Beijing pushes island’s candidacy with exercises and laws

THE PLAYBOOK:
Beijing begins its claims in the region with reinterpretations of history by academics, followed by “law enforcement” actions and missile tests, the source said.

• By Su Yung-yao and Fion Khan / Journalist, with the editor

China aims to control the first island chain through naval maneuvers and legal warfare, a national security source said yesterday, urging Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines to act quickly to counter the threat.

In the ten years since a tribunal administered by the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled on July 12, 2016 that China’s claims to historic rights in the South China Sea within its “nine-dash line” had no legal basis, Beijing has not only failed to curb its authoritarian expansion in the region but has also demonstrated greater external aggression, although the ruling has helped ease tensions regional authorities at the time, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Claims by Chinese scholars late last month that the Philippines’ Batane Islands belong to China are part of a false narrative that Beijing is using to wage cognitive warfare, similar to the approach it has long used to claim Taiwan and the Ryukyu Islands from Japan, the source said.

Photo: AFP

In 2013, Chinese state media published articles by scholars questioning Japan’s sovereignty over the Ryukyu, and in 2023, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) referred to “historical records” related to the islands and a research institute was established for Ryukyu studies, they said.

After Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made comments in November last year about a Taiwan contingency, Beijing expressed its displeasure and renewed its rhetoric over China’s claims to the Ryukyus, they said.

Chinese coast guard vessels were detected in the contiguous area around the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) – known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan – for 357 days last year, they added.

Beijing’s strategy is to establish a legal narrative by fabricating historical claims and legal justifications, before launching international cognitive warfare campaigns and coupling these efforts with an escalation of “gray zone” activities to pressure neighboring countries into submission, the source said.

The legal war is closely synchronized with military intimidation, they said, citing harassment by China’s coast guard in Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone in the country’s east and Japan’s exclusive economic zone under the pretext of carrying out “law enforcement operations.”

Taiwan has tracked more than 110 Chinese navy and coast guard vessels operating around the first island chain, a record, the source said.

National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) has warned that China plans to gradually expand through measures that remain below the war threshold, attempting to create an irreversible “new normal” in the waters east of Taiwan and ultimately transform the first island chain into an interconnected “single war zone” threatening Japan and the Philippines.

The Chinese military’s test launch on Monday last week of a long-range ballistic missile from a nuclear-powered submarine in the South China Sea to the South Pacific was highly provocative as its flight path passed over northern Luzon in the Philippines, the source said.

Beijing is using the Ryukyus and Batanes as strategic footholds on both ends of the first island chain to challenge the territorial sovereignty of neighboring countries, they said.

A major similarity between the campaigns is the forced connection between history and geography, they said.

“China’s approach is to turn fantasies into fait accompli,” the source said.

The scenario begins with state-backed academics and state media launching a “reinterpretation” of history and treaties, followed by the “law and order” actions of China’s coast guard and nuclear deterrence through missile tests to coerce neighboring countries, they added.

Beijing has for years used a Han-centric interpretation of history to simplify Taiwan’s diverse past and incorporate it into a broader narrative of national unification as the basis for its sovereignty claims, the source said.

In the case of the Batanes, Chinese scholars have focused on the provisions of the 1898 Treaty of Paris and the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki while ignoring historical facts, including Spain’s formal annexation of the Batanes in 1783 and the fact that the islands ceded to Taiwan under the Treaty of Shimonoseki never included the Batanes, they said.

Some Chinese scholars have instead put forward the false claim that the islands should have been returned to China along with Taiwan after World War II, the source said.

Beijing’s latest actions are not isolated incidents, but rather a direct reproduction of the cognitive warfare strategy it has long used to promote the narrative that Taiwan belongs to China, highlighting how authoritarian states use coordinated campaigns of disinformation and legal warfare to pressure neighboring democracies, they said.