The South China Sea: From colonialism to the Cold War
The South China Sea: From Colonialism to the Cold War
WRITTEN BY PAWEL BEHRENDT
27 April 2020
Though rising to prominence in the last decade, the South China Sea dispute has been a live issue since at least the 1930, with disputed waters in Southeast Asia playing host to tensions between a variety of regional powers, dating back well into the 20th Century.
From the period of European colonialism through the war in the Pacific and into the Cold War, the waters of the South China Sea were never immune to the wider tensions at play both in Asia, with both China and the states of Southeast Asia seeking advantage over one another. The history of the South China Sea is one of falling and rising tensions where on several occasions the dispute has escalated into open fighting, with violent clashes between claiment states. The tensions during this period helped mould the regional security agenda in the Asia-Pacific region we see today, with key events during this time having important ramifications for the present day.
The beginnings of China’s claims
The origins of the South China Sea dispute as we know it starts during the era of European colonialism. The question of sovereignty of the Spratly and Paracel island chains were at first a peripheral issue, forming part of the wider tensions between France and China concerning the delimitation of the Gulf of Tonkin. As the region’s primary colonial power, France was able in the early 20th Cenutry to enforce its claims via its naval power, but from a legal perspective, the matter lay unresolved. During this time, the Spratly islands were knwon to the region’s inhabitants for their guano resources, a natural source of phosphorus, calcium, and magnesium, giving the archipelago some economic importance.
Owing to the strife and turmoil that embroiled mainland China at this time, the late Qing Empire and the early Republic of China were unable to assert any claims on the South China Sea. Thus unchallenged, France paid little attention to the remote islands, islets, rocks and reefs, tolerating economic activities in the region by Japanese entrepreneurs, who in the 1920s started guano exploitation.
The situation changed dramatically in the early 1930s with the Japan’s invasion of China and the Empire of the Rising Sun’s attempts to exert hegemony in East Asia. In 1931 and 1933, France was forced to assert its claims to the Paracel and Spratly Islands more forcefully, incorporating them into French Indochina.
China issued in response a diplomatic protest in September 1932, claiming the Paracels as “the southernmost territory of China”. The following year the government in Nanjing established a special commission reviewing and appraising the maps of the contested region. The result of this two-year work was “the Map of Chinese Islands in the South Sea” published in April 1935, the first official Chinese government map picturing Peking’s claims in the South China Sea
War in East Asia
The Sino-French dispute faded into the background in the face of Japan’s invasion of China. Already in September 1937 Japanese Marines had landed in Hainan and occupied the Paracel Islands. However faced with a strong response by both France and the United Kingdom, Japan reluctantly withdrew its forces.
In the next year however, with the Imperial Japanese Navy blockading China, Japan once again turned its attention to the Paracels but this time French naval and marine forces in Indochina were ready. The French Navy prevented another attempt to invade Hainan and in July 1938 Paris for the first time sent troops to the island archipelagoes of the South China Sea.
As the prospect of war in mainland Europe grew, France and the United Kingdom’s invariably turned their attention and their forces from Asia, thus giving Japan the opening it was looking for. On 31 March 1939, Japanese forces occupied and annexed the Spratlys. This time the operation was aimed principally against the U.K. rather than China or France. The Spratly Islands in the South China Sea lay directly in the middle of the British “Security Triangle” (Hong Kong, Singapore and Port Darwin) in the Far East.
This move now provided Japan with new bases to threaten the vital Sea Lanes of Communication for the Royal Navy’s Far East Fleet, as well as Southeast Asia more broadly. The most important of these was the submarine base on Itu Aba (Taiping) Island, the largest island in the Spratlys. As Japan launched its offensives across the Pacific in 1941, the bases in the South China Sea were used to support the eventual invasions of Indonesia, Malaya and the Philippines.
After the Second World War
With the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty in 1951, Japan renounced “all right, title, and claim to the Spratly and the Paracel Islands”. However, there was not a single word in the document regarding the rights to archipelagos.
Nonetheless since 1945, the Republic of China (ROC) became increasingly active in the contested region, conducting naval patrols, survey missions and establishing a garrison on Itu Aba (Taiping Island) following Japan’s surrender.
In the 1970s, China showed that cooperation between the military and paramilitary forces play an essential role in its maritime strategy. The clashes with Vietnam during the Cold War allowed Beijing to refine the concept and practices of hybrid warfare.
Detailed information about features of the South China Sea collected by ships resulted in several documents published by the ROC Ministry of Internal Affairs in late 1947 and early 1948. One of them was the “Location Map of the South Sea Islands”, where the “nine-dash line” appeared for the first time, though it was an “eleven-dash line”, with two dashes in the Gulf of Tonkin. This way the Republic of China claimed the Spratly, Paracel and Pratas Islands, as well as the Macclesfield Bank though only the island of Itu Aba was occupied by ROC troops. France upon its return to the region ignored the Chinese claims.
Before any resolution on the South China Sea could be established between France and China however, the region was once again plunged into war. Following Japan’s surrender, China was plunged into civil war between the Nationalist government of Chang Kai-shek and the Communist forces under Mao Zedong.
