Category Archives: Foreign policy

by | May 20, 2013 · 10:12 am

Taiwan: The most important R.O.C. in the South China Sea

Events over the last couple weeks have re-drawn attention, rightfully, to an oft-overlooked player in the South China Sea disputes, Taiwan (aka. Republic of China). SCS analyses often dismiss Taiwan’s claims as a marginal issue and is only mentioned in the context of mainland China’s claims, however as the most recent incidents with the Philippines demonstrate, Taiwan’s strategic importance to the South China Sea (and East China Sea) is actually woven into the very core of disputes.

Fishermen Wars

On May 9, a 65 year old Taiwanese fishermen named Hung Shih-cheng was shot and killed by the Philippine Coast Guard in a standoff. The PH Coast Guard claims that they shot at Mr. Hung’s vessel  to disable the engine as a self-defense mechanism because the fishing boat was attempting to ram-and-run. Eye-witness accounts through Taiwanese media however, report that the boat was struck by 30-40 bullets, which seems excessive. Mr. Hung was unarmed, accompanied on the boat by his son and two other sailors.

On May 10th, the news broke and Philippine officials acknowledged the incident and indicated investigations have began. Coast guard commander Rodolfo Diwata Isorena indicated that the 11 officers involved have been suspended from duty. On May 12, with tensions running high on both sides, Taiwan issued a 72 hour ultimatum to the Philippine authorities, demanding formal apology from the President, appropriate reparations to the fishermen’s family, and extradition of perpetrators to Taiwan for investigation to ensure “justice”. On May 15th, just minutes before the deadline, the Philippines announced that it would send its representative to Taiwan to apologize but that no extradition will occur and was unclear with regards to reparations. Taiwan subsequently rejected this apology declaring it insincere and insufficient. It announced a series of retaliatory actions, including withdrawing its diplomatic representative, conducting elevated sea patrols, and sanctions on work permits for the nearly 87,000 Filipinos working in Taiwan. The last action would prove to be costly to the Philippines which sends over a million workers overseas each year and is heavily reliant on remittances.

On May 17, Taiwan carried through with its threat to conduct joint Naval – Coast Guard drills in the SCS, the first time ever crossing the 20* latitude “temporary enforcement line” since the Taiwanese government established it in 2003. Taiwan indicated that these drills, along with heightened patrols (increase of 1-2 ships to 3-4 ships) are not a one-off occurance but will continue indefinitely, in order to ensure the safety of its fishermen. Continue reading →

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by | May 9, 2013 · 9:16 am

A Primer to the Philippines’ South China Sea Arbitration Challenge to China

Earlier in January this year, the Philippines submitted a unilateral challenge to China on certain key aspects of their ongoing dispute in South China Sea (SCS) maritime delimitations under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS). This challenge will take the form of an arbitration case before the International Tribunal on the Law of the Seas (ITLOS). To the uninitiated, this move is intriguing but unclear as to its real-world implications for international maritime law or the future of SCS geopolitics. The following primer attempts to translate the dense jargon of maritime law, distill the meanings behind subtle diplomatic language of Claimant States, and untangle the intricate web of geopolitical maneuvering to provide a clearer, layman picture of this case and its implications for the SCS disputes.

Why the arbitration case?

The ongoing dispute between the Philippines and China has been simmering for many years. Ever since a joint exploration agreement (along with Vietnam) to conduct seismic review of potential hydrocarbons in the SCS region collapsed in 2007, the tone and intensity of SCS disputes have escalated.  The situation came to a head when in early 2012, Chinese Coast Guard ships came into confrontation with a Philippine naval ship over harassment of fishermen in Scarborough Shoal, a formation in the Spratlys (南沙in Chinese). The Scarborough Shoal standoff did not end well for the Philippines as China has now established an ongoing blockade of the shoal. (More discussion of this standoff and its implications to follow in a later article) In response, the Philippines moved for ASEAN to issue a unified statement to China censoring it for its actions in the South China Sea. However, other ASEAN members proved reluctant to do so for many reasons. (More discussion of this will come in a later article) Suffice it to say, by Fall 2012, the Philippines began actively exploring other options to pursue its dispute with China.

