By James R. Holmes
China is using language to quietly redefine international maritime law.
Never surrender to China in the battle of language, Washington. Ceding control of the words we use can be fatal to diplomacy. If you let someone define the words used in an argument how he pleases, or if you let him use terms so imprecisely that they lose all meaning, you let him establish the assumptions from which the argument proceeds. And once he sets the assumptions, he can prove whatever he wants. You will lose every time. Call it rhetorical battlespace preparation, or call it “three warfares.” Whatever the name, it’s a never-ending campaign for Beijing. Blunting it demands similar persistence.
Language, then, is a battleground. Exhibit A: Beijing’s effort to coopt the language of maritime law in the recent controversy over aerial intercepts. Ace Defense News reporter Wendell Minnick recounts an exchange with Wang Dong, director of the School of International Studies, Center for Northeast Asian Strategic Studies, Peking University. The topic: last month’s PLA Air Force interception and harassment of a U.S. Navy P-8 anti-submarine-warfare jet east of Hainan Island.
Where to begin? Let’s go over Wang’s commentary piecewise. As Minnick puts it, “There is a strong sense” in China that “the U.S. has abused the definition of ‘innocent passage’ under UNCLOS.” Stop right there. Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, innocent passage refers to the right of ships to pass through a coastal state’s territorial sea — that is, within 12 nautical miles of its shoreline — provided it refrains from doing things that could infringe on the coastal state’s security. The treaty text lists such activities as military surveillance. Fine. But innocent passage is a meaningless term beyond the territorial sea. It has no bearing on the coastal state’s exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, which extends from 200 to 350 nautical miles offshore depending on the underwater geography. Freedom of the sea prevails there.
Freedom means freedom. The P-8 was some 135 nautical miles east of Hainan and at liberty to execute its mission. U.S. and allied spokesmen must debunk the use of the term innocent passage every time Beijing applies it to the EEZ. If the term seeps into common parlance, it will find its way into the legal debate over the EEZ, the United States will have yielded a crucial point. It will have let China redefine a legal precept. Bad idea.
Read the full story at The Diplomat