China Casts Shadow on Historic Trilateral Summit
by Cordelia Jamieson
On August 18th, 2023, the Biden administration issued its strongest condemnation yet of China’s “dangerous and aggressive behaviour” in the South China Sea. The President of the United States convened with the leaders of Japan and South Korea at the wooded confines of Camp David, a presidential retreat in Maryland. Their objective: to project a united front and publicly commit to political, military, and economic cooperation. While these commitments cannot yet formally constitute a trilateral relationship, they mark a noteworthy step forward, given the historical complexities among these nations. White House Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell declared that the U.S. relationship with Japan and South Korea would be the “defining trilateral relationship for the 21st century”.
The recent summit was a pivotal stand-alone meeting fuelled by collective concerns and mutual interests in addressing international obstacles posed by China, North Korea, and Russia. In this unfolding geopolitical drama, the world watches with bated breath, eager to discern the implications of this alliance on an intricate web of international defence and security dynamics.
The South China Sea Dispute
The South China Sea, a region China has attempted to claim wholly, hosts an estimated 11 billion barrels of untapped oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Competing claimants Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam have been staking their claims on islands and sea zones as early as the 1970s. China insists that, per international law, countries should not be able to conduct intelligence-gathering activities within its exclusive economic zone (EEZ). However, according to the United States and the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), claimant countries should have freedom of undisclosed navigation in these waters. China refuses to accept this authority in the spirit of profit, monopolization, and contradiction. In recent years, satellite imagery reveals that China has militarized islands, forged airstrips, physically increased the size of islands, and created new ones altogether. To protect political and economic regional interests, the United States has challenged China’s assertive territorial claims. Moreover, Japan has sold military equipment to Vietnam and the Philippines to improve their maritime capacity and deter Chinese territorial aggression.
A History Fraught with Tumultuous Relationships
Historical tensions between South Korea and Japan stem from various conflict-ridden exemplars. This bilateral strain includes name disputes of the body of water separating Japan and the Korean Peninsula, the legality of Japan’s colonization of Korea from 1910–1945, and the treatment of sexual slaves by the Japanese imperial military during the war-torn period. Many grievances, however, are more contemporary. In 2021, the Japanese government approved a wastewater discharge plan set to release treated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, which was met with Korean resistance. Members of the Korean public feel the discharge poses an inevitable risk to the local fishing industry. On August 26th, 2023, 50,000 protestors gathered in the capital of South Korea to demand the Japanese government take action to avoid the impending disaster they fear. The commendable efforts of the Republic of Korea’s President, Yoon Suk Yeol, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida have drastically improved the bilateral relationship, which would have been unthinkable even earlier this year.
During World War II, the United States and Japan fought as bitter foes, notably marked by Japan’s surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor and the subsequent American detonation of two atomic bombs over inhabited Japanese cities. Throughout and since the Cold War, however, Japan became the United States’ closest and most reliable ally in the Asia Pacific region, an evidently remarkable turnaround. After the devastating bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were deployed, the U.S. subjected Japan to a seven-year post-war occupation that dismantled the nation’s military and restructured its political framework. They aimed to turn a small but powerful Pacific island into its Asian bastion against communism. Rather than humiliate Japan and devastate it long-term by demanding reparation payments, the United States manipulated a more positive relationship with its defeated counterpart. Americans airlifted food to avoid mass famine, allowed the figurehead Emperor to remain on his throne, and re-wired a nationalist imperial state to be democratic.
Global Implications and Expectations
A military conflict in the South China Sea would have a ripple effect spanning far beyond the immediate claimants in the region. Given China’s position as the world’s second-largest economy, it is a vital contributor to global economic stability. A conflict in this zone would force most shipping from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa destined for Asia and the western United States to divert around the southern tip of Australia. This rerouting would increase shipping costs and decrease international economic activity, with particularly dire effects on the countries at the epicentre of the crisis. Approximately 80% of global trade is transported by sea, and an estimated 20% to 33% is carried via the South China Sea. In the event of a complete freeze on international shipping, Taiwan’s economy would shrink by a third while China’s economy would only face a loss of 0.7% due to its extensive domestic markets outside the hypothetical conflict zone. Notably, the only country unaffected by such a trade downturn would be Ireland.
Moreover, the South China Sea acts as a physical buffer zone for the Chinese mainland, enabling it to create a military barrier against any future military threat. China’s continued control of the territory allows it to establish, develop, and refine military bases from which it can project against rivals, including the United States, Japan, and South Korea. The trilateral relationship between the three nations is, therefore, a form of mutually assured geopolitical insurance. The not-so-subtle message geared at China is that South Korea and Japan will not sit idly by should the state intensify its economic and maritime aggressions. The summit occurred amid growing cooperation between Russia and China as Chinese and Russian ships sailed jointly close to Japan mere days before the Camp David assembly.
Conclusion
China is employing a combination of diplomatic, military, and economical means to achieve a strategic end in the South China Sea. The summit hosted at Camp David to pledge economic, political, and military cooperation was historic and courageous but nonetheless overshadowed by the ongoing geopolitical threat posed by China. The trilateral relationship between the three nations is not seamlessly ironed out as of yet, and concerns linger. The Chinese military splurged double-digits on defence spending in 2015, and several tumultuous levers can still be employed to send the world spinning. States are on edge as tensions rise, and allies wait for cues to interject. While this summit is momentous, it certainly does not signify an end to complex and ever-evolving dynamics in international security and defence.
Cordelia Jamieson is studying Political Studies in her third year at Queen’s University.
