, but before the dredging was even completed construction had already started on the runways and support facilities. The runway on Subi was completed by mid-2016. The usual industry practice would have been to allow the reclaimed land to settle for months or even years before beginning construction. To do otherwise leads to the possibility of subsidence. Japan’s Kansai Airport, also constructed on an artificial island, has suffered from this problem since it opened in 1994, despite extensive remedial engineering work.

Doubts about the structural integrity of the artificial islands are amplified when the issue of corruption is considered. Despite President Xi Jinping’s anti-graft campaign, corruption in China remains endemic, including in the military-industrial complex. For instance, in July 2019 Su Bo, who oversaw the construction of China’s first domestically produced aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, was convicted of corruption and jailed for 12 years. And in May 2020, Hu Wenming, the head of China’s aircraft carrier construction program, was arrested and charged with corruption and passing secrets to foreign powers. Corruption in the building industry leads to short cuts and shoddy construction.

If the airstrips on the three atolls are sinking or cracked it would not be readily apparent from satellite imagery. Aircraft could use them, especially slower turboprop aircraft such as the military transport planes and maritime patrol aircraft that landed on Fiery Cross Reef in March and April. But for fast combat jets the integrity of the runway surface needs to be much higher. The image-conscious and risk-averse PLA would be keen to avoid the public relations debacle that would accompany a mishap involving one of its fighters as it took off or landed on one of the three reefs.

If indeed there are structural problems with the runways and associated facilities on China’s man-made islands it calls into question their strategic utility for the Chinese air force and any ambitions Beijing may harbor to enforce an ADIZ over the South China Sea.
 

South Korea cancels Korea-China Culture Town project amid mounting anti-Chinese sentiment​

A US$1 billion (S$1.3 billion) project to build a tourist district in South Korea has been scrapped due to mounting anti-Chinese sentiment sparked by an online petition wrongly depicting it as a Chinatown.

The decision came after what Gangwon Province head Choi Moon-soon said was a series of “fake news” allegations that taxpayers’ money would have been used to build a settlement town for Chinese immigrants – despite repeated clarifications that it was intended as a cultural park. “It is not a Chinatown,” the province had stated.

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Kolon Global Corporation said on Monday it had cancelled the Korea-China Cultural Town project in the face of a fierce public ire sparked by the petition on the presidential Blue House website’s online petition page.

“The company acknowledges that the Korea-China Cultural Town cannot move forward any longer” despite “huge losses” the withdrawal would incur, it said in a notification to Gangwon Province.

Kolon Global said the project was not aimed at building a Chinatown as was claimed by the petitioner and some news reports, but a culture-themed district where tourists would be able to enjoy traditional and modern culture from both China and South Korea.

“Regardless of the truth and facts, we have no alternatives but pay heed to the voices of the 650,000 people who have signed the petition, because [South Korean] people are also clients who are no less important than foreign tourists,” it said.

Had it gone ahead, the Korea-China Culture Town would have been built by 2022 on a site 10 times larger than the country’s most famous Chinatown in Incheon city, west of Seoul.

It would have provided a range of facilities and attractions, including Korean style buildings, traditional Chinese gardens, a K-pop museum and a Korean Wave video display, “enabling mutual cultural exchanges between the two countries”, the province said.

But the clarifications failed to quell the rumours and soothe public anger, which was further stoked by further false reports that the province planned to bulldoze a prehistoric site to build hotels catering to Chinese tourists.

“Why should we create a little China on the soil of the Republic of Korea [South Korea],” read the online petition titled “Scrap the Chinatown Construction in Gangwon”.

“People don’t understand why we should provide chances for experiencing Chinese culture on our own land. Don’t yield any piece of our land to China,” said the petition which garnered a whopping 660,000 signatures since it was published on the Blue House website on March 29.

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Korean Women in Hanbok.
PHOTO: Master3Language
The hostility to what Gangwon was promoting as a cultural exchange venue reflected popular perceptions that China is engaged in “cultural imperialism against Korea”, said the Korea Joongang Daily .

The petitioner said Koreans were worrying they might lose their cultural identity to China’s attempts to “plunder” Korean traditional cultural heritage and distort history to include ancient Korean kingdoms that existed in Manchuria as part of China.

“It is time to confront China”, which keeps trying to steal our culture”, said the petitioner.

A different online petition posted on March 24 on the Blue House website condemned a new SBS TV history-themed fantasy series Chosun Exorcists as distorting historical facts and using props of Chinese origin such as mooncakes and specific home decorations.

It has secured some 250,000 signatures over the past month, forcing SBS to pull the plug on the series after airing only two episodes, incurring millions of dollars in losses.

“It is quite regrettable that public opinions have been trending in the wrong direction against truths and facts, forcing Kolon Global to abandon the project,” a Gangwon Province official told This Week in Asia .

The public petitions run counter to rapprochement on the political level, underscored by a bilateral foreign ministers’ meeting in Xiamen early this month – the first South Korean ministerial level visit to China since 2017.