What is happening?

To the layman observer of SCS disputes, the Philippines’ move to challenge China by arbitration may have been surprising. After all, it’s generally understood that China studiedly avoids multilateral engagement on SCS disputes and/or 3rd party mediation, insisting that the SCS disputes are a regional issue that should be addressed on a bilateral basis. Questions regarding this case include:

  • Can the Philippines unilaterally bring China to arbitration? And if so, does China have to engage?
  • Regardless of China’s engagement, does the ITLOS have jurisdiction to rule on the challenges?
  • What are the points the Philippines is challenging?
  • Even if ITLOS has jurisdiction to rule on certain aspects of challenges put forth, what are the actual implications for SCS disputes?

Continue reading →

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by | May 8, 2013 · 9:38 am

Myanmar ethnic reconciliation: Impossible without Chinese cooperation

Just outside of Yangon lies the “National Races Village,” a park laid out as a geographical representation of Myanmar, with real-sized model minority homes dotted around the park next to miniature lakes and mountains. The park feels quite similar to the Chinese Ethnic Culture Park in Beijing; both represent slightly bizarre attempts to paper over inter-ethnic conflict, as if both countries are trying to live out some sort of “big socialist family” of yesteryear.

Unfortunately Myanmar also seems to have copied much of China’s policies towards ethnic minorities. Sixty years ago, China promised its ethnic minorities that if they cooperated with the CCP, they would be granted self-autonomy. Myanmar promised the same thing in the form of the 1947 Panglong Agreement, which called for power sharing between the majority Bamar and ethnic minority groups. Both countries failed to live up to their promises. In China, the CCP has engaged in a campaign to eradicate traditional cultures and languages, and has kept minority areas under tight control by party officials. In Myanmar, Ne Win’s military coup in 1961 gave rise to centralized, authoritarian control, and to ethnic rebel groups who fought the military for decades. Continue reading →

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by | May 7, 2013 · 9:28 am

Myitsone: A road block for Sino-Burmese relations?

A year and half ago this past March, one of the more the surprising events in recent Sino-Burmese relations took place. With a short letter delivered to the Burmese legislature, President Thein Sein suspended the Myitsone Dam until 2015, the end of his term. The dam, a $3.6 billion project that would sit at the confluence of the Irrawaddy’s two main tributaries, was the centerpiece of a series of seven dams on the upper reaches of the river. The project was the result of a joint venture between the Burmese government and China Power Investment (CPI) beginning in 2006 and appeared to be of great importance to both sides. However, a nationwide protest campaign against the construction of the dam supported by Aung San Suu Kyi ultimately won out.

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by | April 24, 2013 · 10:45 am

Where have all the fish gone? Killing the Mekong dam by dam

The Mekong, a river of wildly majestic fast-flowing currents flowing through six countries, has long enchanted explorers with its rich biodiversity second only to the Amazon.

It is home to the Giant Catfish, and at least 877 fish species sustaining food security for around 65 million people which make the Mekong the world’s most important centre of freshwater fisheries.

“For the people born on the Mekong, the river is like their blood—the principle of life,” says Dorn Bouttasing, a Lao environmental researcher.

Surely it is unthinkable that man would want to endanger or destroy the basis of such extraordinary natural wealth? Such invaluable natural resources, their infinite value defies any attempt to measure with a crude price tag.

