Strategic Trust-Building

In August, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will make a critical statement to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. The long anticipated statement has been debated and crafted carefully over the past year by the Abe administration and will be influenced by the recommendations from an independent and bi-partisan panel of experts in Japan. In the end, however, the choice of what is – and more importantly, what is not – included in the statement will depend on decisions Abe makes. He will have to balance his own reservations about the traditional narrative of Japan’s war guilt against the considerable pressures, both foreign and domestic, to strongly adhere to previous statements made by former Japanese leaders. 

The Abe Statement will be scrutinized because of its likely direct impact on Japan’s relations with its regional neighboursThe Abe Statement will be scrutinized because of its likely direct impact on Japan’s relations with its regional neighbours, especially China and South Korea. Both Seoul and Beijing have essentially pre-conditioned stronger relations with Tokyo on Abe’s willingness to adopt a more contrite stance on historical issues. This is particularly true in the case of Japan-South Korea relations, which have been paralyzed since Abe took office in late 2012 due to Seoul’s perception of Abe and his Cabinet as historical revisionists. This stalemate has plunged Tokyo-Seoul ties to their present nadir, with an abnormal lack of high-level bilateral meetings. For these reasons, the Abe Statement is critical not just from a historical perspective but also for geopolitical relations in Northeast Asia. 

Historical Precedent and Abe’s Personal Beliefs

The Abe Statement will be closely watched by a number of countries, but will be followed most closely by China, South Korea and North Korea – the three countries in East Asia most impacted by Japan’s war time actions. While the Abe administration would like to frame this statement as a “forward looking” document, it will be challenging to build the foundation for stronger regionalism in Northeast Asia without addressing Tokyo’s wartime role in concrete terms. In this sense, Abe’s remarks will be held up against three key statements made by former Japanese officials: the Kono Statement (1993), the Murayama Statement (1995) and the Koizumi Statement (2005).

In the Kono Statement, made in 1993, then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono said that the “Japanese military was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and the transfer of comfort women.” The Kono Statement may be the most controversial to date because it revealed the cleavages between conservatives and liberal political views in Japan. An example of this divide was last year’s review of the Kono Statement evidence, through which Japanese conservatives who are aligned with Abe railed against the alleged faulty and disingenuous evidence used to bolster the statement. This review was coupled with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) unrelenting criticism of the well-respected liberal newspaper Asahi Shimbun for publishing unverified stories allegedly used as facts to support Kono’s assertion in 1993. Meanwhile, several members from the opposition parties and liberals within the LDP have pushed the Abe Administration to maintain the integrity of the Kono Statement. 

The Murayama Statement, made in 1995 on the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, noted that Japan’s engagement in the war was “a mistaken national policy, advanced along the road to war, only to ensnare the Japanese people in a fateful crisis, and, through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations.” While apologizing, Murayama also outlined the “irrefutable facts of history” and stressed Japan’s need to “eliminate self-righteous nationalism.”

The Murayama Statement, while applying to Japan’s role in the war more broadly, was especially well received at the time by China, South Korea, and countries in Southeast Asia and the Pacific that were most affected by Japan’s actions during the conflict. It complemented the Kono Statement with a more comprehensive apology that addressed other issues beyond the comfort women. The same reaction, however, was not universally shared in Japan, with several conservative politicians feeling betrayed by a Statement released by a Prime Minister from the socialist party. Many LDP politicians in particular felt at the time that the Murayama Statement was too effusive and contrite in its admission of guilt.

The Koizumi Statement (2005) is the third important, and most overlooked, statement. It was made by Abe’s predecessor (during Abe’s first reign as Prime Minister from 2006-2007), Junichiro Koizumi, on the 60th anniversary of the end of the war. Koizumi was one of the most successful LDP politicians and was the longest tenured Prime Minister in Japan since the reign of Yasuhiro Nakasone in the mid-1980s. Moreover, Koizumi was known both for his pragmatism but also for his pride as a Japanese conservative, evidenced by repeated visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, which drew the ire of China and South Korea.

But while Koizumi rebuffed complaints from Beijing and Seoul on the Yasukuni issue, he maintained a strong balance through consistent engagement with both Northeast Asian neighbors on economic issues. Moreover, in his statement, Koizumi largely upheld the sentiments from Murayama claiming that “Japan, through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations.” Koizumi also repeated Japan’s “heartfelt apology and deep remorse,” but noticeably did not reflect upon Murayama’s spear aimed at Japanese nationalists on the “irrefutable facts of history.” Another critical difference between the Koizumi statement and the more apology-focused texts of the Kono and Murayama statements is its predominant focus on Japan’s positive international role after the war.

