Abstract
A strategic choice is fast approaching between accepting China’s sub-regional hegemony and pushing back through strategies that would impose costs.
During the course of 2015, China used land-reclamation techniques to expand many of the features that it occupies in the South China Sea, most of which were then militarised. This development – alongside many other important signs of assertiveness, including China’s large-scale naval modernisation; its expanding deployment of maritime paramilitary forces to coerce other Asian states, including Japan, in the East China Sea; its efforts to undermine the unity of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); and its attempted creation of an alternative regional security architecture – not only indicated Beijing’s intent to reinforce its maritime claims, but also highlighted China’s drive to create a new regional order in which it plays a dominant and arbitrating role. Such an order could only undermine the interests of other regional states and the West. While the success of these efforts is by no means inevitable, the United States and its regional allies and security partners will need to respond more firmly to China, particularly in the South China Sea (SCS). By late October 2015, an initial ‘freedom of navigation’ patrol by the US Navy, which took one of its ships inside the 12-nautical-mile territorial waters claimed by China around one of the features that it occupies in the SCS, indicated that Washington recognised the necessity of stronger countermeasures. However, to succeed, this tougher approach will need to be both persistent and supported by US allies and security partners in the region and beyond.
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