My documentary Where Have All the Fish Gone? (Eureka Films) looks at the four Chinese hydropower dams that have been already built on the Lancang (The Chinese name for the upper Mekong), but its main focus is on the Lower Mekong basin shared by Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

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Filed under Cambodia, China, Current Events, Economic development, Energy, Environment and sustainability, Food, Foreign policy, GMS, Governance, Laos, Mekong River, Sustainability and Resource Management, Thailand, Vietnam, water

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by | April 23, 2013 · 7:22 am

Book: River of Lost Footsteps

River of Lost Footsteps

Thant Myint-U (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Since the beginning of political and economic reforms in 2010, Burma has become a regular topic inthe news. Anyone who regular reads publications like the New York Times or the Economist would beable to consider themselves relatively well-informed about the rapidly changing situation in the Golden Land. However, much of the coverage of Burma is often ahistorical, and there is little public discussion about Burma before 2010, let alone before Aung San Suu Kyi. In River of Lost Footsteps, Thant Myint-U provides a detailed history of Burma over the past four centuries, all the while weaving in the story of his own family in Burma.

Indeed, Thant Myint-U is uniquely positioned to write such a history. Born in New York, his grandfather U Thant was the Secretary-General of the UN in the 1960s. Educated at Harvard, the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and Cambridge, the author has lectured extensively on Asian and British imperial history. In the book, his mastery of the subject is quite evident, but also is a certain objectivity. Being Burmese himself and having spent summers there while growing up, he has an obvious intimacy with the country and passion for it but at the same time, he lacks the nationalistic bias that some native Burmese writers might carry. Continue reading →

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by | April 18, 2013 · 12:00 pm

Regional Roundup for Week of 4.18.2013

Just the news this week. Continue reading →

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Filed under ASEAN, China, Cold War, Current Events, Economic development, Energy, Environment and sustainability, Foreign policy, Governance, Health, Laos, Mekong River, Myanmar/Burma, NEWS DIGEST, Thailand, Vietnam, water

by | April 15, 2013 · 10:31 am

The logic of China’s economic strategies in Southeast Asia

In so many ways, China’s strategies for its involvement in Southeast Asia are much more pragmatic, more predictable, and considerably less nefarious than any other rising global power that previous laid sight on region.  Moreover, those strategies, born in the 1990s, make even more economic sense now than at the time of their inception due to the current needs of its development trajectory.

Energy consumption and the speed of urbanization in China are rising at ever-increasing rates.  To keep pace, the central government must secure energy resources and safe, low-cost agricultural goods. Southeast Asian states, in a complementary fashion, have robust food export markets, as in the case of Thailand or Malaysia, or as in Laos and Myanmar, have abundant endowments of energy resources.  Chinese state owned enterprises and private business interests seek to access and integrate into these markets and new infrastructure linkages such as highways and high-speed railways are indicators of deeper market integration abroad. Continue reading →

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by | April 10, 2013 · 2:18 am

The Kachin Conflict and China: No More Non-Interference?

While peace hasn’t been an easy thing to come by in Kachin State these past few years, peace talks actually have. Since tensions between the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and the Burmese military erupted again in 2011, the two sides have held multiple rounds of informal talks, often to no avail. Last month’s talks, while not bringing an end to the conflict, were still important for another reason – they weren’t held in Myanmar, but instead in the border town of Ruili, China. This was the first time such talks have been hosted by China and raises questions about what significance they could have for the future of Chinese diplomacy.

As is already well known by now, China claims non-interference in other states’ domestic affairs as a guiding principle of its foreign policy. With this recent round of talks between the KIA and the Burmese government, however, we seem to see something different. Is China willingly taking up the mantle of responsibility associated with being a “global power” or is there a different motivation behind hosting these talks?

From my perspective, the latest round of negotiations has much more to do with China’s national security than any grand policy shift. China hosted these talks, which some might see as an involvement in Burmese domestic affairs, because they have a significant interest in seeing the Kachin conflict come to an end. China’s interests are intertwined in two ways. Continue reading →

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by | April 8, 2013 · 9:17 am

About East by Southeast

WRITE FOR US!  JOIN THE ExSE TEAM, contact us at eastbysoutheastmail@gmail.com

The East by Southeast team is made up of scholars, development professionals, logistics experts, environmentalists, green entrepreneurs, and policy makers. We all live and work in the region – some were born here and some are implants. It is in the framework of the wide variety of our opinions that we seek to promote a deeper discussion of regional challenges. Some of us write under pen names to allow discussion to flow freely.