France likewise was fighting an exhausting war against Communist guerrillas in the valleys and rice paddies of Indochina. For the French, the situation was even more clouded in terms of sovereignty. Paris claimed only the Spratly Islands, but its puppet State of Vietnam claimed both Spratly and Paracels. As the ROC and France were war-time allies and in the face of a common Communist threat, the archipelagos in the South China Sea once again became secondary issues.
After the Communist victory in the Chinese civil war, the new People’s Republic of China announced the same claims as the ROC. Similarly in Indochina, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north of the country announced the same claims of the French backed State of Vietnam.
A solution to the South China Sea dispute may well have been found at the San Francisco Peace Conference. However, because of the Korean War and the emerging situation around Taiwan, Washington decided against inviting representatives from the ROC or the PRC, thus neither sides of the Chinese Civil War were represented. French appeals to declare the Spratly and Paracel Islands part of French Indochina resulted in them coming under the control of France, and later South Vietnam.
As the Cold War heated up in Asia, especially in Korea, the United States dismissed the the archipelagos as not relevant. The same opinion was shared by Great Britain. A report of the British Colonial Office from August 1950 stated that occupation of Spratlys by Communist China could do “little strategic harm”, even if some military facilities would be built there. The British were convinced that in case of another major war in the Pacific, allied naval dominance involving the retaking of islands of the South Chian Sea “would be a fairly simple matter”.
Thus for the next two decades, the South China Sea went nearly dormant. During this time the original map published by the People’s Republic of China in 1953, without any official reason, changed the “eleven-dash line” into the “nine-dash line”, the two dashes in the Gulf of Tonkin were removed.
The Battle of the Paracels
The situation in the South China Sea began to change in the late 1960s when the possibility of deposits of oil and gas under the seabed were found. The prospect of major economic gains brought from resource exploitation encouraged Communist China, North and South Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia to all reassert their respetive claims.
At the beginning of the 1970s, American declarations of disengagement from Southeast Asia and the moving U.S. forces out of the Gulf of Tonkin to Guam created a security void in the region and China grabbed the opportunity.
Starting in 1970, the People’s Liberation Navy (PLAN) started survey operations in the South China Sea and in early 1971 Beijing reasserted its claims to all of the Paracel and Spratly Islands. Washington was caught wrong footed. With the U.S. retreat from Indochina and the abandonment of South Vietnam, Beijing moved into the vacuum.
China’s first target was the Paracels. The western part of the archipelago was under the control of South Vietnam; the eastern was controlled by China. However, both sides undertook frequent incursions into each other’s waters.
In January 1974, South Vietnam’s Navy and China’s ‘maritime militia’ clashed and escalated into an all out sea and land battle, with the participation of the PLAN. The operation for Beijing was a high priority; it was supervised by the Defence Minister and Vice-Chair of the Central Military Commission, General Ye Jianying and Deputy Prime Minister Deng Xiaoping, who just several months earlier returned from exile. In a series of firefights and clashes on 17-18 January, China seized the Paracels. The South Vietnamese lost one corvette, 53 men, and 48 POWs. All of them was released later in Hong Kong after mediation of the Red Cross. The Chinese confirmed 18 killed in action.
The battle put the whole of the Paracel Islands under the control of China. Beijing sent a clear warning to the other claimants that under favourable circumstances, it is ready to use force to resolve the matter in its favour. The Chinese action against South Vietnam was protested by North Vietnam. The bitterness in Hanoi was all the greater as shortly before the PLAN operation in the Paracels, Beijing had agreed to bilateral talks on the South China Sea.
In 1988, when China took the Johnson South Reef from Vietnam it again showed that under favourable conditions, in this case the decline of the USSR, that it was ready to use force. China’s clash served as a warning towards other claimants.
The battle was yet another factor that aided in degrading Sino-Vietnamese relations, which turned to open hostility after Vietnam invaded Cambodia to depose the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal regime. It is worth noting that during the Sino-Vietnamese War in February-March 1979, the People’s Liberation Army Navy did not conduct further naval operations against the Vietnamese holdings in the Spratly archipelago. The PLAN remained passive during the conflict, due to the large concentration of Soviet warships in the Gulf of Tonkin.
To the U.S., both the Battle of the Paracel Islands and the lack of PLAN activities during the war of 1979 confirmed a widely held view in Washington. Despite its opportunism against South Vietnam, China’s naval capabilities were limited, even in a small scale conflict and posed no challenge to American naval dominance in the Pacific. The South China Sea dispute could thus still be ignored.
The South China Sea in the 1980s
The beginning of the 1980s in the South China Sea saw setbacks for China. The Soviet Union’s alliance with Vietnam and enhanced naval presence limited China’s ability to execute its claims further. Other claiment states eagerly took advantage of the opportunity. In a short time Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan and Malaysia occupied nearly all the features in the Spratlys which stood salient at high tide. China attempted to take part in this race too but fell behind. Conflict with the Soviet Union and internal reforms, as well as a foreign policy aimed to win popular opinion in the Third World promoted restraint.
