American Thought Leaders - China’s Step-by-Step Takeover of the South China Sea: Grant Newsham

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

“What you’re seeing in the Philippines is one more step in China’s effort to tighten its control over all parts of the South China Sea,” says retired U.S. Marine Col. Grant Newsham, an expert on the Asia-Pacific region and a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy.In recent clashes near the submerged reef known as the Second Thomas Shoal, there have been cases of Chinese vessels ramming Philippine ships, deploying water cannons, and injuring several sailors.In this episode, Newsham breaks down the Chinese communist regime’s decades-long strategy to gain control of the South China Sea, from methodical island building to deploying a combination of Coast Guard, maritime militia, and fishing fleets to harass and intimidate other nations.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

What you're seeing in the Philippines is one more step in China's effort to tighten its control over all parts of the South China Sea. The Philippines has a treaty with the United States, and some people might argue that this is actually strike three from the Filipino perspective when it comes to relying on the Americans. Grant Newsham is a retired U.S. Marine colonel and an expert on the Asia-Pacific region. He's a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy. They have basically gotten de facto control of the South China Sea. But what they have done is they have kept the operations mostly with the Coast Guard, maritime militia, and the fishing fleet.

And that way they say, this is not military. In this episode, he breaks down the Chinese regime's decades-long strategy to gain control of the South China Sea. Subi Reef has been turned into a military base that is actually bigger than Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Janja Kelley. Graham Dusham, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders. I'm glad to be here.

Grant, a little over a year ago, I had you on the show. We were talking about your book, When China Attacks. And you paint a very interesting scenario in the book of what that might look like. And it, in fact, might not look exactly like what we think of conventionally as an attack. And recently, when I've been looking at what's been happening in the South China Sea, specifically around the Philippines, I was reminded of what you wrote in that chapter about the book. So let's talk about what's happening in the South China Sea. DAVID FREEMAN, Sure.

What we're seeing actually is the outcome of about a 20, 30-year effort by the Chinese to establish control over the South China Sea. And just to give you a sense of the scale of that, the South China Sea is about 1 and 1 half times the size of the Mediterranean. The Chinese have gone about it gradually, but steadily, and they have moved quicker when they could, and sometimes they've

gone more slowly. And they have generally done it without firing a shot, except for one instance in 1988, when they gunned down 60-some Vietnamese sailors and marines standing knee-deep in water on a piece of Vietnamese territory in the middle of the South China Sea that China wanted. So they went and took it. But otherwise, they have done it just by gradually establishing their presence, a physical presence, of course, and also having their Coast Guard, their maritime militia, their fishing boats, and the Chinese Navy always present. And they have basically gotten de facto control of the South China Sea by about 2015, and that's almost 10 years ago. So you've watched this happen. They have taken over what has always been international waters.

And the Americans and the neighboring countries haven't done much about it. And the one country that really could, of course, is the United States. Well, let me jump in here for a sec. I don't think it's conventional wisdom that the South China Sea has been taken over at all. After all, we see reports regularly of aircraft carriers heading through there and all sorts of activity. There's open shipping lanes. And certainly, I don't think the Chinese regime would say, hey, we control the whole South China Sea. Well, they've been very clear that they think the South China Sea is theirs,

and they've gone to great lengths to sort of make that case, even concocting a legal argument for that, but also, as I said, getting the physical control. They're in a position to really choke off the sea lanes through the South China Sea. They've passed laws, domestic laws, giving them the right to do that, most recently giving the Chinese Coast Guard the right to arrest trespassers in the South China Sea. They just haven't done it yet very often. Go back in time a little bit and as I mentioned this is about a 30-year effort the Chinese have been

undertaking. Starting in 1974 they took some Vietnamese islands up in the Paracels group at the northern end of the South China Sea. Then in 1988, they took some more Vietnamese islands or territory down farther south in the Spratly Islands. That's when they gunned down the Vietnamese servicemen. Then in 1996, they established some fishing huts on a reef called Mischief Reef, which was Philippine territory. The Philippines have not been back there since. And then from about 2013 to 2015, they launched on an island-building campaign that was impressive, to say the least. And they have built a number of man-made islands in the parasols up

north, but also down farther south, some hundreds of miles from the Chinese mainland in the Spratly chain. And there's three islands that they've built that really deserve mention and give you a sense of just how they've gone about establishing their control. And those are Mischief Reef, Subi Reef, and Fiery Cross Reef. Now, Subi Reef has been turned into a military base that is actually bigger than Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. So it's gone from basically nothing to a place that's bigger than Pearl Harbor, has deepwater anchorages, you can put your naval forces in there, long runways. I remember when these reefs were being built, the big ones especially, and I remember

there were promises made, right? These aren't going to be militarized, right? And I remember thinking, what a silly idea, because you're building it in the first place, what other possible reason could you have? But there were all sorts of promises made along the way that were sort of, I guess, in the other direction, if I recall correctly. Oh, yes. Xi Jinping actually promised President Obama that he would not militarize these man-made islands.