Abe’s Turn

Abe has stressed the point on numerous occasions that his administration will uphold all statements made by his predecessorsAbe has stressed the point on numerous occasions that his administration will uphold all statements made by his predecessors. However, despite these assurances, South Korea remains critical of Abe’s approach. Before his election in late 2012, Abe criticized the Kono Statement in particular for its explicit reference to Japan’s culpability on the issue of “comfort women” in World War II. Since re-taking office, Abe made sure to take a more pragmatic approach to the issue and has been intentionally ambiguous on his feelings regarding the Kono Statement. While at Harvard during his state visit to the US this past April, Abe remarked that “when it comes to the comfort women issue, my heart aches when I think about those people who were victimized by human trafficking, who were subjected to immeasurable pain and suffering beyond description. My feeling is no different from my predecessors.”

But Abe’s support for the Kono statement appears to be more obligatory than substantive. This has further magnified the image – albeit often distorted for political purposes – in Seoul and Beijing of Abe as a revisionist bent on altering the traditional narrative of Japan’s culpability during the war period. And this sense has not been limited only to officials in China and South Korea. Despite an extremely successful visit from Abe to the US earlier this year, there remains a concern in Washington that Abe is not willing to mend ties with South Korea if that necessitates a public reiteration of the words contained in the Kono Statement. Indeed, several US experts on the region pointed to Abe’s lack of specific remarks about the “comfort women” issue in his Congressional speech as the one “dark spot” in an otherwise successful visit.

In addition, there are concerns that Abe will remove from his own statement key elements from the Murayama Statement, including references to Japan’s use of “aggression” or references to “nationalism” or the “irrefutable facts of history.” Indeed, Abe provoked controversy in 2013 when he questioned the definition of “aggression” in the Diet and remarked that determining these definitions was beyond the scope of politicians. The remarks predictably fueled intense criticism from China and South Korea that Abe was intending to emasculate the statements of his predecessors.

But the Koizumi Statement is especially critical when looking at Abe’s approach and forecasting the language he might use later this summer. Since retaking office in late 2012, Abe has repeatedly stressed his desire to put forth a statement that would be “forward looking” and focus on the public goods that Japan has provided to the international community since 1945. As a snapshot of this, Abe’s speech on the anniversary of the war last year previewed this approach through his articulation on the future and a lack of focus on the apologies of the past.

Geopolitics and History Collide

These historical strains continue to negatively impact Japan’s relations with China and South Korea. With regard to Seoul, many in Japan – and also some in the US – refer to “Korea fatigue “which represents their combined frustration that, after repeated apologies and compensation, Seoul still insists on Japan’s atonement.  On one hand, Japan’s so-called “Korea fatigue” is entirely understandable given that Tokyo has repeatedly apologized and made statements of remorse for its actions during the war period. Japan also provided South Korea with hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and soft loans, which helped to build South Korea’s economy over the past several decades. Tokyo also feels that there should be closure on the historical issues after the two sides agreed to a grand bargain settlement to restore diplomatic ties in 1965 with their Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea.

Thus, Japan has been frustrated with what it sees as South Korea’s unwillingness to separate history from political-security cooperation, which has led to a stalemate in relations between Tokyo and Seoul and created an abnormal situation of Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-hye not having held a formal summit since the latter took office in early 2013. This split has also elicited frustration in Washington, as the Obama Administration pushes to synergize a united trilateral relationship with its two Northeast Asian allies in order to deter North Korea and hedge against Chinese assertiveness and rapid military modernization. 

The US has a strong interest in patching up frayed ties between Japan and South KoreaOf course, the US has a strong interest in patching up frayed ties between Japan and South Korea in order to shore up deterrence against North Korea and push back on China’s increasing regional assertiveness. This has led the US to expend a painstaking amount of diplomatic capital on promoting Washington-Seoul-Tokyo trilateral cooperation and a smoother relationship between Tokyo and Seoul. The results have arguably not been worth the effort as Park only agreed to meet with Abe in a trilateral setting – last year in The Hague – focused purely on North Korean cooperation. However, it appears there might be some positive momentum towards the holding of a bilateral summit before the end of this year as both sides are now in serious discussions aimed at resolving the “comfort women” issue. Moreover, Japan and South Korea have both indicated their interest in attending a summit-level meeting with China at the end of this year. Complementing this high-level traction is a wide range of less recognized – but still important – cooperation between Tokyo and Seoul on a range of issues including security cooperation, negotiations on a trilateral free trade agreement with China, and work on energy security and the environment.  

