A small Vietnamese fishing boat putters along in the dark. A storm has knocked
down its radio antenna, and the cheap GPS unit the poor fishermen use to navigate
has long ago stopped functioning. They're sailing using the stars now,
the way their ancient forefathers did, and cast a westerly course in hopes of hitting the mainland.
Suddenly, a bright spotlight blasts the fishermen in the face, completely blinding them. A massive
Chinese destroyer quickly steams in close to the small fishing vessel- in the dark, the fishermen
hadn't even noticed it approaching. Two zodiac craft full of Chinese marines are tearing through
the water at high speed towards the fishermen, the machine guns at the bow of each boat aimed at
them. With frenzied shouts, the Chinese marines board the craft and push the fishermen to the
floor, zip-tying their hands behind their backs. They will be arrested, interrogated, temporarily
held and eventually released back to their native Vietnam. Their ship will be pulled apart
piece by piece in search of secret spy gear, the fishermen will never see it in one piece again.
Their crime? Accidentally sailing too close to one of China's growing number of illegal
military fortifications in the South China Sea.
The controversy began back in 2014, as China began to implement a plan to aggressively expand its
military power, and national sovereignty, into the South China Sea. With the world's largest
fleet of dredging craft, China began to build up seven isolated reefs in the South China Sea,
hundreds of miles from mainland China. The massive ships sucked in sand from the bottom of the ocean
and stored it in huge tanks, then released it onto the small beaches of these tiny reefs,
gradually building until the reefs had turned into islands.
The move was immediately met by international condemnation. Vietnam, the Philippines,
and other neighbors have their own, far more legitimate claims to the region,
which China has largely ignored. Citing a map drawn by the Chinese national government
in the 1940s, and dubious claims about sea exploration during the Ming Dynasty,
China maintains that a nine-dash line extending all the way to Malaysia in the south,
the Philippines in the east, and running along Vietnam's coast is China's true
national claim to the ocean. This nine-dash line encompasses nearly the entire South China Sea,
and ignores the economic exclusion zones of neighboring nations as set by international law.
Along with its army of dredgers, China also deployed a massive coast guard fleet dedicated
to the intimidation and harassment of other nation's ships. Armed with water cannons,
Chinese ships ran off Vietnamese, Malaysian, and Filipino fishing vessels,
while escorting its own fishing fleets to some of the world's richest fishing grounds.
In an extremely bold and controversial move, China even moved an oil drilling platform directly into
Vietnamese waters, and began extracting petroleum and natural gas from the site.
China's strategy was twofold- first, it would build up artificial reefs throughout the Paracel
and Spratly islands, turning them into solid ground and moving Chinese military troops there.
Under international law, a country can't claim the waters around an island feature
unless that island has a permanent presence of that nation's inhabitants.
This is also the reason why to counter Chinese claims, the Filipino navy regularly maintains
soldiers stationed on old shipwrecks around reefs in the Spratly Islands. These soldiers
rely on resupply from Filipino navy ships for everything from batteries to food and water,
yet almost immediately the Chinese navy began to blockade Filipino navy ships from
reaching those soldiers in an attempt to starve them out of their positions.
China's second part to its strategy to illegally claim the South China Sea was
to build up a large enough military presence that it simply wouldn't be possible to remove
China from the area. This would be tricky though, as it would require massive construction efforts
over many years until the islands were big enough to hold large amounts of military equipment.
Vietnam and its neighbors in the South China Sea are too weak militarily to do anything about
China's expansion, so they filed a complaint with the UN. In 2016 a ruling from the international
court at The Hauge found China's claims and island reclamation abilities to be illegal,
and ordered a halt to further expansion on the contested reefs.
China immediately ignored that order and the world did nothing to enforce it.
The real question is why is China burning global goodwill for the sake of a few island bases?
The answer to that is threefold, and the first part of that answer is economic.
The South China Sea holds 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas
and 11 billion barrels of oil in reserves, with much more believed to lie undiscovered.
This surplus of energy is worth trillions to the Chinese, and along with oil and natural
gas the region is also home to some of the world's remaining fertile fishing grounds, worth billions
in revenue. By edging out all other nations from their own legitimate claims to the region,
China has positioned itself to amass a staggering wealth, paying out over decades to come.
Secondly, China has long chafed at the United State's status as regional security partner with
its neighbors. One of China's greatest ambitions is to throw the US out of the South Pacific, and
thus bully its neighbors into its own political sphere of influence, no different than the Soviet
Union and its iron curtain post World War II. Today the South China Sea is the world's greatest
trade artery, with hundreds of billions of dollars worth of trade moving through the region every
year. The US Navy guarantees freedom of navigation for all vessels in the region, yet if China could
successfully push the US out of the region, all of that trade from nations around the world would be
subject to China's authority. Any nations China finds itself displeased with, could soon find
their merchant vessels harassed, or even outright barred from traversing the region- a serious
concern for any country that doesn't want to be subject to the Chinese Communist Party's will.
The plan is working, as China continues to build military infrastructure across the reclaimed
islands, it will become increasingly unrealistic for the United States Navy to remain in the region
and expect to survive in case of war. With US forces effectively pushed out of the region,
China's neighbors will have no choice but to deal with China- something Vietnam is so afraid
of it recently held discussions with US diplomats about potential cooperation with the US military.
The third answer to China's wish to establish itself in the South China Sea is to protect itself
from the military power of the United States. China understands that it cannot challenge the
US Navy in a stand-up fight, even with a portion of US naval forces stationed in the Atlantic.
However, the buildup of military facilities across the South China Sea
has officially put China in a position to not just challenge the US Navy,
but to prevent it from operating in the region outright in the case of war.
China has built just under 100 bunkers for fighter aircraft across its seven artificial islands,
and invested billions in anti-ship and anti-aircraft missile batteries, long-range radar,
signals intelligence equipment, and even missile defense batteries. CWIS (see-whiz)
gun mounts protect Chinese radar and missile installations, and several of the runways
China has built are large enough to host Chinese bombers loaded with long-range anti-ship missiles.
All of this firepower has effectively made it impossible for the US to intervene in the region
at the outset of war, and pushed back US forces to Guam- if they hope to avoid immediate destruction.
While eventually US firepower could level all seven of these island bases,
the investment would be extremely costly in terms of missiles and hardware both- each base would
need approximately 100 missiles each to completely neutralize, and a significant number of those
missiles would be knocked out by Chinese missile defenses. High altitude airstrikes would be a far
better option, but even B-2 stealth bombers would find the environment challenging to operate in,
and non-stealth aircraft would have practically zero survivability.
What's more, all the firepower needed to neutralize these island bases and
open up the South China Sea again is much more desperately needed further up north,
in defense of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan-
all three of which no doubt would find themselves under threat from Chinese forces
should a regional war break out. The only American hardware that could operate within the contested
sea space would be American submarines- Chinese anti-submarine capabilities are still lacking.
However, these subs would be focused on sinking Chinese ships and subs, and wouldn't
be risked just to undertake largely ineffective missile attacks against the island fortresses.
China's successful strategy to claim the South China Sea has been an incremental war of inches,
with President Xi Jinping correctly guessing that the United States would never risk a
full-blown war as long as China's aggressive expansion was done very incrementally,
just a few inches at a time. Now, in 2020, not only has China won the war of inches,
but guaranteed that in a future US-Sino conflict, freeing the South China Sea once more will require
incredible amounts of American blood and resources both- a price we may simply not be willing to pay.
In the end, it's the rest of the world that ends up losing as China wins big.
Now go watch US vs China 2020 Millitary comparison, or click this other video instead!