PLA Gen. Li Shangfu, Chinese defense minister, peaks for the first time in public at Shangri La Dialogue 2023. IISS CEO John Chipman is to the right. (Credit: IISS)
SHANGRI-LA DIALOGUE — In his first public appearance, China’s defense minister left little doubt that his country’s military will continue to engage in what the US and other allies call dangerous and unprofessional behavior at sea and in the air, saying any foreign military should “mind its own business.”
The latest incident involved a US destroyer, the USS Chung-Hoon, which was doing a rare joint transit of the Taiwan Strait with a Canadian ship, the HMCS Montreal on Saturday. The incident was witnessed by a Canadian reporter on the Montreal, who reported “a People’s Liberation Navy ship picked up considerable speed and cut in front of the bow of the Chung-Hoon, a maneuver HMCS Montreal’s commander, Capt. Paul Mountford, called ‘not professional.'” The Canadian captain said the Chinese ship passed within 150 yards of the Chung-Hoon — a tiny distance for a fast-moving warship.
The Chinese action was deliberate, per the Canadian captain. “When the Chinese vessel altered its course, Mountford says the crew called the American ship and told them to move or there would be a collision. The Americans responded by asking the Chinese to stay clear of the ship, but the Chung-Hoon ultimately needed to alter course and slow down to avoid a crash.”
That close call came just days after a Chinese J-16 fighter jet flew in front of an American US RC-135, causing the RC-135 to rumble through the jet’s wake.
Watch the moment a Chinese jet buzzed an American spy plane over the South China Sea and flew directly in front of the plane’s nose, a maneuver the U.S. military called “unnecessarily aggressive.” Here's what to know about U.S.-China relations: https://t.co/FrD5CPGzZc pic.twitter.com/2mfGlre0QA
— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 1, 2023
Pressed by speaker after speaker after his hour-long speech this morning to explain recent Chinese actions in the Taiwan Strait and in the South China Sea, Gen. Li Shangfu finally delivered an unequivocal answer when prodded by John Chapman, CEO of the Institute of International Strategic Studies.
“We have codes for sea and air reached with many other countries to prevent unnecessary dangers. But I want you to also raise a question. The incidents you mentioned, why did all those incidents happen in areas near China, not areas near other countries?” he asked. “To truly prevent such incidents in the future, we don’t only need the codes we have already have. The best way is for all the countries, especially the naval vessels and countries […] not to do closing actions around other countries’ territories. What’s the point in going there? For China, we always say, mind your own business.”
On top of that injunction, Li told the audience here that “some country” forced its rules on others, portraying international law as a sort of conspiracy by the West to hem China in. For its part, China is, according to Li, “committed to promoting cooperative, collective and common security in our region on the basis of mutual respect.” He said “fairness and justice should transcend the law of the jungle for countries big or small, strong or weak, rich or poor, equal members of the international community.”
But, he said, “some country […] takes a selective approach to rules and international laws. It likes forcing its own rules on others… Its so-called rules-based international order never tells you what the rules are.” He did not mention the US by name.
So, the defense minister says the existing rules — which include the UN Charter, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the myriad websites about international law, its underpinnings, precedents and rulings by various bodies — aren’t fair. What would China do instead?
“Setting security rules does not mean reinventing the wheel or overturning the existing rules. Rather, countries should abide by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and complement and refine existing rules to make the international order fairer and more equitable,” he averred.
He then presented a laundry list of initiatives China is pursuing through ASEAN and other Asia-Pacific organizations to “promote multilateral security mechanisms.” How these will be fundamentally different from the existing international order was unclear, except that China clearly believes it will have created a system with which it is more comfortable.
But fundamentally, Li made China’s position clear. It does not accept the current system and it wants other countries — mainly the United States — to leave its international waters and airways, Malcolm Davis, China expert at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told Breaking Defense after the speech.
“In effect, he’s saying, ‘China wants exclusive access to East Asian waters’ with the US Navy excluded,” Davis said. “In other words, China wants naval dominance and control. So much for cooperative security, and ‘win win.’”
China’s goal, Davis says, is even broader. “The big strategic goal is a Chinese-led international order, a Chinese century, where the US strategic primacy has ended. The US can basically move back to the Western Hemisphere and focus on itself, which is what he was saying. Then China sets the rules and China dominates the region. It is a Chinese dominated spirit. That’s what they want,” Davis said.
The US and many of its allies take part in Freedom of Navigation Operations, known as FONOPS, such as the one that just occurred in the Taiwan Strait.
The US Defense Department publishes an annual report on what the US says are “unlawful and sweeping excessive maritime claims — or incoherent legal theories of maritime entitlement” and lists each country and what their claims are.
“To ensure continued access by all countries to these areas, the US executes FONOPS designed to challenge coastal state maritime claims that unlawfully restrict navigation and overflight rights and freedoms and other internationally lawful uses of the sea related to these freedoms guaranteed in international law as reflected in the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention,” the State Department says. “FONOPs demonstrate the United States will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows.” The DoD report can be found here.
Australia participates in Indo-Pacifc FONOPS, because the vast majority of its trade passes through waters that China contests. Breaking Defense asked Richard Marles, Australian defense minister, about Li’s injunction to “mind your own business.”
“Freedom of navigation for a trading country like Australia is absolutely essential to our national interest. And so we stand for the idea that there should be freedom of navigation on the high seas, and we obviously welcome the efforts of countries which Australia engages in as well, that assert the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea,” Marles said. “But even where there are circumstances where countries have a disagreement about that, and militaries interact, it is so important that that interaction happens in a safe and professional way so that we do not see miscalculation, and we do not see accidents.
“Obviously, an accident in that context would be a disaster. And dialog is an important element to making sure that there is no misunderstanding and there are no accidents,” he said.