And well, he did. And the Chinese will, of course, concoct sort of an excuse for this, saying, well, we're not militarizing them. This is just defensive in nature. The idea was that when they built them, well, this is just to sort of take care of fishing, control fishing interests, or make sure that everything's in order in the South China Sea, but they don't have any desire to actually put military forces out there. And then they did.

And they're building these in waters that are owned by someone else. And so this is this other piece that's important. And what's very curious to me, the Chinese regime has specialized in what we would call gray zone operations, exerting some sort of provocation, something that might be provocative that achieves an objective, but not quite provocative enough that it elicits a response or a significant response. And just kind of always kind of testing how far that can go. This is sort of an approach I'd like to get you to talk a little bit about this. And it just struck me that these reefs, in a way, have functioned like a kind of gray zone warfare. It's bizarre that the construction of military bases on new reefs in foreign waters would be actually gray zone.

You would think that would be something more than just that. It's gray zone if you want to call it gray zone. And gray zone is not an ancient expression. It's a more recent term. And what it ultimately means to us is that, well, it's something somebody does that isn't worth going into or getting into a shooting war about. And as a result, if the other side sees that's how you interpret it, well, they're going to push that as far as they can because they see you will always back off. You will always come up with an excuse not to do anything. But you'd look at what China is doing in the South China Sea, and not just the eyelid building, the way they have interfered with American and our partner nations' aircraft, with their ships. And they've been doing this for

years. It's a miracle nobody's been killed. They do things like drop chaff or flares in front of a ship or an aircraft, or an aircraft in particular, or use lasers to try and blind pilots as well. Their aircraft and ships constantly try to intercept and interfere with the operations of our ships and aircraft and our friends as well. And so that's the sort of thing that I would point to, but also most recently when the Chinese and the Russians sent nuclear-capable bombers up towards Alaska into the American area. And this was, it's called, we call it gray zone, but as a practical matter, what the Chinese are doing with these activities is they are, one, rehearsing for war. They are getting their forces more capable.

They're also sort of wearing down us, but creating a sort of conditioning on our part to say, well, this is what they do. We just have to tolerate it. There's nothing which we should do about it. It's too risky. Our main point is to avoid war, avoid conflict, that you'll always back off. And instead, we should be looking at it and saying, well, let's give maybe the other side should

be the ones worried about what we're going to do to them. Instead of just sort of tolerating it and hoping that nothing more happens, we'll do things like suspend the People's Bank of China's license to operate in the U.S. for six months, put a complete sort of ban on high-tech exports to China for some period of time. And if there's any question why we did it, well, you just tell them you know why. We don't have to tell you. But there's no downside when the Chinese do behave like

this, and the Chinese have used this really effectively, particularly in the South China Sea. And if the Americans act this way, you know that everybody else is as well. So we've sort of set the tone for the other nations when it comes to standing up to the PRC. So Grant, we're going to take a quick break for a moment and we'll be right back. And we're back with Grant Neusham, Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Policy and author of When China Attacks. So tell me a little bit about how these different naval units work, because you mentioned the maritime militia, you

mentioned the fishing fleet, of course there's the Coast Guard, and you kind of mentioned them all as part of one unit, which in fact they are, but that's not obvious. They are part of the same unit, ultimately. But we choose not to believe that. If the Chinese have gotten us to convince ourselves that, well, a Coast Guard or maritime militia is not really part of the Chinese national power, but it's just something, it's civilian, it's peaceful, well, they've had a great success and they've been able to win without fighting.

But what the Chinese have done to exert this control in the South China Sea is you combine these different elements. And, of course, you have a huge fishing fleet, which is very good just for establishing presence and even pushing people out of areas. The fishing fleet has sort of an up-gun part of it called the maritime militia. And these are, they look like fishing boats, but they have, you know, very reinforced hulls. They've got weapons on them. And they are used really, once again, as muscle by the Chinese communists. And you can put them in a lot of places. You can have a permanent presence. You can just go park them there. And some U.S. outfits, private ones,

of course, like CSIS's Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, a fellow named Ray Powell's operation as well, have actually got the photographs of these ships lined up next to each other in areas that are contested, and they're parked there. And that's your maritime militia. And then beyond, then you have the Chinese Coast Guard, and their Coast Guard ships are actually built to fight. It's not just to go catch fishing boats. And some of these are huge. The Chinese have a 10,000-ton Coast Guard ship down near the Philippines right now in one of the areas where there's skirmishing going on. And it's parked there to intimidate. 10,000 tons is bigger than some American ships, naval ships. So say they build these to fight,

and then you have the People's Liberation Army Navy, the Chinese Navy. And they have been there. They've got about 350 ships now. The US military navy has about 290 and shrinking. The Chinese are building about five ships for every one we do. Their numbers are going way up. They also only have to cover an area fairly close to China. The U.S. Navy has to cover the whole world. So they've got the numbers on their hands, on their side, and you can see how they can establish this presence. But what they have done is they have kept the operations mostly with the Coast Guard, militia and the fishing fleet. And that way they say, well, this is not military. You know, this is not our military out here.

