CONTINENTAL CHINA / MARITIME CHINA

Territorial claims of the nations bordering the South China Sea.

China's maritime borders, as claimed by Beijing.

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The different claims made by nations bordering the South China Sea cannot be separated by the People Republic of China's position on Taiwan. They're linked in the sense that any invasion of Taiwan by China will probably be accompanied by military actions in the Pratas archipelagos, located just south-west of the rebellious province, and also in the Spratlys archipelago, where an island is occupied by Taipei.

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Here's a few texts on that subject, first published on Twitter in the last days and weeks.

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US offensive operations in the South China Sea are conceivable in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, directed againts China's military assets in that theatre. Consequently, it's quite possible that, faced with such US offensive manoeuvers, China will favor delaying actions, while concentrating on the island of Taiwan.

As for one of America's allies in the region, Vietnam, it would probably adopt a defensive posture overall, carefully avoiding overt and deliberatly hostile actions. As for another ally, the Philippines, some support of US offensive operations against Chinese forces, both in Taiwan and on the South China Sea, are to be expected, with the inevitable risk of collateral damages. Those damages would likely be greater in the area surrounding the Philippino military bases where the US forces have recently gain access for its personnel and matériel.

Presently, four such Philippino military bases have been designated on the archipelago:

• two on the northern part of Luzon island, just opposite Taiwan,
• two on Palawan island, facing the Spratlys archipelago, in the South China Sea.

It is very important to emphasized that, years ago, all the portion of the South China Sea that lies inside the 9-dash line have been made an integral part of the province of Hainan. It follows that, for Beijing, that maritime territory is also an integral part of its national territory.

A few things have to be clarified about that the nine dash line, in order to better understand the South China sea situation. That line was defined by the Kuomintang at the end of World War 2, in the likely event of:

1. a Japanese defeat at the conclusion of said WW2,
2. the subsequent evacuation, by all units of the Japanese armed forces and by members of the Japanese civil administration, of the two large islands that lays off the Chinese coast, that is to say A) Taiwan, then a Chinese province occupied by the Japanese Empire since the XIXth century, and B) Hainan, then an integral part of the province of Kwangtong, occupied by Japan in the course of WW2, and
3. the subsequent return of those two islands to Chinese civil administration, meaning their transfer to the legitimate governement, i.e. to the Kuomintang (at that point in time), and
4. the almost inevitable resumption of open conflict between the legitimate governement, i.e. the Kuomintang (the Nationalists), and its main opposition, i.e. the Chinese Communist Party (the Communists), and
5. the possibility of a Nationalis defeat ar the hands of the Communists, and
6. the resulting necessity of starting the evacuation, off the continental part of China, that is to say off the soil of mainland China, of as many units of the armed forces of the Chinese governement (KMT) and of as many members of its civil administration as possible, and
7. the resulting necessity of transforming the maritime part of China (meaning mainly Hainan and Taiwan) as a kind of redoubt (or fortress) for the Kuomintang, against the Communists, who would then dominate the continental part of China, and
8. the resulting necessity of making that maritime China territory as large as possible, in order to give it strategic depth to the south and east of the two big islands, and also maximise its resources base in food production (fishing), mining production and all other types of economic production conceivable in the event of a prolonged conflict, and
9. the possibility that all the preceding moves would enable the Nationalists, in such an event, to use those two big islands as springboards for an eventual future reconquest of Continental China, occupied by the Communists, by the Kuomintang, relocated in Maritime China, with the help, of course, of the US Navy and other armed branches of the American military forces.

It turned out, eventually, that all those plans, easy to reconstruct in retrospect, didn't change the course of the Chinese Civil War, begun well before World War II and still unifinished in Anno Domini 2023. The Nationalists were never able to reconquer Continental China. After a few years of fghting, following the end of WW2, the Kuomintang was forced to flee Continental China (1949), (the year Mao Tse-Toung established officially the new governement of China, or PRC), never to return. Then, one of the two big islands, Hainan, was invaded (1950). It finally fell after some fierce fighting between invading Communist forces and defending Nationalist forces. It must be said that Hainan (raised to the status of a province of its own a few decades ago) lies close to the province of Kwangtung and was thus more or less easy to invade by forces crossing, by large and small ships, the relatively narrow body of water that extend between a large peninsula jutting out of the continent and the island itself.

