China, Japan, and Senkaku Islands: Conflict in the East China Sea Amid an American Shadow by Monika Chansoria

Author:Monika Chansoria [Chansoria, Monika]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Political Science, World, Asian, General
ISBN: 9781351011433
Google: _LpXDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 40002338
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

Strategic Power Play

The previous and current leadership in China is seeking ways to leverage Beijing's growing military, diplomatic, and economic clout to advance its ambitions to establish regional preeminence and expand international influence. In this reference, the military-technological development of the People's Liberation Army and the tenets and probable development of Chinese security and military strategies over the next 20 years will leave an indelible impression on Asia's geo-strategic scene — perhaps a definitive and decisive one. The longterm, comprehensive modernisation of the armed forces of the People's Republic of China has entered a new phase since January 2016 as Beijing unveiled sweeping organisational reforms to overhaul the entire military structure. These reforms aim to strengthen the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) control over the military, enhance the PLA's ability to conduct joint operations, and improve its ability to fight short-duration, high-intensity regional conflicts at greater distances from the Chinese mainland.40 The Chinese leaders fully comprehend that instability/conflict would substantially jeopardise China's peaceful external environment that has enabled its economic development in the past decades — a tenet that is central to the perpetuation of the CCP's domestic political legitimacy. That said, China, simultaneously has continued to assert sovereignty claims over features in the East and South China Seas. In the East China Sea, China continued to use maritime law enforcement ships and aircraft to patrol near the Senkaku Islands —viewed as a tacit move to enforce maritime claims, just below the threshold of provoking conflict.41

It is becoming nearly habitual tor China to use a progression of small, incremental steps to increase its effective control over disputed areas in the land and maritime realms, and avoid escalation to limited or full-scale military conflict, while concomitantly maintaining a near-continuous presence in the disputed maritime, land area/areas to demonstrate its unceasing claim. In the long term, the Chinese leaders appear to be fixated on developing the capabilities they deem necessary to deter or defeat adversary power projection and counter the US' intervention during a crisis or conflict. In fact, the US Department of Defence has acknowledged in a 2016 declassified report (National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010, Public Law 111-84) that China's military modernisation is producing capabilities that hold the potential to reduce core US military technological advantages. With an expanding global footprint, China's military modernisation programme has become more focussed on investments and infrastructure to support a range of missions beyond China's periphery, including power projection and sea-lane security.

The emergence of China as a global actor presents a far-reaching challenge, especially for policy-makers in the region, given the on-going power shifts driven by China's growing comprehensive national power and influence. Japanese analysts argue that with this power shift that has been underway in the region, as China rises, the time has come for Japan to rethink its post-war strategic policy and consider its strategic options for the future: (l) the continuation of the status quo—the policy of keeping the US as the foundation of Japan's security strategy while maintaining a

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