22 April 2020, NIICE Commentary 4194
Sweta Basu
While countries across the world are involved in combatting the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, China has been exerting aggressive plans for the South China Sea. Despite being declared as an active ‘hotspot” of the virus, China continued to announce the resurge of military corporations at Wuhan, the epicentre of the coronavirus.
China has greased up the health crisis as a strategic blessing to maintain its control over the South China Sea. On 3 April, China sank a Vietnamese fishing boat and committed an act of violating the sovereignty of Vietnam that further resulted in huge damages to the lives and property of Vietnamese fishermen. According to the various media reports, the foreign ministry of Vietnam has multiple times pointed out how China tried to assert its unlawful claims concerning the South China Sea which is called as the East Sea by Vietnam.
Despite the outbreak of the virus in China around December last year with around 81,000 confirmed cases, China continued with their military pursuits. Andrew Yang, a Taiwanese politician and the Secretary General of Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies mentioned, “The priority for China is to protect their national interests so implementing military exercises is inevitable.” However, this was highly evident by the actions of the Chinese military when they carried out anti-submarine manoeuvres as a counter to US warships’ patrol. Though the US has time and again criticized China for its military deployments and claimants regarding the area of the Sea, by sinking the Vietnamese boat, China showed its ability to do whatever it takes to emerge as a global hegemonic leader of the Sea. When the US aircraft carrier passed through the South China Sea towards Guam, around 170 and more positive COVID-19 cases were confirmed among the US aircraft crew which later rose to around 1500. This has created a lot of skepticism as to whether China is using this pandemic as a biological weapon to extract geopolitical influence.
The ‘China-originated Coronavirus’ contrived an economic and commercial lockdown across nations. As per the reports of the World Health Organisation (WHO), with over 2.5 million active coronavirus cases and over 171,000 deaths, countries are looking forward to containing the pandemic with the best possible means. China claimed that Beijing donated gloves to the affected areas of Italy, test kits to Ethiopia, and effective medical suits to South Korea but one cannot miss out the opening of the two non-combatant laboratories to study about marine issues concerning South China Sea prospects near Nansha Islands. These labs have been created to look after radar turrets, missile placements and encampments to shelter a thousand combatants for exploration of deep-sea oil reserves, metals and other resources. Following this, even the landing of the Chinese transport plane on the Fiery Cross Reef went completely unnoticed for it would be seen as the usual patrolling of Chinese maritime administrative boards to tackle the consolidated area of the South China Sea.
Multiple times, China has been criticized for intercepting the rigidities concerning the reports followed by the outbreak of the deadly virus from the perception that it has not yet revealed the essential way outs or the ‘indispensable power’ that will enable countries to contain the cosmic spread of such a virus.
Manhandling or Mishandling?
Beijing has always called 90 percent of the region around the South China Sea as their own despite contesting claims by countries like the Philippines, Brunei, Taiwan, Vietnam, and others. The constant surveillance of Chinese coast guard vessels around these countries has made it clear as to how China wants to accomplish its goal of regional sea control and encompass power optimization through littoral waters. When both the US and the United Kingdom are struggling hard to deal with the pandemic, China has been effective enough to use recovery reports of COVID-19 cases as a diversion to increase its grip over the South China Sea zone. Alongside China has successfully reaped out gas hydrates from the northern part of the sea, which highlights that nothing can deter China’s preparedness equally for war and prospects of achieving maritime stability. Speculations are afloat that the two most engaging parameters of Chinese development, the military and the economy would be hampered the most by COVID-19. This further will enable China to focus more on fulfilling their maritime ambitions even amidst such a worldwide health crisis.
However, China has been very careful about the spread of information regarding the virus and taken the necessary steps to counter the same. The highly censored Chinese media has successfully suppressed the reports of COVID-19 cases and the mishandling of situations starting from Wuhan’s retraction on man-to-man transposal to restrained access of equipments from the World Health Organization (WHO), to the country. Though China has denied the accusations of occultation regarding the actual number of coronavirus-positive patients and had defended itself by highlighting their success in ‘flattening the curve’ by resorting to stringent measures.
Fundamentally, China has not ceased to render its foreign policy pursuances even when there are internal and international allegations regarding COVID-19. Though China claims to have controlled this pandemic by bringing down the number of active cases, there has been no rolling back on their part to lay down their aggressive policies especially concerning the South China Sea. Nevertheless, mistrust is evident once again between China and the US where China warned the US to prevent themselves from linking the current pandemic with China’s maritime concerns. Vietnam, on the other hand, has asked China to curb its wrongful claims and lodged an official protest. The Philippines and Malaysia, where China again tried to barge in through deep-sea explorations, made it clear that China must prevent themselves from their extensive “bullying behavior”.
Though all nations have pledged to stand together and try holistically to mitigate this current catastrophe, China, on the other end is engaged in a war of its own. Whether a new world order will emerge or not, it is yet to be apprehended but China’s continuous claims over huge swathes of the region of South China Sea is the very proof that China has kept its aggression bottomed up with continued hostilities. Though their military establishments and surveillance might not be frequent for the time being but one must be aware that the ploy of China is to further consolidate and strengthen its global position in the days to come.