As for Taiwan, its fate was different, essentially for two reasons:

• the exceptional width of the Taiwan Strait, the body of water that separate the province of Fukien, on the mainland, from the maritime province of Taiwan, settled by Chinese many centuries ago and, at the time, just recovered from the Japanese,
• B) the presence of numerous American warships on said large body of water...

All the CCP could do, then, was to shell heavily the closest islands still occupied by the Nationalists and to invade a few islands near Shanghai.

In that time period, Mainland China had the will, but not the means, to recover Taiwan, the part of China it didn't control, if one except the islands to the southward (Paracells, Spratlys, etc.), attached to Maritime China by the Kuomintang and still uncontrolled then. Now, these days, after recovering many of those southern small islands, it has both the will and the means to recover the last part of Maritime China that still escape it...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/08/competition-over-the-south-china-sea-explained-in-30-seconds

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If (or when) China invade Taiwan, Vietnam would be foolish to activate an open conflict with her enornous northern neighbor. But then, as a peacetime ally, she may be useful to America by providing, with its elongated coastline, a containment wall on the western side of the South China Sea, opposite the eastern containment wall that is shaped by the lenght of the Philippines archipelago. Along with Borneo's northern coast, on the southward od the sea, those walls neatly delimit a very vast, clearly maritime theater of operations.

It is doubtful, though, that China would be preparing offensive military operations in that quadrant, so far from its main bases of Hainan island and China's mainland. That being said, defensive operations are another matter.

In the event of an invasion of Taiwan, China would certainly wish to retain its existing assets in the South China Sea, especially since they're considered an integral part of the territory of Hainan province, thus of the territory of China itself, and are managed by civil administration, the military bases being only there, officially, to protect the (quite small) civilian population.

The concept of "maritime militia", surprising at first, must be understood in that context, the fishermen being civilians engaged in commercial activities, but enrolled in a militia force put up by the civilian government of China, whose proper military force are the army, navy and air arms of the People's Republic of China. Or course, those military units (and also the militia units) are at the service of the Chinese governement, as in the cases of most countries aroung the world, i.e. those not under the thumb of their military, likefor instance in Myanmar (Burma). It is also the way it works in the United States (despite the Trumpian insurrection that took place in Washington not very long ago...).

That being said, to call China a "Leninist dictatorship", like The Economist did in a recent article (see below), is a cheap shot, akin to the use of propaganda techniques instead of factual arguments. It also miss the point. In China, the military doesn't give orders to the population, like in Chili, after America's Pinochet took over. In China, the military is at the beck and call of the civilian government. To call Xi a dictator is like calling Louis XIII a dictator. That Louis could certainly be called un homme fort, since, as the legitimate sovereign of the royaume de France, he didn't hesitate to put siege to La Rochelle, a French Huguenot port that was siding with le royaume d'Angleterre.

In fact, Xi is de facto a subject to the judgement of his Party peers, while Louis XIII had only to fear the jacqueries, frondes and all those endless révoltes paysannes that periodically erupted in the French Kingdom, usually when the kings were too eager to go to war and when the taxes, accordingly, had a tendancy to go too high...

Voilà.

https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/09/07/joe-bidens-visit-to-hanoi-is-a-signal-to-china

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The origanal claim (9-dash line) was made by the Kuomintang, near the end of WW2, to delineate a Chinese maritime domain as wide as possible, to serve as a kind of Alpine Redoubt in case of defeat in the Chinese Civil war. It did serve its purpose for the KMT as an ultimate refuge after 1949, although the KMT soon lost Hainan and some other islands and archipelagos. The Chinese KMT claim, now transfered to the PRC's-run Chinese government, is still in place and valid, at least in the mind of most of the mainland's population, hence Beijing's attitude.

