military and national security

• • In August 2016, The Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled that China’s territorial nine dash line over the waterways of the South China Sea were ‘unlawful’. 
  • Yet, this has not stopped the recent land reclamation activities of China and militaristic assertions of their perceived sovereign claim. 
• • The Chinese government claims an enormous area under what is known as the ‘nine-dash line’, which claims anywhere between 60-90% of the South China Sea waterway. 
  • Beijing maintains the area has been under Chinese rule since ‘ancient times’ (CNN). 
  • These claims override the different, sometimes overlapping, territorial claims over land features in the sea based on historical and geographical accounts
• • According to the Global Conflict Tracker, China has constructed ports, military installations and airstrips on islands around the sea, or manufactured their own artificial islands to construct military and industrial outputs. 
  • For example, in June 2015, the PRC completed construction of seven artificial islands in the Spratly Islands on reefs they occupy. These would host military and civilian structures (ABC). 
• • This facilitates the ability of China to effectively create a ‘strategic triangle’ (Asia Policy) of occupied islands of Paracel, Spratly and Scarborough Reef that has the ability to host civilian and military infrastructure.
• • These all represent themselves as efforts to tighten its hold on the sea, estimated to have 11 billion barrels of untapped oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. 
  • Moreover, the sea claims to host ⅓ of global shipping, and was worth more than $3 trillion in 2016 (Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) China Power Project). That included $874 billion of Chinese exports. 
• • In 2022, the PRC passed a law authorising the Chinese Coast Guard to ‘take all necessary measures, including the use of weapons, when national sovereignty, sovereign rights, and jurisdiction are being illegally infringed upon by foreign organisations or individuals at sea’.
• US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENCE: the great exceeding of China’s militarisation through land reclamation and construction has ‘allow[ed] China to maintain a more flexible and persistent military and paramilitary presence in the area’, which ‘improves China’s ability to detect and challenge activities by rival claimants or third parties and widens the range of response options available to Beijing.’  
• LIMITATIONS to ACHIEVING NATIONAL SECURITY

  • New Bilateral Defence Guidelines strengthened US security commitments under the US-Philippines defence treaty.
  • Stated that armed third-party attacks against Philippines armed forces, including Coat Guards, aircrafts, or public vessels, ‘anywhere’ in the Sea, would invoke US mutual security commitments.