The new trilateral military information-sharing agreement, signed in December of last year, between Washington, Tokyo and Seoul demonstrates this clash between history and geopolitics. First, it is narrowly focussed on North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and makes no mention of cooperation in other key areas on the conventional or cyber level. Second, the agreement, while theoretically trilateral, is essentially the marriage of two separate information-sharing pacts (U.S.-Japan and U.S.-Korea). The new agreement does not create a mechanism for all parties to evenly share information. Rather, it positions Washington as an intermediary through which information can be passed from Seoul to Tokyo, and vice versa. Unfortunately, this arrangement falls in line with the traditional “hub and spoke” mechanism of US alliances in Asia and does not align with the Obama administration’s rebalancing goal of networking its alliances in the region to be more interdependent.  

The geopolitical divide between China and Japan is fundamentally different than Tokyo’s spat with Seoul. Beijing and Tokyo are engaged in a strategic rivalry, hallmarked by tensions in the East China Sea and wrapped up in the broader trajectory of US-China ties, as a result of Japan’s security alliance with the US. As a secondary element, Beijing has coupled historical issues – such as high-level visits to Yasukuni shrine – with the larger strategic competition in order to help frame a narrative that Abe is both a revisionist and a militarist.       

The Abe Statement: A Choice of Words

Taking these factors into consideration, what will Abe’s statement later this summer look like? Most indications lead to the following general guidelines.

• Abe will almost surely note his intention to uphold the statements of previous Japanese leaders, including Kono, Murayama and Koizumi. This reaffirmation would be regarded favourably in the US, but will be considered insufficient in China and South Korea unless Abe repeats key excerpts from the statements.
• Like Koizumi, Abe will look to focus the attention of his remarks on a forward-looking statement that emphasizes the positive role Japan has played internationally since the end of World War II. This will also be an opportunity to frame Japan’s future role going forward and explain Abe’s policy of a “proactive contribution to peace.”  Much of this language would likely mirror Abe’s speech to the joint session of Congress in the US this past April and will focus on the importance of Japan and the Japan-US alliance in global security. 
• While re-affirming previous statements, it is doubtful that Abe will specifically use verbatim language from his predecessors. Specifically, the new statement might leave out touch words such as “aggression”, “colonial rule”, “irrefutable facts of history.” Such omissions – especially a lack of apology or mention of colonial rule – will likely be seen in Seoul and Beijing as tantamount to a revisionist statement on history.  
• As the statement is not intended to represent closure to the “comfort women” issue, it is unlikely that it will contain details or specific references to Japan’s guilt. While this issue will certainly irritate many in South Korea, this criticism may be dulled if Seoul and Tokyo are able to strike a deal on the “comfort women” issue before the summer’s statement.  
• Taken as a whole, this paints a skeptical picture of the impending Abe statement. However, there is room for optimism. Abe has an opportunity to reiterate a sincere apology to countries in Asia that were deeply affected by Imperial Japan’s war. Moreover, while Abe may be a historical revisionist, he is also a geopolitical pragmatist. This pragmatism – especially the improved state of bilateral ties with China – will induce him to produce a balanced statement that, at the very least, acquiesces to Beijing’s concerns.

Implications for Canada

Canada has largely remained outside of the fray between Japan and its regional neighbors over history. This is understandable as Canada, despite its role in the Pacific theatre of World War II, is not in the position and has not build up the necessary relationships in the region to intervene. Even if Ottawa wanted to wade into the historical spat, it would be ill-advised as evidenced by Washington’s bloody nose. 

Yet, while Canada may not be scrutinizing Abe’s words later this summer, it should be paying close attention to the historical tensions in the region due to their larger geopolitical side effects. Canada’s interests in Asia are contingent on a stable and prosperous region led by dynamic economies with functioning political relationships. Nowhere is this more critical than Northeast Asia, with China, Japan and South Korea being Canada’s top three trading partners in the Asia Pacific. 

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To read the article at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, click here.

