Now China Wants All Subs in the South China Sea to Ask
Permission, Surface, Show Flag
DefenseOne, 21 Feb 17
Beijing's proposed revisions to maritime law, if adopted,
could set up a nuclear naval confrontation with the United States in
international waters China claims to own.
Submarines are designed with one primary aim: to travel
underwater. But when it comes to foreign vessels operating in the vast waters
it claims, China doesn’t much like that idea.
According to state media reports posted last week,
Beijing is drafting a revision to the nation’s maritime “traffic safety” law.
While in Chinese waters, according to the changes, any foreign submarine would
be required to stay surfaced and display its national flag. It would also need
to get approval before entering Chinese waters, and report to maritime
management authorities. China would reserve the right to bar or expel foreign
ships deemed to threaten “traffic safety and order.” Ships entering Chinese
waters without approval could be fined more than $70,000.
One big problem: China claims nearly all of the contested
South China Sea—with its strategic shipping lanes, rich fishing grounds, and
oil and gas deposits—as its own territory, based on its nine-dash line. That
claim was shot down last July by an international tribunal ruling under the
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). But Beijing is
sticking with it.
Another problem is that what most countries consider
international waters, China views more as territorial waters.
Under prevailing international norms laid out by UNCLOS,
a country’s territorial sea extends out 12 nautical miles (22 km, 14 miles)
from the coast. Here a country is free to set laws and regulate use, though a
foreign military vessel can still make “innocent passage” whereby it does
nothing threatening and carries on its way.
After that is a contiguous zone (another 12 nautical
miles) where a nation can continue setting some laws. Beyond that is the
exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Extending out 200 nautical miles (370 km, 230
miles), the EEZ is considered to be international waters under UNCLOS, though
within it a nation has sole rights to extract natural resources from the waters
(for example, fish) and below the seabed (including oil and natural gas).
China is among a small group of nations that interprets
UNCLOS to mean (pdf, p. 16) it can regulate foreign military vessels within its
EEZ. Under the proposed rules revisions, foreign submarines would be prohibited
from serving their purpose well beyond China’s coastal waters and throughout
most of the South China Sea.
“China’s waters are open to foreign ships as long as they
do not damage the waters’ safety, order, or China’s sovereignty,” Yang Cuibai,
a law professor at Sichuan University, told the Global Times. China, he added,
should take the lead in establishing legal order in the Yellow Sea, the East
China Sea, and the South China Sea. According to the hawkish tabloid, the
revisions will take effect in 2020.
Beijing would likely ignore any international rulings or
statements against the new regulations, just as it dismissed the tribunal’s
decision last July.
China wouldn’t necessarily enforce its new rules
immediately. In 2013, Beijing declared an Air Defense Identification Zone
(ADIZ) in the East China Sea, requiring foreign aircraft—even if in
international airspace—to identify themselves to Chinese authorities. The
country has done little to enforce the ADIZ, but establishing it was an
important first step that will make enforcement—when it comes—somewhat easier
for Beijing to justify.
Likewise, the proposed submarine rules might go
unenforced for years, until they are eventually used as justification for
interfering with foreign vessels.
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