All the U.S. Can Do is Play Cat and Mouse with the Dragon in the South China Sea

Austin Ramzy has a decent story, "KFC Targeted in Protests Over South China Sea," about an uptick in Chinese protests directed at the United States for its support of the Philippines' successful suit, decided last week in The Hague by an international tribunal, denying China's territorial claims over the South China Sea. According to Ramzy,

KFC outlets in about a dozen cities, including Hangzhou, in Zhejiang Province; Changsha, in Hunan Province; and Yangzhou, in Jiangsu Province, were targeted by protests and calls for a boycott on Monday, according to a report from Sohu News, a Chinese online news outlet. But the campaign was far smaller than previous nationalist boycotts, and state media outlets warned protesters to avoid any illegal behavior.

Ramzy doesn't mention the bombings of Kentucky Fried Chickens in Egypt last year. Yum Brands, the corporate owner of KFC, says it plans on selling its China operations, no doubt a shrewd business decision given that we are at the beginning of what promises to be a prolonged period of showy super-power saber rattling.

Yesterday Michael Forsythe reported, "China Begins Air Patrols Over Disputed Area of the South China Sea," that the Dragon would begin overflight of the Spratly Islands:

HONG KONG — China said Monday that it had begun what would become regular military air patrols over disputed islands and shoals of the South China Sea, highlighting its claim to the vast area a week after an international tribunal said Beijing’s assertion of sovereignty over the waters had no legal basis. 

China’s air force flew a “combat air patrol” over the South China Sea “recently,” Xinhua, the official news agency, reported, citing Shen Jinke, an air force spokesman. The patrol consisted of bombers, fighters, “scouts” and tankers and would become “regular practice,” Mr. Shen said, according to Xinhua.

The announcement of the air patrols, plus a separate statement that China would conduct military exercises in the South China Sea off the coast of Hainan Island, came as Adm. John M. Richardson, the chief of United States naval operations, was in Beijing to discuss the South China Sea and other issues that arose after the tribunal rebuked China’s claims over the waters on July 12.

The landmark decision rejected China’s assertion that it enjoys historical rights over a huge area of the South China Sea encompassed by a “nine-dash line.” China had argued that the tribunal had no jurisdiction in the matter.

***

On Monday, Admiral Richardson’s Chinese counterpart, Adm. Wu Shengli, said China would continue construction in the South China Sea. In the past two years, China has reclaimed thousands of acres on seven features in the Spratly Islands, an area where Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims, building ports, large airstrips and radar installations.

“We will never stop our construction on the Nansha Islands halfway,” Xinhua, in a separate report, quoted Admiral Wu as saying, using the Chinese name for the Spratly chain. “The Nansha Islands are China’s inherent territory, and our necessary construction on the islands is reasonable, justified and lawful.”

***

Bonnie S. Glaser, a senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that a more telling test of China’s posture after the decision last week may come when the United States Navy resumes so-called freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea, which often involve testing Chinese claims by ordering American ships to transit within 12 nautical miles of Chinese-claimed features.

The story is worth reading for its helpful map of the South China Sea.

The U.S. is in a pickle here. It can only threaten belligerence, belligerence that the Chinese know is a complete farce. Is the U.S. willing to go to war over territorial claims and island construction in the South China Sea? How can it when it is fighting multiple wars in the Greater Middle East and Africa and every aspect of its political life is divided? The GOP is split, as are the Democrats. The deep state is intact but it is at capacity managing the rewrite of Sykes-Picot and its reboot of the Cold War, not to mention the dissolution of the European Union that these moves have elicited. Also worth mentioning, a completely moribund U.S. antiwar movement will rise from the dead if it looks as if Obama's Asia pivot is going to morph into a shooting war.

No, all the U.S. can do is plead for the Dragon to come to the negotiating table. An illuminating sample of the pleading tone can be found in an unsigned editorial published by The New York Times last week, "Testing the Rule of Law in the South China Sea":

Given China’s stake in peaceful trade with the rest of the world, it would be foolish for President Xi Jinping to take provocative actions that could inflame regional tensions and conceivably lead to a military confrontation with its neighbors or the United States. Retaliatory measures — further island-building at Scarborough Shoal, for instance, or declaring an air defense zone over large portions of the South China Sea — would be risky.

In fact, the ruling offers a fresh opportunity to address maritime disputes in a peaceful manner. China’s ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, condemned Tuesday’s ruling but said Beijing remains open to negotiations. Nations in the region have often gone wobbly in the face of pressure from Beijing. At this critical moment, despite competing interests of their own, they need to join the Philippines in endorsing the tribunal decision and then proceed, if necessary, with their own arbitration cases.