Pictures from the event: 

On 27 May 2015, Admiral Harry B. Harris Jr, the newly promoted Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, said that one of his main challenges, alongside a nuclear armed and erratic North Korea, would be “China’s preposterous claims to and land reclamation activities in the South China Sea.” So now a coral reef with an airfield is as dangerous as a nuclear weapon?

Harris’ statement was widely interpreted as meaning that China was engaged in an unjustified land grab, tantamount to coercion of or even aggression against the country’s southern neighbors. Three days later, a Chinese general repeated to the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore that China has shown “great restraint” in defending its territorial claims against unreasonable derogation by its southern neighbors. China sees its actions as defensive and in no way constituting aggression. There is a highly significant discrepancy between the two assessments. If Harris is wrong about the Chinese motivation, this must represent a significant intelligence failure by the United States. There is nothing more essential to national security intelligence than a correct assessment of a potential adversary’s motivations (intent) in the military sphere.

For the record, China is a country with more than 4,000 km of coastline in the South China Sea. Under international law, it is entitled to claim an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of 200 nm from the baselines of its territorial sea. On a rough estimate, it is entitled to around one million sq km of EEZ in the South China Sea based just on its mainland coast and the coast of Hainan Island.

A country’s international law claims to territory or maritime jurisdiction are only those articulated by its government in a formal manner. Beyond its South China Sea coast and Hainan (and minor islands close to these coastlines), and associated territorial sea and contiguous zones, China’s claims in the South China Sea have the following elements.

Territorial Claims

1. A claim to Pratas islands which is identical in character with the claim of Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines.
2. A territorial claim to the Spratly Islands and Paracel Islands which is identical in character with the claims of Vietnam and Taiwan and which, as a claim, is fully compatible with international law. Someone must own the islands. (Scarborough Shoal, which has rocks above sea level of a type that other countries have claimed as subject to sovereignty, is part of the Spratly group in Chinese claims. It is not claimed by Vietnam.)
3. A territorial claim to the Macclesfield Bank, a small submerged featured known in Chinese as Zhongsha Islands, which does not qualify as land territory under international law and cannot be subjected to territorial sovereignty.

Of these, only the claim to Macclesfield Bank would not be in conformity with international law. Otherwise, China’s claims to territory are nor more or less preposterous than those of Vietnam. Based on research for my 1998 book, China’s Ocean Frontier, I have concluded that China’s claims to at least some of the islands are less preposterous than those of Vietnam and the Philippines, but that China’s claims to the entire Spratly group are probably not, in respect of each and every natural island, superior to those of other claimants.

One unusual problem about sovereignty claims in the Spratly Islands is that Taiwan, a political entity not recognized as a state, is an active claimant.  This is further complicated by the likely implication that states which recognize Taiwan as part of “one China” are probably obliged to recognize Taiwan’s territorial rights as also adhering to “one China,” although that entity has an indeterminate status in international law.

Maritime Resource Jurisdiction

1. A 200 nm EEZ jurisdiction from the baselines of its land territory in full conformity with international law.
2. A claim to continental shelf jurisdiction from its land territory in full conformity with international law.

In addition, China has used the so-called nine-dashed line enclosing almost the entire South China Sea on many official maps since 1947 but it has not yet decided what, if any, legal force to ascribe to it. If it did ascribe any legal force, that would not be compatible with international law (verging on “preposterous”). Chinese officials have from time to time referred to China’s historic rights within this area but have not clarified what these might be beyond the territorial claims. The only possible historic right China could claim compatible with international law would be related to traditional fishing in another state’s recognized economic jurisdiction.

Preposterous or Not?

On balance, it is hard to see how Admiral Harris would justify use of the undiplomatic term “preposterous” in respect of the China’s current claims in the South China Sea. He may be justified in using it (in private) if China did go ahead and claim legal force of any kind to the u-shaped line.  China went close to this (being “preposterous”) by including the line without any explanation or discussion in a sketched map attached to its submission on the extent of its claimed resource jurisdiction on the continental shelf which it submitted to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.  Since the line bears no relationship to the legal criteria outlined in the required submission, it would only be fair to leave open any suggestion as to what it means. The State Department made plain in December 2014 that “China has not clarified through legislation, proclamation, or other official statements the legal basis or nature of its claim associated with the dashed-line map.” The Philippines has brought a case against China in the Court of Arbitration to seek clarification of the Chinese intent behind the dashed-line in that submission.

