In the past few months, China and the U.S. have been continuously flexing their military muscles by conducting military exercises or sailing their aircraft carriers around the East China Sea, Taiwan Straits and the South China Sea, creating disturbance and unrest in the region. Taiwan is faced with unprecedented challenges as the risk of war in the Taiwan Strait is threatening national security. The most likely point of strategic conflict between the U.S. and China in the struggle of the three seas is actually in the South China Sea. The U.S.' proxy war in the Taiwan Strait is based on personal campaign needs or the addition of a pawn in the rivalry with China. Therefore, more attention should be placed on the South China Sea where the U.S. and China may have a direct confrontation.

The Sino-U.S. confrontation in the South China Sea was caused by the strategic conflict between the two sides with China as the initiator. When Xi Jinping took office as president in March 2013, he began to fully dominate the power of the party, government, and military. In November of the same year, the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China upgraded the Belt and Road initiative (BRI) to a national strategy. The 21st Century Maritime Silk Road is the sea route part of the BRI that passes through the South China Sea after leaving the port from Fujian, and then divided into two branches to the Indian Ocean in the west and to Indonesia in the South Pacific in the east. In order to enable the South China Sea to safeguard the BRI, China began the land reclamation of Mischief Reef in the South China Sea in the winter of 2013. Thus far, China has built and militarized eight artificial islands, equipped with airports, deep-water ports, telecommunication networks, long-range radars, air defense and anti-submarine missile systems, etc.

With the construction of disputed outposts in the South China Sea, the move intends to transform the international water into internal water. It is like establishing private inspection checkpoints around freedom of navigation, innocent passage and other Law of the Sea, making the surrounding countries, maritime and naval powers feel threatened. In particular, it is in serious conflict with the U.S. regardless if it is Obama’s Asia-Pacific rebalancing strategy or Trump’s Indo-Pacific strategy. Globally, the U.S. deploys six major fleets in front line combat, and the South China Sea must be kept unobstructed at all times for flexible mobilization of mutual support at any time. This is also the main reason why Trump strongly opposes the BRI and has drawn India, which sees China as an imagined enemy, in the Indo-Pacific strategy which has been extended to Japan and Australia for additional support. It is not surprising that these four countries have also frequently conducted military drills near the South China Sea.

In order to counter China’s hegemonic behavior, the U.S. first attempted intimidation by civil means but when that had proven to be ineffective, the U.S. reverted to threatening with force. In July 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines over the South China Sea Arbitration and condemned China’s nine-dash line sovereignty claims over the South China Sea and the reclamation of the sea. According to a multi-party post-analysis of the Philippines' complaint, the U.S. had paid for the huge attorney fees and hired a Japanese person with a predetermined position to serve as the presiding judge. The development of the case was rather biased, including arbitrarily changing Taiping Island from an island to a reef. However, in the absence of any enforcement power in the arbitration court, the winning party can only vilify the other party in reputation. This was also resolved because the new Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte urgently needed China’s economic aid.

When civil means fail, shine the sword. During the meeting of foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Moscow on Sep. 10, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi disclosed that, in the first half of this year, the U.S. dispatched nearly 3,000 different military aircraft and more than 60 aircraft carriers and warships of various types in the South China Sea to flaunt its military strength. Earlier on Aug. 26, during its military exercises in the South China Sea, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launched four medium-range ballistic missiles, known as “aircraft-carrier killer,” into the South China Sea. One of the missiles, the DF-26B, was fired from Qinghai and the other missile, the DF-21D, was launched from Zhejiang. This move is undoubtedly intended to target American aircraft carriers.

On the same day, U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper claimed that the U.S. would not make concessions in the Pacific region. Furthermore, for the first time, he stated that the U.S. was not only a Pacific country but also an Indian Ocean country. Also on Aug. 26, the U.S. government announced the sanctions of 24 Chinese companies that played a role in helping the PLA reclaim and militarize the South China Sea. It seems that the U.S. will not relent as long as the internationally condemned artificial islands in the South China Sea are not demolished.

What does the Sino-U.S. strategic conflict in the South China Sea have to do with Taiwan? First, China will not seize Taiping Island and Dongsha Island in the South China Sea. This is an opportunity to realize the united front strategy of “Chinese people unanimously defend territories from foreign forces.” I will not make a statement except to reiterate that the islands around the South China Sea are still Taiwan’s inherent territory. This is a superior policy. Second, the confrontation between the U.S. and China in the South China Sea may evolve to a point where Taiwan must choose a side, for example in the event the U.S. military explicitly or secretly asks to borrow Taiping Island or Dongsha Island. On this extremely sensitive hypothetical topic, we need to deploy ahead of time and work harder to draw up multiple sets of contingency scripts.

(Liu Kuo-hsing is a retired ambassador and a professor in the Department of Journalism at the Shih Hsin University)

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