“The 19th Western Pacific Naval Symposium”
“China was a rude host of this year’s symposium”
The People’s Liberation Army Navy, PLAN, held a naval symposium between April 21st to the 24th at the Chinese port city of Quingdao. The symposium was the 19th Western Pacific Naval Symposium (WPNS) and was attended by 180 delegates from 29 navies or maritime defense agencies including the U.S., China, Australia, U.K., Japan, South Korea, India, France, and Russia as well as navies from the Americas and western Asia. The U.S. delegation was led by the Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet Admiral Stephen Koehler and was joined by U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns. This was the first time in ten years that China has hosted the symposium and had a theme of “Oceans with a shared future”. The Chinese delegation was led by Central Military Commission (CMC) vice chairman General Zhang Youxia who, despite the cooperative intent for the meeting, used it as an opportunity to lecture and threaten the delegation that was in attendance.
The forum discussions are based around maritime issues, areas of cooperation such as disaster relief, and military-military communication. The group did agree to update the standing code for unplanned encounters at sea and the disaster response guidelines. The attendees also agreed to create a working group to study the impact of unmanned systems to determine if additional guidance is needed for future symposium guidelines. Also, naval leaders took this meeting as a chance to hold bilateral talks with their peers that were attending the conference. This is the “feel good” part of the meeting but the PLA and PLAN leadership saw this as an opportunity to make their position clear to the gathered audience that was figuratively captured in China.
The symposium theme of “Ocean with a shared future” could not be seen as anything but ironic to the attendees in China and is the perfect double speak for the leadership of China. China currently is at the center of disputes across the western Pacific and none of it involves a shared future. The foremost issue is the claims over Taiwan and the Taiwan Straits and its near entire claim over the South China Sea. These claims have been rejected by international courts and were summarily dismissed by China and the claims impact multiple countries in the region. China also has disputes with Japan in the Senkaku Islands and the East China Sea, a dispute with South Korea in the Yellow Sea, and has disputes over U.S. policy of conducting freedom of navigation exercises in the disputed regions.
With the backdrop of so many claims in the region and “figuratively” holding the microphone since it was chairing the summit. General Zhang Youxia from the China’s CMC took to the stage and delivered the key address of the symposium. He stated that China is an active participant in international security cooperation and providing maritime security and that in the future it will have a more positive and open role in military cooperation in the future. This is part is mostly in reference to China participating in the international efforts to combat piracy in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia which is a threat to international shipping including interests to China.
Zhang then called for the abandoning of “Cold War mentality” which is a reference of avoiding a bipolar or multipolar world. This is typical calls by China, and it appears to be a public break with its close allies in Russia. China has consistently demanded that alliances not to be formed in the Pacific, but this has been more self-serving than a matter of principle. China has no issues with maintaining an alliance with Russia in both the United Nations Security Council or regarding the war in Ukraine where China is an ally of Russia and is suspected of helping Russia get around world sanctions due to the Ukraine War. China is also a founding member of BRICS that has a goal of displacing the current economic order including replacing the U.S. Dollar as the international reserve currency. So, China has no issues with dividing the world into camps when it serves its purposes.
China does have an issue when alliances are used in the western Pacific and the South China Sea over its claims. China has a practice of bullying small countries in the region both militarily and economically when they attempt to forge alliances between themselves (strength in numbers), or form alliances with the U.S. which China considers a foreign element into the disputes in the region. This also flies in the face of Zhang’s next point that disputes are resolved peacefully through “friendly consultations” with the countries directly concerned. This is directed at the U.S., Japan, and other powers in the region that form cooperative alliances with western Pacific countries that have territorial disputes with China.
An example of this is the Philippines’ alliances with the U.S. and Japan and conducts other cooperative exercises with Australia. These are examples of foreign elements that China insists that should not brought into negotiations over disputes. China only wants to negotiate, for example, with Vietnam over its South China Sea disputes and no other country that has South China Sea disputes. This strategy puts smaller countries at an absolute disadvantage with China in negotiations.
Zhang also added that China will safeguard its legitimate rights over what it views as deliberate violations of its sovereignty. China would exercise “firm countermeasures” against what it views as unreasonable provocations. This means that China believes that any counter claim by any country in the region is illegitimate and if it wishes to negotiate with China, it must halt all activities in the disputed region if it wants to negotiate. Otherwise, that country can be subjected to retaliation by China but China insisting they have the legitimate claim is not required to halt its activities in the disputed regions.
Zhang continued his address to the audience stating that China would “resolutely safeguard national unity and interest”. That last statement was, among other things, a reference to China re-uniting with Taiwan, by force if necessary. The “re-unification” with Taiwan is an internal matter in the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party and the CMC and any attempt to interfere with China’s actions in Taiwan would be subjected to resistance from China.
The purpose of the symposium is for leaders of regional navies to discuss initiatives for cooperation and regional and maritime issues with each other. The speech by General Zhang Youxia was improper for the format of the conference and it was a disrespectful act to lecture to guests that were being treated more like a captive audience and not guests. The issues that Zhang addressed are at the core, political disputes and are issues to be discussed at the political level and not the military level. In a communist system, the lines are blurred between political and military issues as the military is an integral part of the communist system. This is clearly seen in the fact that the PLA serves the CCP and not Chinese nation, but China is aware that most of the world does not operate that way. Military leaders in most of the Pacific are subjected to non-military leadership and do not set policy but serve at the discretion of political leadership in a Clausewitz like model. This was another demonstration of China acting not as a responsible actor on the world stage but as a petulant child who acts in a ham-handed way in foreign relations.
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References:
https://www.cfr.org/timeline/chinas-maritime-disputes
https://english.news.cn/20240422/5351378ee90e4fafa5287e30689da84a/c.html