It is now widely known that the nine-dashed line was first used (in a slightly different form) in a map released by China in 1947 (before the Communist Party came to power). What is not widely discussed is that the Chinese move followed by less than two years the Truman Declaration in which the United States broke with pre-existing international law by claiming resources jurisdiction in the seabed of the continental shelf beyond the territorial sea. Perhaps China in 1947 was staking out a similar claim as other states rushed to emulate the revolutionary and expansionary U.S. claim.

Sources in China close to the government say that it has been unable to decide what to do about this nine-dashed line left over from history. Some constituencies in China have argued that China has “sovereignty” over all of the sea areas enclosed by the line, but the government has not endorsed this view–ever. So it has become a sensitive domestic political matter in which leaders face the accusation of being a traitor if they surrender the line. Such a charge has been publicly levied by Chinese hawks against former President Jiang Zemin for his border agreement with Russia. At the same time, there are more than a few Chinese official statements that appear to limit China’s claims to maritime resource jurisdiction to those embodied in the Law of the Sea Convention.

Land Reclamation

Admiral Harris also characterized China’s land reclamation activities as “preposterous.” By contrast, it should be noted, China regards these reclamations as examples of its “great restraint.” What significance should we attach to the reclamations?

For the record, to my knowledge, all of China’s current land reclamation is on submerged features in the vicinity of the Spratly Islands that have been the subject of Chinese physical presence for over two decades, so China has not permanently occupied new features in the last eighteen months, or even the last 20 years. A list of these features was noted in my 1998 book on the subject, China’s Ocean Frontier, as follows:

Between 1987 and 1996, the PRC occupied eight features in the Spratly group. These included Fiery Cross Reef, a totally submerged feature where the PRC in early 1988 conducted major engineering works to construct an 8000 square metre platform of concrete and steel rising two metres above the sea. It erected structures on Cuarteron Reef, Gaven Reef, Subi Reef, Dongmen Reef and Johnson Reef in 1988 and 1989 and on Mischief Reef in late 1994.

In September 2014, when new construction was revealed on Johnson Reef, a Chinese commentator echoed the Foreign Ministry by saying that the country needed to improve facilities there to make the lives of its occupants easier, but he added that China also needed an airbase to prepare for emergencies. He noted that this would be a breach by China of the 2002 Code of Conduct but that Vietnam and the Philippines had consistently breached it, and that China had shown great restraint by not using force to evict their forces form the islands and submerged features they occupied. On 9 April 2015, as CSIS in Washington observed, China acknowledged for the first time an unspecified military purpose to the reclamations.

It is hard however to credit the extreme view published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) that a 10,000 ft. runway that China appears to be building on Fiery Cross Reef “could enable China to monitor and potentially control the airspace over the South China Sea, which would provide greater capability to exert sea control.” This to me is hypothetically possible (in terms of monitoring) but preposterous in terms of practical realities (controlling all South China Sea air space from one reef airfield against the might of the United States and its allies). This sort of  overblown assessment reflects the mood in Washington and in U.S. Navy circles that borders on rage at what they see (mistakenly) as China’s destabilization without any willingness to consider that actions of Vietnam, the Philippines or the United States itself might be contributing to the instability.

The Philippines has expressed concern in 2015 that China may be planning reclamation activity in Scarborough Shoal, an underwater feature that China took control of in 2012 after repeat confrontations with Philippines vessels.

Propaganda and Intelligence

The propaganda tactic being repeatedly used by those who see China as the only provocateur is to blur complex matters of law, dates and sequencing of events to paint China in the worst possible light. China is not blameless but the hysteria coming from the anti-China camp might be seen as laughable were it not so serious. It has been well summarized by a Chinese commentator in 2014: “Manila and its Western supporters have a rather ludicrous logic that the Philippines and Vietnam can do anything on the Nansha [Spratly] Islands and China can’t take any countermeasures.” The U.S. State Department position has consistently been relatively measured and restrained. It needs to reassert some control over PACOM’s public diplomacy.

But this is not simply an institutional coordination problem in Washington. It is a serious intelligence failure on the part of the U.S. Navy leaders in the Pacific. They are expert in the Law of the Sea but they have far less expertise on the law of territorial acquisition and sovereignty. The Pentagon, and PACOM in particular, have appeared on too many occasions deeply inexpert or biased on China. In public and in private, PACOM officers too often rush to ascribe the most silly intentions to China without offering any sort of reasoned and empathetic assessment of how the Chinese might see the problem.