“Some Chinese people may see this incident as an epitome of anti-China sentiments in this country,” said Yoon Sung-suk, a political-science professor at Chonnam National University.

“This could spark angry reactions from Chinese people, especially young online warriors, damaging diplomatic efforts to improve ties.”

Public sentiment against an increasingly assertive China has been growing in the country in recent years, especially after China’s economic retaliation against South Korea over its 2016 deployment of the highly sophisticated US missile defence system known as Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD).

Controversies over Korean food and clothing, and China’s purported attempts to distort history and “hijack” cultural heritage further stoked public anger, especially amid the Covid-19 pandemic, compelling many young South Koreans and Chinese to denounce the other country online.

“Korea is becoming like a colony by the Chinese Communist Party … Politics, economy and culture are all commandeered by China,” tweeted one user.

But others voiced different opinions. “Chinatown in Gangwon Province turned out to be a fake news! Someone attempted to frame it up (as a community settlement for Chinese immigrants),” tweeted Kim Mi-kyoung.
 

Indonesia, China go toe-to-toe in gas-rich Natunas​

JAKARTA – The Indonesian government has yet to protest over an incursion by a Chinese survey vessel and two Coast Guard escorts into its economic exclusion zone (EEZ) north of the Natuna islands, which has now continued around a promising natural gas exploration site for more than three weeks.
“It’s the longest and most overt incursion we have seen, yet there has been no response at all,” says one analyst, noting that the three Chinese intruding vessels are being shadowed by a rotating flotilla of six Indonesian Navy ships and three Maritime Security Agency (BAKIMLA) patrol craft.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said he could “neither confirm nor deny if there are diplomatic interchanges between Indonesia and the PRC on this issue.” He had earlier told Asia Times: “What is important to us is the exploration (in the gas block) is unhindered.”

It is understood the Indonesian Foreign Ministry did call in Chinese ambassador Xiao Qian to query him about the extended seabed mapping exercise, but no further action has been taken in the most serious incident since a Chinese Coast Guard vessel seized back a captured trawler in territorial waters in 2016.
The latest drama was unfolding at the same time senior Chinese Foreign Ministry official Liu Jinsong summoned Indonesian ambassador Djauhari Oratmangun to convey China’s displeasure at the recent announcement of the new AUKUS security agreement involving the US, Australia and Britain.
Analysts say it seems ironic for Beijing to be seeking the support of Indonesia and other core Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for what it called a “hypocritical and treacherous act” when it continues to encroach into neighboring backyards in the South China Sea.
“This is going to become a fact of life,” said one regional commentator, who sees it as a direct consequence of US-China rivalry. “But why is it in China’s interest to push so hard with the Indonesians? They have already turned Australian opinion against them.”
The Guangzhao-based Haiyang Dizhi 10 had its automatic identification system (AIS) activated when it entered Indonesia’s EEZ in late August in the company of the two Coast Guard cutters, both of which had been running dark since they left their homeport of Yulin on Hainan island.

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A Chinese Coast Guard ship at sea. Photo: AFP
Analysts say the survey ship began steaming in a grid pattern, indicating it was mapping the seabed close to where Harbour Energy, a joint venture between Premier Oil and state-owned Russian company Zarubezhneft, launched an appraisal drilling program three months ago.
The Chinese have often harassed oil exploration activities in waters claimed by Vietnam and Malaysia, but this is the first time they have homed in on an area where its unilateral nine-dash line claim of historic sovereignty intrudes into Indonesian maritime territory.
Indonesian watchers trying to understand Jakarta’s restrained reaction point to China’s role as the country’s biggest infrastructure investor and its leading role in the nickel-smelting, lithium battery and electric car industry which promises to firmly link Indonesia into global supply chains.
Up to now, Beijing has only sought to exert its traditional fishing rights inside that contested line, despite the concept not being recognized under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), of which China and Indonesia are both signatories.
Since 2016, there have been fewer incursions as the bulk of the Chinese fishing fleet, along with its Coast Guard and militia escorts, have begun ranging further out into the Western Pacific in search of concentrations of fish before they reach Southeast Asian waters.

The Noble Clyde Boudreaux, a rented Malaysian oil rig, began operations in Harbour Energy’s Tuna Block, 300 kilometers north of Natuna island, in late June, looking to determine the size of a resource that was first discovered about three years ago.
The two appraisal wells are designed to measure the extent of the field, which is currently believed to contain one trillion cubic feet of gas, but will need to be significantly larger than that to be judged a commercially viable deposit.
Even then, with an LNG operation out of the question, the only way to exploit such an isolated block will be to run a 220-kilometer pipeline southwest to the three West Natuna fields owned by Premier and two Indonesian companies, Medco and Star Energy, that have been supplying piped gas to Singapore for the past 25 years.
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Source: Twitter
Although two of those fields are now severely depleted, they are the only producing blocks among the 11 existing concessions in the Natuna archipelago. Historically, the best known was Natuna D-Alpha, a massive 222 trillion cubic feet resource north of Natuna Island, which was eventually abandoned because of dangerously high quantities of Co2.
It wasn’t until mid-July that the Chinese cutter CCG 5202 activated its AIS, confirming its presence southeast of the Tuna rig. Three Bakamla patrol craft dispatched to the area were subsequently joined by the navy tanker KRI Bontang and later by the British-built corvettes KRI John Lie and KRI Bung Tomo.