Still, the only way to enable a peaceful sharing of all those islands and bodies of water has to be under the aegis of the United Nations and it would need the consent of all claimants (or at the very least, most of them).

https://asiatimes.com/2023/09/chinas-ten-dash-line-ups-ante-with-the-philippines/

https://www.thejakartapost.com/world/2023/09/01/why-is-the-south-china-sea-a-flashpoint-for-asia.html

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Essentiellement, les BRICS, c'est un groupe de puissances économiques moyennes qui s'allient à de plus petites puissances (Global South) qu'elles, afin de se protéger des plus grosses qu'elles (monde occidental). Leur but n'est pas nécessairement d'éliminer ou de malmener les plus grosses puissances, mais d'utiliser l'avantage que leur confère l'action coopérative pour faciliter et accélérer leur propre développement, ainsi que celui des plus petites puissances, toute cela sans entraver du même coup le développement des plus grosses puissances, puisque rien ne les empêche de participer à tout le processus ici décrit par le biais d'investissements provenant d'entités publiques ou privées.

Dans ce contexte, sur un pur plan économique, personne n'a de raison valable ou compréhensible pour déclencher un conflit armé. Le facteur politique est cependant incontrôlable par nature et indépendant de toute prévision, comme ce fut le cas en Ukraine, dont la nature réelle et profonde des liens unissant (depuis des siècles) les peuples ukrainien, russe et byélorusse n'a pas été réellement comprise, pleinement évaluée ou même simplement prise en compte par un monde occidental un peu trop obsédé par l'individualisme à outrance, tandis que l'avidité territoriale des pays de l'Organisation du Traité de l'Atlantique Nord et leur attitude revancharde envers la Russie aggravaient encore une situation explosive en elle-même. Tout cela ne pouvait faire de l'Ukraine qu'une pomme de discorde potentielle assez évidente.

Bien évidemment, il est trop tard pour changer le cours des événements et prévenir le conflit ukrainien, celui-ci étant déjà en cours. Ce n'est peut-être pas encore le cas pour Taiwan, aucun coup de feu n'ayant encore été tiré.

Au bout du compte, l'évolution en cours du conflit ukrainien et la tenue, en janvier prochain (2024), de prochaines élections présidentielles taiwanaises risquent d'être déterminantes. Trois candidats sont en lice à ces élections. Le premier candidat, celui du Kuomintang (il faut rappeler que le KMT et le PCC croient tous deux dans le principe d'une seule Chine) et le deuxième candidat, de tendance plutôt autonomiste, tirent présentement de la patte derrière le troisième candidat, plutôt de tendance indépendantiste. Qui vivra verra....

https://africa.businessinsider.com/local/lifestyle/2-african-nations-have-finally-been-accepted-into-the-elusive-and-exclusive-emerging/8bll966

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Les choses se cristallisent peu à peu en mer de Chine méridionale. le Vietnam et les Philippines encadrent, l'un par l'ouest, l'autre par l'est, une vaste mer bordée aussi par la Chine, tout au nord, et par la plus grande île du monde malais, celle de Bornéo, tout au sud. Les États impliqués fortifient îles et îlots, récifs et atolls, suivant l'exemple donné par la Chine elle-même. Notons que cette dernière a placé la zone sous administration civile et sous protection militaire. Officiellement, tout le secteur relève de la province de Hainan, la plus petite et la plus récente des provinces chinoises. Les installations militaires ont pour mission de protéger cette province maritime, assez exposée et très vulnérable, surtout devant des puissances navales potentiellement hostiles, comme les États-Unis, le Japon, le Royaume-Uni ou l'Australie.

https://fulcrum.sg/troubled-waters-ahead-for-philippine-vietnam-strategic-partnership-on-the-south-china-sea/

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PLUS:  @charles.millar3 (Twitter)