A new and more empathetic study of the issue from the United States government might also evaluate the reliability of the repeated reassurances from Chinese leaders that their activities in defence of the Spratly claim represent no threat to international commercial shipping. The U.S. intelligence community is capable of such a balanced study. It may exist already. The world would be a safer place if it could see such a balanced study by the U.S. intelligence community in the public domain.

To read the article published by The Diplomat, click here.

The East China and South China Seas have long been cast as twin problem spots in the Asia-Pacific security landscape. Ensnared in complex and baggage-laden histories, both disputes have seemed equally intractable and have also been focus points for Beijing to flex its burgeoning military and coercive-diplomacy muscle. All observers expected tensions to keep rising in both disputes as China continues to build up its capabilities and brandish its hardened diplomatic resolve.

But the last year has seen the disputes evolve in dramatically divergent ways. Tensions have dropped perceptibly, if not significantly, over the East China Sea. Unplanned encounters between boats and aircraft have decreased and China's Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) has not substantially hampered routine air traffic over the disputed area as many feared when the ADIZ was initially declared. The leaders of China and Japan have even held two terse face-to-face meetings that nonetheless broke a long-time freeze in high-level official interaction between the two sides.

Meanwhile, tensions in the South China Sea have flared. Though a low hum of troubling incidents have afflicted the region for years, international attention has recently focused on accelerated Chinese efforts to reclaim land in disputed areas of the South China Sea, turning atolls into bona fide islands that now house facilities and equipment (such as runways and docks) with potential military applications. Signaling and rhetoric has grown bellicose, particularly between the U.S. and China; the U.S. recently conducted a reconnaissance flyover of some of these man-made islands with a CNN crew in tow to broadcast their findings. This prompted the party-run Global Times newspaper to flatly warn the United States that "war will be inevitable" unless the U.S. gets out of China’s way in the South China Sea.

Why is one dispute simmering down while the other is heating to boiling point? These developments defy the usual logic that analysts have applied to the disputes—whereas China previously seemed bent on wielding its growing power wherever it claims "core interests," it now seems to be applying its power with greater discretion. If one is to lend credence to the idea that the Chinese regime uses the maritime disputes to consolidate domestic support by stoking nationalist sentiment, then the ongoing thaw in China-Japan relations, particularly on the much-trumpeted 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, is especially puzzling. Some observers have suggested that Chinese President Xi Jinping is pulling back in the East China Sea because he now feels sufficiently secure in his power; if that is the case, then why have we not seen any such easing on the South China Sea or any of his other putative “power-consolidation” tools, such as his domestic ideological hectoring, crackdown on speech or even the anti-corruption campaign?

The key factor at play is China’s position in the two disputes; its hand is much weaker in the East China Sea than in the South China Sea. Since placing a sovereignty marker on the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in 1895, Japan has exercised far greater de facto control over the islands than China, which gives it an immense advantage in the sovereignty dispute with China. With no opening to gain a toehold of control in the islands, China faces an uphill battle to establish its sovereignty claims over Japan's. China also will not risk military confrontation with the United States to take the islands by force, as the U.S. has unambiguously declared that its security treaty with Japan currently considers the islands Japanese territory. China can continue to press its claims, if only to remind everyone that a dispute exists, but these gestures amount to little more than strategic hot gas—for instance, though China’s ADIZ succeeded in ruffling feathers when it was declared, it has proved largely toothless in practice, leaving China little leverage in future negotiations over the dispute. Furthermore, a view gaining traction in the Chinese foreign policy community is that the islands are not worth the potential harm that animosity with Japan could inflict on China's long-term strategic and economic interests. (Leading Chinese foreign policy scholar Wang Jisi published an article arguing this point shortly before Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's first meeting on the sidelines of last November's APEC summit.) In short, until it can find a way to break Japan's grip over the islands, China's claims in the East China Sea are at a dead end.

Not so, however, in the South China Sea. Chinese control over disputed areas have expanded continuously since the foundation of the People’s Republic; China achieved effective control over the Paracel Islands (nominally also claimed by Vietnam) in 1974 and has grown its presence in the further-flung Spratly Islands since first occupying features there in 1987. The land reclamation efforts allow China to consolidate control in its occupied areas while avoiding direct confrontation with other claimants. And unlike in the East China Sea, where China has little more room to maneuver, China quite literally has plenty of ground left to gain “creating facts on the ground” in the South China Sea. Moving military assets and other infrastructure onto the newly-built frontier islands further serves to strengthen China’s de facto territorial control and also increases China's operational capacity to impose and enforce its claims in the region, giving China considerable leverage in any future negotiations over their status. The balance of military power is also switched in China's favor; just as China would be loath to challenge U.S. firepower to take the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, none of the claimant states in the South China Sea—nor the United States—are willing to go toe-to-toe with the People's Liberation Army to dislodge China from the Spratly and Paracel Islands. And if military force can’t impede China’s claims in the South China Sea, then international arbitration—such as the case brought by the Philippines before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague—hardly stands a chance.