The ratification of UNCLOS in 1982 was another challenge. The convention weakened China’s nine-dash-line claims to sovereignty over the whole South China Sea. The legal definition of an island and rules on establishing the 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zones created new dynamics in the dispute. Control over islands gained even more importance.
The situation in the South China Sea again changed in the mid-80s. Since 1984 the Soviet Union, weakened by the war in Afghanistan and arms race with the U.S., had no more resources to support Vietnam and started to press Hanoi to normalise relations with China and ASEAN states. The Sino-Soviet détente also reduced the USRR’s need for an ally against the People’s Republic.
A step further was made by Gorbachev, who in 1986 announced strategic disengagement from Southeast Asia. Just like South Vietnam decade earlier, now Hanoi was now abandoned by its superpower and became isolated.
At this moment, a United Nations initiative gave Beijing another opportunity. In 1987, Beijing joined the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) of UNESCO. China had to build five stations, among them one in the Paracels and one in the Spratlys. In January 1985 it was decided that the No. 74 Marine Observation Station would be built at Fierry Cross Reef, located east of the Johnson South Reef, which was an area of activity for both Chinese and Vietnamese fishermen. Both countries had begun construction of logistics installations supporting the growing fishing fleets.
Tensions between China and Vietnam, high throughout the whole decade, erupted into fighting in 1988, this time the Spratly Islands served as the flashpoint. On March 13, 1988, three Chinese PLAN frigates clashed with two Vietnamese transport vessels around Johnson South Reef. The Vietnamese are reported to have lost between 40 and 74 dead; the most common number is 64. Vietnamese sources say about 40 POWs, but Chinese ones cite only about nine. The Chinese admit six killed and 18 wounded, but some sources mention no casualties and only one wounded.
China took all of Johnson South Reef from Vietnam and again showed that under favourable conditions, in this case the decline of the USSR, that it was ready to use the force. China’s clash served as a warning towards other claimants. The battle (or more often skirmish) of Johnson South Reef was a limited action however and as in 1974, Beijing did not seek a further escalation. Despite the defeat, Vietnam managed to take and keep other reefs, including Collins and Landsdowne Reefs.
Despite its limited scale, the skirmish of Johnson South Reef can be treated as a turning point in the South China Sea. The Sino-Vietnamese clash spurred all claimants to find solid legal backing for thier claims.
The first to take such steps was Taiwan, which in 1989 established two special committees under the Ministry of Internal Affairs to define borders of territorial waters and draft a law on the EEZ. The same year, Vietnam began to withdraw its troops from Cambodia. The Vietnamese leadership concluded that without Soviet support it was now impossible to fight simultaneously against the Khmer Rouge, the Chinese, and maintain frozen relations with the ASEAN countries, the majority of whom were U.S. allies.
The subsequent peace processes paved the way for the UN to deployed peacekeepers to Cambodia, for Vietnam to join ASEAN and the eventual establishment of formal relations with Washington in 1993. This was to the gain for the whole of Southeast Asia economically, but the lines for the present day South China Sea dispute were now drawn.
Conclusions
During the the Cold War, the South China Sea featured little in the rivalry between the United States and the USSR. The waters were always at the margins of far larger issues and only erupted into fighting when first the U.S. and later the Soviet Union disengaged from Southeast Asia.
This has relevance to today. It is highly unlikely that Communist China would have conducted aggressive actions against the Paracels and South Vietnam if the U.S. had maintained a large military presence and close diplomatic ties with Saigon post-1974. Likewise in the present day, the counter-factual question to ask would be this: would China have acted so aggressively in the South China Sea in last decade had the U.S. not invaded Iraq and focused so much attention on the Middle East?
Another echo from the Cold War with lessons for today is this. Already in the 1970s, China showed that cooperation between the military and paramilitary forces play an essential role in its maritime strategy. The clashes with Vietnam during the Cold War allowed Beijing to refine the concept and practices of hybrid warfare, where coordination between the PLAN and maritime militias was first deployed. In the 21st Century China has now turned the South China Sea dispute into a paramilitary conflict, waged just under the threshold of military confrontation.
The Sino-Vietnamese clashes in the South China Sea during the Cold War were also factors in leading to the reorientation of People’s Liberation Army in the late 1980s and early 1990s away from a focus on the defence of Chinese territory, and towards local regional conflicts.
Using the theatrical analogy: the Cold War set the stage and script for the later acts we are now seeing the South China Sea. It is astonishing how little the background and methods of the dispute have changed during the 70 or even 100 years. There are still (and continuously) four main factors driving all the actors: national pride, economy (fisheries and exploitation of resources), control over the crucial sea lanes of communication and the rivalry of the great powers. All plot tricks and even cliff hangers repeat themselves, but always in a different form.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Pawel Behrendt is a Political Science PhD candidate at the University of Vienna. He is a Member of the Board at the Boyma Institute in Warsaw and is a regular contributor to konflikty.pl. Image credit: CC BY-NC 4.0/Wikipedia Commons.