Geopolitics — China
How China is terraforming its way to war in South East Asia
image provided by ThePrint
It seems like conflict could erupt any day between the United States and China. With daily news headlines of U.S. warships or aircraft coming face to face with their Chinese counterparts, something is bound to happen.
But when and why?
It depends on who you talk to as to when conflict is likely to break out. A good bet is by 2025.
However, there are several States involved in the issues with the South China Sea that often aren’t portrayed in mainstream Western media. This is because what matters most to the West (and to you) is access to a free market in Taiwan. But there are a few more states worried about the exact same thing. So lets dig a bit deeper.
Sphere of influence and historical rights
I’ve talked about sphere of influence before in a recent substack article about Ukraine.
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As mentioned in that article, having a perspective of “sphere of influence” means
you look at the world according to social, cultural and economic norms.
When it comes to cultural norms, they generally can be traced back to a particular state. So for instance Quebec is culturally French. But that doesn’t mean France owns Quebec. It’s part of Canada (although some Quebecois would like to challenge that.).
This is how China views the South China Sea. It is in their sphere of influence and therefore belong to them. It is trying to accomplish this by saying they have historical rights to particular islands throughout the South China Sea.
Its sort of like saying that the very first car you owned and then sold for a better one, is still legally yours. You can say it all you like, but everyone is going to look at you a bit funny and the person who currently owns it is probably going to stop you from taking it back.
The importance of the nine-dashed line
China established this line of demarcation in 1949. They claim anything within the line as their own. The claimed Chinese area covers the majority of the South China Sea and conflicts with a few other countries. In particular, the nine dashed line conflicts with established borders of Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
image provided by Radio Free Asia
Of course this kicked off a lot of controversy throughout SE Asia has China continues to assert this claim. In attempt to circumvent this, China has re-branded its efforts into that they now call “four sha”. This the translates to “four sands”.
Basically four island groups, the Pratas Islands, the Paracel Islands, the Macclesfield Bank which aren’t really islands but submerged shoals, and the Spratly Islands. They also claim that Taiwan is within the nine-dashed line, which is a point of national pride for them.
So far the two main states who are pushing back the most are the Philippines and Taiwan. Western mainstream media often depicts how Taiwan is preparing to push back against China, by training its territorial army and relying on U.S. assistance. However the Philippines is doing just as much.
In 2022, the Philippines signed a £368m deal with India for the BrahMos supersonic missile system. Three of them to be precise. The hope is that this will provide protection against Chinese naval activity in the South China Sea. Delivery is expected this year.
Why does China want these areas so badly? Because they provide unrestricted shipping routes both east and west. Additionally, they would pick up some strategic military locations so they could better control these shipping routes with their Navy and Air Force.
Why is the United States involved?
The simple answer is, because of you.
image provided by shutterstock
Do you want a new car with GPS (SatNav) built in, touch screen displays and a diagnostic system that tells you what's wrong when something goes wrong?
Of course you do, so do I. This has been the case for a long time, otherwise the roads would be filled with Volkswagen Beetle’s and Jeep Cherokee’s with the easily fixable straight-six engines and other standardized parts.
Every luxury car comes with semiconductors that make your plug & play car work. And the biggest player in the realm is TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
It doesn’t just end with cars, the world runs on computers and to a lesser extent, mobile phones for the consumer-tech crowd. The world knows people want these things because people continue to buy them.
A war to protect economic viability
As with all war, it is an extension of policy. These days its typically economic policy. So with the Philippines, Taiwan and the United States actively building up forces to fend off the build up of forces by the Chinese, as time goes by it becomes difficult to de-escalate. Especially since it’s not exactly about simply maintaining territory, but rather economic viability through trade.
With the Philippines expecting delivery of a missile system, I expect they will spend most of 2023 implementing and training with it, which makes 2024 a bit more dicey for the South China Sea.
Since the visit by Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan in late 2022, the United States has pretty much nailed its colors tot he mast as to what it is willing to do for Taiwan.
However it is important to keep in mind that the United States seems to be following an ever increasing isolationist policy. This is caused by the U.S. economy producing a world-leading amount of agricultural and energy products. They are trying to build up their semi-conductor facilities, but this will take time. The afore mentioned TSMC is building a semi-conductor factories in Arizona . This should be completed around 2030.
So in some ways, the U.S. involvement in the South China Sea will be lessened after 2030. If the U.S. can get their economic ducks in a row, they may even be able to drop the entire situation like a hot potato.
But that is some big wishful thinking.
If you have a story or topic you would like investigated, please get in contact directly or in the comments.
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