As long as China has more to gain from escalation in the South China Sea, there is unlikely to be a calming of tensions as seen in the East China Sea. Unless the U.S. and its allies in the region can quickly bring China to the negotiating table, Chinese control over many of the South China Sea islands will slowly but steadily become a foregone conclusion. In that case, the U.S. and its allies may need to be prepared to cede a significant amount of territory to China in an eventual deal to prevent China from fully operationalizing its "nine-dash line" claim, which would lasso almost the entire South China Sea into China's territorial waters and potentially threaten freedom of navigation and other countries' resource exploration rights. The clock is ticking in the South China Sea, and each passing minute gives China more reason to keep pressing.

This article is also published on China-U.S. Focus and The Diplomat. 

"The South Pacific has become a crowded field for influence with many diplomatic suitors. Japan’s efforts have complemented similar overtures by its key partners. That includes Australia, which has distributed the most foreign aid to the Pacific Islands in the past decade, nearly $7 billion, along with New Zealand, the United States and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom and France. But they are not alone, as divergent interests are at play in the Pacific," Miller writes.

To read the full article at World Politics Review, click here.

Ronald Kirk, former United States trade representative and former mayor of Dallas, and R. James Nicholson, former chairman of the Republican National Committee and former secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, respectively led the U.S. Democratic and Republican delegations. The Chinese delegation was led by Wang Jiarui, vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the minister of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (IDCPC). EWI Director John Hurley and David Firestein, EWI’s Perot fellow and vice president for the Strategic Trust-Building Initiative and Track 2 Diplomacy, also participated as non-partisan delegates.

In addition to the plenary dialogue session, EWI and the IDCPC co-hosted an inaugural U.S.-China Entrepreneurs Roundtable with the China Economic Cooperation Center, which included the participation of U.S. and Chinese corporate representatives. The U.S. delegation also met with Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Qishan, who leads China’s ongoing anti-corruption campaign as secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, and Executive Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Zhang Yesui. 

The U.S.-China High-Level Political Party Leaders Dialogue, launched in 2010, seeks to build understanding and trust between political elites from the United States and China through an exchange of views on governance and foreign policy issues. It is currently the only U.S.-China dialogue process involving sitting officers from the CPC and the U.S. Democratic and Republican National Committees.

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Selected Media Coverage

Television news coverage of the 8^th U.S.-China High-Level Political Party Leaders Dialogue (Mandarin)
http://m.news.cntv.cn/2015/05/06/ARTI1430898023295761.shtml

Television news coverage of the U.S. delegation meeting with Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Qishan (Mandarin)
http://news.xinhuanet.com/video/2015-05/07/c_127776042.htm

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Event Photos

Vice Chairman Wang Jiarui greets Ambassador Ronald Kirk.

8th U.S.-China High-Level Political Party Leaders Dialogue.

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Edward Gillespie speaks at the 8th U.S.-China High-Level Political Party Leaders Dialogue. 

Former Missouri Governor Robert Holden speaks to reporters. (Photo copyright: Sean Gallagher)

Vice Chairman Wang Jiarui speaks to former Secretary of Veterans Affairs R. James Nicholson. (Photo copyright: Sean Gallagher)

Democratic National Committee Vice Chair and New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Raymond Buckley speaks to Fu Kui of the CPC’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (far right).

 Republican National Committee Treasurer Anthony Parker speaks at the Celebration Dinner in honor of the 5th anniversary of the U.S.-China High-Level Political Party Leaders Dialogue

Group photo of all delegates and staff at the 8th U.S.-China High-Level Political Party Leaders Dialogue.

Vice Chairman Wang Jiarui presents the “Excellent Team Award of the U.S.-China High-Level Political Party Leaders Dialogue” to EWI’s China team, accepted by EWI Perot Fellow and Vice President David Firestein.

EWI Director John Hurley speaks to a student at Tsinghua University. (Photo copyright: Sean Gallagher)