This is Coast Guard law enforcement effectively. And even fishing, you know, just fishermen. You know, who can complain about that? But when they operate, generally the People's Liberation Army Navy is either nearby or over the horizon. So what is the significance of what actually happened recently in the Philippines? Well, what you're seeing in the Philippines is one more step in China's effort to tighten its control over all parts of the South China Sea. It is a big area, so they haven't quite got the ability to control it all at all all the time.

But with the Philippines, they have leaned in on the Philippines for, it's been a while now, it really started before 1996, of course, but it started in earnest in 2012 at Scarborough Shoal. So over a decade ago, the Chinese have just moved in and occupied Philippine territory, and there's places where they would like to get more of it. And the most recent one is a place called Second Thomas Shoal. And this is like a reef about 100 miles or so west of Palawan Island in southern Philippines. And the Filipinos have, they beached a old World War II area or grounded a World War II era transport ship on the reef as a way to have physical presence. So nobody could say it didn't belong to them.

And it's manned by a small group of sailors and Marines. And it really is pretty rough living, as you can imagine. And the Chinese have been trying to block resupply by the Filipinos of this ship. And there has been skirmishing, just water cannons, bumping of Philippine ships by Chinese boats. You've even had small inflatable or small boats with Chinese troops on them have interrupted and knifed the ships and even chopped the even a Philippine sailor got his thumb chopped off in the most recent event. A big problem here is that for some people is that the Philippines has a treaty with the United States and the treaty it's a defense treaty and the treaty says that the Americans will help the Philippines defend their territory from armed attack.

And the Filipinos, I think, have been counting on the Americans to actually come help them. I mean, to come out to the sharp end, to the place where this fighting is going on, the skirmishing. And the Americans haven't done it. And I'm not sure exactly why. You hear different things. But the point is, they haven't come out. And you are hearing a lot of Filipinos saying, well, what is the purpose of this treaty if when we really need you, you won't come out and help us? And some people might argue that this is actually strike three from the Filipino perspective when it comes to relying on the Americans. And once again, a little history is helpful.

In 2012, at an area called Scarborough Shoal, which is over 100 miles west of Luzon, the main Philippine island, the Philippines sent a Coast Guard ship out to deal with some illegal Chinese fishermen there. And the Chinese showed up with Coast Guard ships, and there was a standoff. The U.S. State Department negotiated a deal between both sides that they would each withdraw their boats, withdraw their ships. Of course, the Filipinos did. The Chinese didn't. They stayed there. The Americans did nothing. And there was even on the U.S. side, there was one senior official and others as well who actually seemed to regard themselves as having been very successful at avoiding a fight with the Chinese. And they were saying,

well, we couldn't go to war over some rocks, and we avoided danger, avoided this potential conflict, as though this was the success. And yet what it did is it demoralized Filipinos. And then you had, after that, the Americans actually encouraged the Filipinos to bring a suit to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. And they did. They brought a lawsuit challenging what China had done at Scarborough Shoal and elsewhere in the South China Sea. And the court ruling in 2016 was overwhelming in favor of the Philippine position.

Overwhelming. And usually these rent decisions, they kind of split the difference, and neither side leaves very happy at all. But this one obliterated China's arguments and gave the Filipinos a resounding victory. And what happened after that is the Chinese said, this is just scrap paper. We're not going to pay any attention to that.

The U.S. administration did nothing. They said almost nothing about it, and they did nothing to help the Philippines enforce this or even give them much moral support at all. And the Filipinos once again felt like they had been stiffed. And that's strike two. Now, what is going on at Second Thomas Shoal more recently? Once again, there are Filipinos who see this and say, well, where are the Americans? Why aren't they out here with us? And some in baseball terms, you're all getting pretty close to strike three

as the Filipinos see it. And this potentially causes some real domestic difficulties for the Philippine President Marcos, who has shifted the Philippines back towards the United States, where his predecessor Duterte shifted it the other way and was not on good terms with President Obama, to put it mildly. He referred to him very disparagingly. And part of the reason for that was because of what happened with the permanent court of arbitration decision and Scarborough Shoal. So you can see how America's reputation and the reliance that people will have on it has really been undercut by some of these things that have been happening

in the South China Sea. And that has a ripple effect, often well beyond the region. Final thought as we finish? You know, I may sound pretty sort of glum about all this, particularly when I'm describing the South China Sea, where it does look like the Chinese have de facto control and are strengthening it. But at the same time, if you look at the geography of the region, if you go from Japan to Taiwan to the Philippines and down to Malaysia,

if you look at it from China's perspective, the South China Sea is kind of like a bathtub. And those nations I've described, the so-called first island chain, that's like the other side of the bathtub, properly armed, properly defended. China may have seized control of the bathtub, but they haven't got the other side. And they have some real problems getting beyond that if we play our cards right. So we do have a good hand to play. We just have to decide we want to play it. Well, Colonel Grant Newsham, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Well, thank you for having me. I always enjoy it. Thank you all for joining Grant Newsham and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.

I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.