China's Naval Tensions

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One of the most vexing challenges presented by China’s emergence as a budding superpower has to do with the Asian giant’s ability to get along with its neighbors. The most glaring test lies in the waters surrounding the Chinese mainland: and Beijing has not quite passed with flying colors. In both the South China Sea and to China’s East, enduring disputes over maritime territory — often uninhabited spits of reef and rock — have threatened to blow up into a regional crisis this year.

In January the Philippines said it would take China to a UN arbitration court over heavily disputed claims — China considers the vast majority of the South China Sea (and likely the lucrative gas reserves beneath its waters) as its own immediate sphere of influence. That is hotly contested by a number of Southeast Asian states, especially neighboring Vietnam and the Philippines.

The situation is perhaps even more intense between rivals Japan and China, where a long-simmering contest over a string of islands administered by Japan in the East China Sea ignited massive anti-Japan protests in 2012. The quarrel came to a head in November when China declared an “East China Sea air-defense identification zone” over the mostly bare islands, which the Japanese Foreign Minister said could “trigger unpredictable events.” The U.S. entered the fray by flying two B-52 bombers, unannounced, through the zone just days later. The Chinese didn’t react, but the zone is still nominally—for now—in place. As are the geopolitical tensions simmering beneath.