By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.
WASHINGTON: After a UN tribunal ruled stingingly against Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea, Beijing reacted with its characteristically prickly mix of grandiosity and insecurity. The official Chinese perspective inverts Washington’s worldview so thoroughly it can be hard for Americans to understand: International rules are rigged, US military presence is destabilizing, China rightfully owns the whole South China Sea and is being generous to let its lesser neighbors use it at all.
When China’s ambassador to the US, Cui Tiankai, says benignly that “we are not trying to take back the islands and reefs that have been illegally occupied by others,” he’s referring to almost everything claimed by every other country in the region.
Amb. Cui laid out Beijing’s point of view beautifully yesterday afternoon, speaking (in English) just hours after the UN ruling in an unscheduled appearance at a Center for Strategic & International Studies conference. We asked some leading experts to help us parse his remarks.
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| Map charting the Arbitration Tribunals Findings (Click Image to Enlarge) |
“This case was initiated not out of good will or good faith,” Cui said of the Philippine appeal to the UN tribunal. “it is a clear attempt to use a legal instrument for political purposes.” What’s more, Cui said, the Philippines’ legal case was cynically coordinated with America’s “so-called pivoting to Asia,” which manifested in “mounting activities by destroyers, aircraft carriers, strategic bombers, reconnaissance planes and many others…. This is an outright manifestation of ‘might is right.’”
There’s an obvious irony here. From Washington’s perspective, it’s China and Russia that practice “lawfare,” using international bodies to delay or obfuscate while their military forces seize objectives in “grey zone” operations short of war, be it a disputed reef in the South China Sea or the entire Crimean Peninsula.
Read the full story at Breaking Defense