Palpitations in South-East Asia's maritime heart

China recently established a special agency in its Foreign Ministry to handle land and sea border disputes with neighbouring countries.

This is an overdue measure since the disputes, previously dealt with by several departments, are a festering source of tension and potential conflict with other Asian states, especially South-East Asian nations, India and Japan.

The announcement in Beijing on May 5 about the new Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs followed the release of Australia's defence white paper highlighting China's growing military clout.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu dismissed suggestions that China posed a regional threat, asserting that modernisation of its armed forces was "defensive in nature".

He added that the Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs would develop policies on land and maritime boundaries, guide and coordinate external work concerning oceans and seas, manage land boundary demarcation and joint inspections with neighbouring countries, handle external boundary matters and cases involving territories, maps and place names, and engage in diplomatic negotiations on maritime delimitation and joint development.

This mandate, with its emphasis on negotiation and cooperation, sounds promising. But recent developments suggest China is becoming more assertive in advancing its claims as its ability to enforce them increases, and the strategic and economic value of the assets encompassed in the claims rises.

To be fair, China has since 1998 settled at least 11 boundary disputes with its neighbours, among them Russia, Vietnam and Tajikistan. The most recent was the completion of the land border delimitation treaty with Vietnam last December.

But the biggest and most complex land and sea claims remain unresolved, despite years of talks. All relate to the maintenance or recovery of territory China says was taken by colonial powers when it was weak.

China is the world's fourth-largest country after Russia, Canada and the United States.

It has a land area of nearly 9.3 million square kilometres and a land boundary of 22,000km with 14 countries. On land, the most intractable dispute is with Asia's other major rising power, India.

China insists that about 90,000sqkm of territory in India's mountainous north-east, covering virtually the whole of Arunachal Pradesh state to the base of the Himalayas, is part of China.

The entire Sino-Indian border, which stretches for more than 3300km, is disputed and militarised.

India also rejects Chinese rule over 38,000sqkm of Kashmir land ceded by Pakistan to China in 1964.

China is currently blocking an Indian request for a $US2.9 billion loan from the Asian Development Bank. Indian officials say it doing so because part of the loan is marked for a watershed development project in Arunachal Pradesh.

This is just the latest example of China using its growing power and influence to advance its national interests.

Of course, all big powers engage in muscle flexing and arm-twisting. But China is a very different player in Asia from the US, which has no territorial disputes in the region.

China has made securing maritime rights and power a top national priority. The US Central Intelligence Agency's latest World Factbook says that China's total water area is just over 270,000sq km, less than half that of the US.

However, China claims maritime territory of 3 million sq km.

Most of it is in two areas the South China Sea, where China's claims overlap with those of several South-East Asia countries, and the East China Sea, where its claims are contested by Japan.

China underscored its position last week as a deadline expired for filing extended claims to a United Nations body over oil, gas and minerals on the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles (370km) out to a maximum of 350 nautical miles from land. China made a preliminary submission for part of the East China Sea and said it reserved its right to make submissions in other offshore areas.

In response to a joint submission by Malaysia and Vietnam in the southern part of the South China Sea, China wrote to the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon saying that its rights had been seriously infringed.

The letter stated that "China has indisputable sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea and the adjacent waters, and enjoys sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the relevant waters as well as the seabed and subsoil thereof."

China appears to be claiming national sovereignty over the maritime heart of South-East Asia.

It attached a map to the letter showing the approximate extent of the Chinese U-shaped claim, which covers about 80 per cent of the South China Sea and stretches southwards close to the Malaysian state of Sarawak and Indonesia's Natuna Islands. Some analysts thought China had abandoned this claim, which dates back many years and does not conform with the modern UN law of the sea treaty which China has ratified.

Does it mean that China is asserting sovereignty over all the waters within the nine-barred line drawn on the map?

Does China regard them as internal waters or territorial sea, through which the ships of foreign nations would no longer have the right of free passage, potentially disrupting one of the world's most important maritime highways for both commercial and naval shipping?

Is the nine-barred line viewed by China as its maritime boundary in the South China Sea, even though it is not marked by any coordinates?

The new Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs in the Chinese Foreign Ministry clearly has much work and a lot of clarification to do.

The writer is visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South-East Asian Studies in Singapore.