The United States, which is neutral on the various claims, can help ensure a peaceful, lawful path forward. The Obama administration has said that disputes should be resolved according to international law, a position it now reaffirms. It has built closer security relations with Asian nations and responded to China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea with increased naval patrols. This combination of diplomacy and pressure is sound, but the hard part is getting the balance right.

My guess is the U.S. is going to play the long game. Draw out negotiations, play cat and mouse with its destroyers and its spy planes, and hope that Abe can rapidly militarize a pacific Japanese populous. Better than a war with China, but still foolish and unsuccesful.

Umbrella Revolution Folding Up After Only a Week

I should be clear. I am not opposed to the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

What I am opposed to is the official narrative of the protests as told in the Western mainstream media. That narrative goes something like this: a peaceful, industrious, capitalist people struggles to free itself from the tentacles of a totalitarian Communist China by embracing the kind of democratic reform we enjoy in the egalitarian, modern West.

It is a crock of shit, a lie, part of the larger narrative of official enemies. There are bad actors on the global stage, according to the Gray Lady, and these number Iran, China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, as well as others. The official enemies found in the mainstream media almost always align with those that the U.S. State Department considers antagonists.

Take today's paper for instance. the number of major stories devoted to Occupy Hong Kong equal that of the West African Ebola outbreak. All this week there have been saturation levels of coverage of the pro-democracy protests; Occupy Wall Street never garnered anywhere near the attention.

So what are we to make of this? The obvious, I would think: We are dealing with an official enemy here, the People's Republic of China; so no expense will be spared. In the case of Occupy Wall Street (OWS), the enemy in question was the be-all and end-all of the U.S., "capitalism in one country" state itself, a nominally democratic massively plutocratic neoliberalism.

As the Hong Kong Occupy protests begin to splinter today, it is interested to note the differences and similarities with Occupy Wall Street. Of significant differences, I think there are two. First, Occupy Wall Street was very careful never to articulate specific political demands, as have the two main student groups and Occupy Central With Love and Peace have in Hong Kong. In Hong Kong the two demands are that chief executive Leung Chun-ying resign and that going forward his successor can be elected by popular vote without first being approved by a nominating committee selected by Beijing. OWS was a Utopian movement, a grand gesture rejecting pretty much the entire cultural project of the West -- its consumerism, its pay-to-play representative democracy, its pauper's wage slavery careerism. There have been indications that this sensibility is also at work in Hong Kong. Good.

Second, the street occupations in Hong Kong are more akin to what went on in Bangkok in the run up to the military coup there than Occupy Wall Street and its various epigones across the United States. OWS was very careful to choose parks, usually located downtown and relatively small, for its occupations. Marches would proceed from those spaces. But mass sit-ins at several locations of the type that protesters in Hong Kong are undertaking were never a feature of Occupy Wall Street -- for the simple reason that, without a doubt, the police would crack down quickly and harshly and be applauded in the prestige press for doing so.

The main similarity between OWS and Hong Kong is the commitment to leaderlessness and consensus in decision making and a lateral rather than hierarchical social structure. This is creating the obligatory splintering and chaos, as Austin Ramzy and Keith Bradsher describe in "Hong Kong Leader Refuses to Resign, but Deputy to Meet With Protesters":

“We don’t have a leader,” said Irene Ng, an English major at Hong Kong Baptist University. “This is trying to be a democracy, but then you try to reach a decision and you can’t. Nobody can decide. The ultimate problem is it might split us apart.” 

The protesters interviewed gave no indication that a retreat was imminent. But many wondered how long they could sustain the turnout necessary to block crucial roads in the city and just what would constitute an acceptable victory. 

Tim Lam, an engineer who said he had joined the sit-ins every day since Sunday, said he expected the occupation to last another week at most. “That’s about how long the protesters’ passion can last,” he said. “After one, two weeks of occupation, protesters would start to think about how it affects the economy, the everyday lives of people.” 

Further escalation by the protesters could alienate members of the public resentful of a demonstration that affects their daily lives. But without more aggressive steps, the protests could fade. “If we take rash actions, we may lose people’s sympathy,” said Niko Cheng, a recent college graduate and protester in Mong Kok, a densely populated area of Hong Kong on the Kowloon Peninsula. “But if this drags on — it’s already turning into a carnival, with people dancing, singing and all that — people may forget what they’re here for.” 

Prominent voices in the pro-democracy campaign have indicated that there is no consensus on what, short of an unlikely reversal of the central government’s position, would lead to an end of the protests.