Conspicuous quiet on South China Sea

Greg Torode

The South China Sea was conspicuous by its absence from President Hu Enhanced Coverage LinkingPresident Hu -Search using: Biographies Plus News News, Most Recent 60 Days Jintao's remarks to US business leaders on China's security concerns, adding to Beijing's strategic ambiguity on the matter - and to the wariness of neighbouring countries.

Last year senior officials described the sea as one of China's "core interests" and pressed "indisputable sovereignty" over the strategic waters, but the claim has never been repeated in a formal setting or official document. Hu's speech did not change that.

He stuck to Beijing's well-worn line that issues to do with Taiwan and Tibet concerned "China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and they represent China's core interests".

Regional envoys and analysts have been watching his visit for signs of how the South China Sea issue will play out. China's actions triggered deep concern in Southeast Asia last year - concern that helps the United States achieve its goal of re-engaging with the region.

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced in July that the US had a "national interest" in seeing the territorial dispute between China and four other nations over the sea resolved peacefully. China, which has long favoured one-to-one settlements, repeatedly raised concerns at Washington's motives.

While the issue was not aired publicly during Hu's visit, US officials were expected to outline their concerns in private.

"While China would prefer not to discuss the South China Sea with the United States, US policymakers will certainly table the issue," Ernest Bower, a regional analyst at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said.

"China does not recognise Clinton's logic in defining US interests in the South China Sea and does not welcome a focus on what it sees as fundamentally a set of bilateral disputes that need to be resolved with neighbouring countries."

While temperatures have eased as China and countries in the region talk about a legally binding code of conduct to keep the peace ahead of a final settlement, the South China Sea dispute has the potential to test this week's pledges of Sino-US warmth and co-operation.

"It is good to see at least the two big players talking, pledging co-operation and agreeing to work on their differences," a Southeast Asian diplomat said. "But the bottom line is we are still back where we started on the big questions - in the long term China wants the US out of East Asia, but the US, and its allies, want to make sure it stays around. And in the short term, the South China Sea is where some of those questions come to life."

China's envoys and military officials, for example, increasingly object to US naval activity off its coasts - activity that will increasingly involve the South China Sea as the US 7th Fleet monitors the People's Liberation Army Navy's highly sensitive submarine base on Hainan island.

The sea - through which most of the oil imported by China, Japan and South Korea is shipped - is considered key to China's naval ambitions since it affords a deep-water gateway to the Pacific and Indian oceans.

The US is developing a strategic partnership with Vietnam, which is expected to result in more naval activity. US Pentagon officials have said that whenever China objects to the US exercising its maritime freedoms in waters Washington insists are international, it has little option but to increase naval patrols.

"Summits come and go, but the naval deployments can only increase," an East Asian naval officer said. "That is the reality of this part of this world for the next few years."