In addition to blog posts, look forward to weekly new digests, book reviews, and data that will help better inform your understanding of this dynamic region.

 

WHY WE WRITE:

There are many good blogs about China and many from Southeast Asia, but it is surprising that there are few blogs looking at the connections between China and Southeast Asia given shared development challenges, centuries of historical and cultural interaction, and rising volumes of trade and people movement between China and Southeast Asia.

In the 1990s, nations and ethnic groups that were cut off from cross-border interaction during the Cold War began to reunite as peace spread throughout the region, and arguably, China’s rise has reinforced stability within the region to deliver deepened integration.  Fast forward twenty years, the region is home to some of the fastest growing economies in the world and rapidly changing urban spaces. It is also known for its abundance in natural resources and biodiversity, and development trajectories are converting those resources into cash crops and energy commodities for trade and consumption. On mainland Southeast Asia, a lack of policy coordination and communication between governments and stakeholders has already created a variety of trans-boundary issues like fisheries depletion in the Mekong watershed.  As a result, for the first time, the region faces threats to food security and a potentially gross mismanagement of its resource endowment.

In addition to the growing connections between China and Southeast Asia, the East by Southeast blog team will examine China’s footprint across its southern borders to provide answers to some of the big questions surrounding China’s global rise. We seek to understand the effect and return of China’s outpouring of aid and investment to its Southeast Asian neighbors and monitor changes in China’s approach to foreign policy as its interests spread across the region. We want to know how China’s neighbors are adapting to its rise and how effectively China’s soft power is spreading. There is much room for discussion and exploration of the gaps between China’s rhetoric on its peaceful rise in the region and its ability to continue expanding its resource base to feed the needs of a rapidly growing economy. Lastly, we are concerned with China’s adaptation and response to a new and concerted US foreign policy toward Southeast Asia.

From a different perspective, the blog team will look at how the space between China and its Southeast Asian neighbors is decreasing at a rapid rate as transportation infrastructure, advances in information transfer, and trade linkages reach across borders and states use what Yale scholar James C. Scott calls in his 2009 watershed work The Art of Not Being Governed, “distance demolishing technologies” to connect areas that were once the frontiers beyond all frontiers. For example, energy from hydropower plants is sent from Laos to the China’s east coast development zones, you can now drive a container truck from Kunming to Bangkok in less than a day on what was once previous non-navigable terrain, and in 2015 the ASEAN Economic Community promises to drop the barriers to the movement of labor and goods through the region. In addition to understanding the trajectory and obstacles of regional integration,
we want to explore how rapid and sudden improvements in connectivity reshape individual livelihoods, communities, and regional relationships.

There are so many stories to tell of the people who are shaping the region for better or for worse and of the people who are affected
by regional decision making. Narratives from the varied and violent histories of the Cold War, colonial, and pre-colonial eras can help demonstrate how history can inform the present challenges. In addition, the blog will expore many regional question marks such as the tenuous path to democratization in Myanmar (and Thailand and Cambodia), Kunming’s rise as the Bangkok of the north, a high-speed rail system through Laos, and the effects of salinization in the Mekong Delta.  Can cities and rural areas in the region learn how to provide each other with sustainable solutions to development challenges? Are there lessons to be taught as countries like Thailand, China, and Indonesia seek to escape the middle income trap?

The East by Southeast team is made up of scholars, development professionals, logistics experts, environmentalists, green entrepreneurs, and policy makers. We all live and work in the region – some were born here and some are implants. It is in the framework of the wide variety of our opinions that we seek to promote a deeper discussion of regional challenges. Some of us write under pen names to allow discussion to flow freely.

In addition to blog posts, look forward to weekly new digests, book reviews, and data that will help better inform your understanding of this dynamic region.

If you’d like to join the discussion, feel free to leave a comment after our posts, or if you’d like to contribute to the blog by becoming a team member, send us a message to eastbysoutheastmail@gmail.com.

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