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| Image: Flickr User - Official U.S. Navy Page |
By Andi Zhou
Tensions are rising in the South China Sea — so why is the East China Sea so calm?
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 has 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.
Read the full story at The Diplomat