Military clashes involving China and the U.S. in the South China Sea will be “increasingly likely” during Donald Trump’s second presidential term, but China will be more prepared this time for such skirmishes, according to Zhou Bo, military analyst and retired People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officer, in a November 19 South China Morning Post report.
Zhou, currently a senior fellow with Tsinghua University’s Centre for International Security and Strategy, asserted that the risks of clashes happening in the South China Sea were higher than for other hotbeds such as Taiwan.
He said accidents or serious crises could happen in the air or sea, and although in the past few months, there were regular confrontations between the Philippines and China, it is becoming likely that in the next four years, the confrontations would be between the U.S. and China instead.
China claims almost the entire South China Sea and does not recognize a 2016 arbitral ruling that said its claim to most of the South China Sea had no basis under UNCLOS, to which China is a signatory.
Tensions between Chinese and Philippine coast guards and naval forces in the West Philippine Sea have sharply escalated in recent months. Multiple confrontations have occurred, with Chinese vessels ramming and using water cannons against Philippine ships, resulting in damage and injuries.
According to the U.S. Department of Defense’s latest China Military Power Report, there were over 180 instances of PLA’s coercive and risky air intercepts against U.S. aircraft in the region, which was more in the past two years than in the previous decade combined.
The Philippines and U.S. have signed a Mutual Defense Treaty on August 30, 1951, and the U.S. has reaffirmed that the treaty extends to armed attacks against either country’s armed forces, aircraft, and public vessels — including those of their coast guards — anywhere in the South China Sea.
Hunter Marston, Asia-Pacific researcher, Australian National University, in a November 13 Business Insider report, said: “It would now take less of a spark for a skirmish or collision to trigger a conflict involving all parties.”
Gregory Poling, director, Southeast Asia Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies, in the same Business Insider report, said that although Trump “introduces a level of personal unpredictability compared to Biden”, “there is no reason to expect any major changes to U.S. policies on this front.”
With Trump’s America First agenda and his priority in tackling an increasingly assertive China’s challenge to the U.S. in the global stage, it is expected that he would protect America’s national interests and not let China claims sovereignty over South China Sea.
Based on a research report by Rand Corporation, a yearlong conflict in East Asia, which includes the South China Sea, could result in a five to 10 percent loss in GDP for the U.S.
The South China Sea, rich in fishing stocks, oil and gas, and is also a key global trade route, where an estimated US$3.4 trillion worth of international shipping trade passes through each year, holds not only economic, but strategic and geopolitical significance too for the U.S.
Photo credit: iStock/ Dilok Klaisataporn