In mid-August, the CCG 5202 was replaced by the CCG 5303, which on August 31 met up with the CCG 4303 in escorting the Haiya Dizhi 10 into the EEZ where it has since been running legs 110 kilometers long and 10 kilometers wide using a multi-beam echo-sounding system.
Interestingly, its search pattern remains confined to a 15-20 kilometer-wide area just inside the EEZ where the rig is located, roughly conforming with what is currently believed to be the extent of China’s hazy nine-dash line.
Three years ago, the same specialized vessel and a team from the China Geological Survey took part in a joint marine survey with Pakistani scientists in the Indian Ocean for what was described as “hydrocarbon research and geological mapping.”
Only last January, the Chinese survey ship Xiang Yang Hong 03 was detected carrying out unauthorized seabed mapping in territorial waters off the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Research into currents, bathymetry and the salinity of the water helps submarines to operate largely undetected.
Over the first week of the Haiya Dizhi 10’s operations, local fishermen reported sighting the Type 052 Chinese destroyer Kunming and five other Chinese navy vessels, apparently surveilling the American aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, then about 80 kilometers west of the drilling operation.
Observers tracking the flurry of ship movements noted a co-relation between the carrier’s presence and a surge of 12 Chinese vessels into the disputed Spratly Islands-Mischief Reef area between September 5 and 12.
The Carl Vinson and its two escorts, the USS Chaffee, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, and the USS Lake Champlain, a Ticonderoga-class missile cruiser, have now returned to Okinawa, but are eventually scheduled to sail for the Middle East.
The San Diego-based flattop is carrying stealthy F-35C joint strike fighters for the first time, along with a beefed-up complement of EA-18G Growler and E-2D Hawkeye electronic warfare aircraft for what is being touted as the seaborne airwing of the future.
The Carl Vinson had no sooner left the South China Sea than it was replaced by its sister ship, the USS Ronald Reagan, which is on its way back to its Yokosuka base in central Japan from a three-month deployment to support the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
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Multiple aircraft fly in formation over the USS Ronald Reagan, a US Navy aircraft carrier in the South China Sea. Photo: Kaila V Peters / US Navy
A recent US Navy statement said the USS Reagan would be conducting anti-submarine and tactical flight operations on an expected passage that will skirt the disputed Spratly Islands, where China has built military installations on 13 reefs and small islands.
Most of the Chinese Coast Guard vessels are now well known in the region. The CCG 5303, for example, one of China’s advanced Type 818 Zhaoduan-class cutters, was among six vessels involved in a stand-off at the site of a drilling rig inside Vietnam’s EEZ in 2019.
The 4,000-tonne CCG 5303 was again involved in the harassment of oil exploration work around Malaysia’s Kasawari field off Sarawak last July, which also led to the air force scrambling jets to intercept a passing formation of 16 Chinese Illuysin IL-76 and Xian Y-20 transport aircraft.
Several additional Coast Guard vessels have recently been transferred from the North Asia and East Asia commands to the South China Sea command in Hainan, where the Chinese have recently expanded their naval base to include nuclear submarines.
The CCG is the world’s biggest Coast Guard, comprising 130 large patrol craft, more than 20 fast assault craft and 400 coastal patrol boats, with a main mission of enforcing China’s sovereignty claims in concert with the People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia.
The bigger vessels, which range in size from 5,5000 to 12,000 tons, are armed with a 76 m.m. rapid-fire naval gun, two secondary weapons, twin anti-aircraft guns and an assortment of heavy machineguns.
According to one regional analyst, the Chinese navy’s only role is to provide overwatch, deter escalation and, if necessary, to intervene. That allows China to use its forces in a graduated strategy to establish a presence, normalize that presence and ultimately to enforce it in disputed areas.
Such coercive tactics become even more worrying against the background of China’s new Coast Guard Law, passed last January, which permits “all necessary means” to stop foreign vessels, including the use of firepower aboard Chinese ships in territory perceived to be its own.

 

ASEAN Leaders’ Declaration on the Blue Economy​

WE, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), namely Brunei Darussalam, the Kingdom of Cambodia, the Republic of Indonesia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malaysia, the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, the Republic of the Philippines, the Republic of Singapore, the Kingdom of Thailand, and the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, on the occasion of the 38th ASEAN Summit on 26 October 2021,







RECOGNISING
the expansive, transformative, long-term, and multidimensional ramifications of the unprecedented Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic throughout the region and the need for ASEAN’s collective efforts and holistic response to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 towards achieving a robust, resilient and comprehensive recovery for the peoples of ASEAN;










Download the full Declaration here.