Sino-US Differences

Over SCS appear to be irreconcilable

- P.K. Balachandran

The on-going conflict between China on the one hand and the “Free World” led by the US on the other over the South China Sea (SCS), is unlikely to end in the foreseeable future. China’s irredentist claims in the strategically located waterway and the Western powers’ pressing need for free navigation in that choke point seem irreconcilable. The conflict is becoming shaper with both the US and China indulging in aggressive military maneuvers and the US mounting economic pressure and imposing sanctions on China.

On August 26, the US announced that it is imposing visa restrictions on Chinese nationals “responsible for, or complicit in, either the large-scale reclamation, construction, or militarisation of disputed outposts in the SCS, or China’s coercion against Southeast Asian claimants to inhibit their access to offshore resources.”

In addition, the Department of Commerce added 24 Chinese state-owned enterprises to the ‘Entity List’, including several subsidiaries of China Communications Construction Company (CCCC), a mega-conglomerate.

The US State Department said that since 2013, China has been using its state-owned enterprises to dredge and reclaim more than 3,000 acres on disputed features in the SCS, “destabilising the region, trampling on the sovereign rights of its neighbours, and causing untold environmental devastation.”

“CCCC led the destructive dredging of the PRC’s South China Sea outposts and is also one of the leading contractors used by Beijing in its global One Belt One Road strategy. CCCC and its subsidiaries have engaged in corruption, predatory financing, environmental destruction, and other abuses across the world,” the US alleged.