South China Sea: ‘reasonable’ for Asean nations to be worried about Beijing’s coastguard law

Southeast Asian countries are rightfully worried about China’s recently enacted coastguard law given that the law heightens the possibility that Beijing’s maritime patrols will use force when they encounter regional counterparts in disputed waters, the South China Morning Post’s China Conference: Southeast Asia heard on Wednesday.

Speaking during a panel discussion on the first day of the virtual conference, Trang Pham, a lecturer in international law and the Law of the Sea at Vietnam National University in Ho Chi Minh City, said China’s new law in effect expands its grip over the South China Sea and increases the possibility of “dangerous encounters” between its coastguard and the maritime patrol forces of Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and even the United States.

“I think other countries have reasonable worries about the law,” she said.

Her views were echoed by other panellists, although a prominent Chinese scholar on the Law of the Sea, Wu Shicun, argued that the law – passed by the National People’s Congress in January – was neither against international law nor beyond the current legal reach of similar laws by other countries.

Southeast Asian countries are rightfully worried about China’s recently enacted coastguard law given that the law heightens the possibility that Beijing’s maritime patrols will use force when they encounter regional counterparts in disputed waters, the South China Morning Post’s China Conference: Southeast Asia heard on Wednesday.

Speaking during a panel discussion on the first day of the virtual conference, Trang Pham, a lecturer in international law and the Law of the Sea at Vietnam National University in Ho Chi Minh City, said China’s new law in effect expands its grip over the South China Sea and increases the possibility of “dangerous encounters” between its coastguard and the maritime patrol forces of Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and even the United States.

“I think other countries have reasonable worries about the law,” she said.

Her views were echoed by other panellists, although a prominent Chinese scholar on the Law of the Sea, Wu Shicun, argued that the law – passed by the National People’s Congress in January – was neither against international law nor beyond the current legal reach of similar laws by other countries.

Pham, who is also a research scholar at the US-Asia Law Institute, said her alarm arose from reading the actual language of the law.

“We can see China [has] become more aggressive because you can see the term ‘necessary measure’ is used repeatedly in the law, and that term usually means using force,” she said.

The US last week joined Asian nations including Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia in stating its opposition to the law, saying it could escalate maritime disputes and be invoked to assert “unlawful claims”, referencing Beijing’s sweeping claim of sovereignty over much of the South China Sea, which it maps with a so-called nine-dash line.

“Allowing the coastguard to destroy other countries’ economic structures and to use force in defending China’s maritime claims in disputed areas strongly implies this law could be used to intimidate [China’s] maritime neighbours,” US State Department spokesman Ned Price said last Friday during a press briefing.

China in turn has stressed that the law is not aimed at any specific country. Apart from its dispute with Southeast Asian claimants in the South China Sea, it also has overlapping claims of sovereignty in the East China Sea with Japan.

Wu, the president of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies in Hainan province, said during the panel session that it was not unusual for countries’ coastguards to be given the right to use force no matter where they operate.

“From my perspective, [China’s coastguard law] neither violates international law nor goes beyond the current state of practice,” Wu said. “The law is misunderstood and [it is] wrongly interpreted by some countries.”

He said the United States coastguard has the green light to use force for personal defence, to prevent federal crimes, to prevent detained boats from escaping and to affect an arrest – with the same being true for Vietnamese and Malaysian coastguards.

When China does it, it is several measures more serious simply because of the sheer expansiveness of China‘s claims

Shahriman Lockman, ISIS Malaysia

Shahriman Lockman, a director in the Chief Executive‘s Office of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies in Malaysia, agreed with Wu that “the Chinese coastguard law mirrors a lot of what everyone else has”, but emphasised that the perceptions of how it was being used were magnified.

“There is no equivalent to it,” he said. “When China does it, it is several measures more serious simply because of the sheer expansiveness of China‘s claims.”

Both Lockman and Dino Patti Djalal, a former deputy foreign minister of Indonesia, said the real test of the law would be how China uses it when Chinese fishing boats are confronted by other nations’ maritime forces.

Djalal said the issue of illegal fishing was an important one for the Indonesian public.

“I hope our Chinese friends are very sensitive about what the Chinese coastguard will do in the event that Chinese fishermen go into our waters and our coastguard responds to them,” he said.

Lockman said that Malaysia maritime enforcement agencies could face a major challenge starting in March, when “a huge number of Chinese fishing fleets will actually venture to the southern reaches of the South China Sea”.

Lockman also said it was important to note that the South China Sea disputes were not just between Association of Southeast Asian Nations member states on one side and China on the other, but that various claimants had disputes among each other, too.

Shahriman added that there were a number of potential “flashpoints” on this front, including a possible dispute between the Philippines and Malaysia over the next year as the Philippines heads into its presidential election season, during which the South China Sea dispute between the two could be politicised.

Among Southeast Asian countries, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei and the Philippines each officially contest Beijing’s claims within the nine-dash line.

Although Indonesia says it is not a claimant state to waters in the South China Sea, it is at least an interested party because the northern reaches of its exclusive economic zone around the Natuna islands are also within the nine-dash line. Taiwan, regarded by Beijing as a renegade province, also considers itself a party in the dispute and has similar claims as the mainland.