By Mortz C. Ortigoza, MPA
The fear of the Filipinos and the
Taiwanese that war with the saber rattling Mainland China could happen anytime
soon in their seas and land is misguided.
As long as China could not solve the Malacca Strait’s choke point dilemma where her seaborne import from the Middle East like the 10 million barrels (2019 data) per day crude oil passes to fuel her economy, the still growing People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) would not gamble to have a shooting war with the blue water navy of the United States of America.
The U.S is a military treaty ally
of the Philippines through the 1951 Mutual Defense Pact and a closed ally of
Taiwan.
Forty percent of the world trade
goes through that strait to China, the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea
and other countries. Eighty percent of these nations use oil tankers to enter
the Malacca. They used too the same route to export their products in the world.
The Strait is a narrow stretches
of water 500 miles long and 40 to 155 miles wide, between the Malay
Peninsula to the northeast and the Indonesian island of Sumatra to the
southwest and connecting the Andaman Sea and the South China Sea.
A blockade of the Quad or Asia’s NATO composed of Australia,
India, Japan and the United States in the ingress of the Strait would see the collapse
of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) where Xi Jinping is the Secretary General
as the hundreds of millions of Chinese lose their jobs and starves.
But the Chinese have been burning their midnight oil to
solve this military conundrum through the following factors below.
THE DJIBOUTI
PORT, CPEC AND CMEC FACTORS
We concerned spectators should
learn about the Djibouti Port, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and
China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC) factors amidst the brouhahas on the incessant
audacious encroachments of the Chinese government and militia ships in our
islands and shoals in the West Philippines Sea (renamed from the South China Sea to suit
the Philippines interest) and the looming cloud of war in the Taiwan Strait.
Since time immemorial the Chinese
wanted to avoid the choke point of the Malacca and the adjacent Sunda, Lombok
and Makasar Straits. They know that incase war breaks between them and the U.S,
they would surely lose the war despite blocking too somewhere in the South
China Sea and East China Sea the tankers and other commercial ships bound to
Taiwan, Japan and South Korea.
As what an excerpt on China Maritime Report No. 13: The Origins of "Near Seas Defense and Far Seas Protection" authored by Jennifer Rice and Erik Robb, says: “…some Chinese strategists argue that the U.S. “rebalance” to Asia renders Near Seas Defense inadequate. To these observers, the rebalance concept’s requirements to deploy 60 percent of U.S. naval and air forces to Asia and strengthen its regional alliances demonstrate that Washington’s approach to China is one of containment and encirclement”.
DJIBOUTI PORT
Since March 2016, the Chinese has
been building the US$590 million naval base in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa. The
facility is to significantly increase Beijing's power projection in there and the Indian Ocean as well as the PLAN's blue water capabilities. The
base is strategically situated at the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait that separates the
Gulf of Aden from the Red Sea and guards the approaches to the Suez Canal. The
Chinese facility is run by the Chinese-operated Port of Doraleh to the west of
Djibouti City.
This base will counter the strong
presence of the American navy in these areas and a counter-measure to the choke
point in Malacca Strait.
CHINA-PAKISTAN ECONOMIC CORRIDOR (CPEC)
In April 20, 2015, the Sinos
created the U.S $64 billion and still growing CPEC. It is a 3, 000 km sea-and-land infrastructure
network project undertaken in Pakistan by China. The development of a deep
water port at Gwadar, Pakistan in Arabian Sea and a well - build road and rail
line from this port to Xinjiang Province in western China would be a shortcut
for boosting the trade between Europe and China. For the Pakistan government,
the effect of this mammoth Chinese investment overcomes the country's
electricity shortfall, increase its infrastructural development and modernize their
transportation networks as they shift from an agricultural based economic
structure to industrialization. Despite the U.S military and economic aids to
Pakistan (almost U.S$ 8 billion in the past decade), the latter becomes closer to China where the Bejing provides mammoth
economic loans and huge military hardware to her military that faces a bigger
Indian army. Besides, the military and commercial facilities dubbed as the
String of Pearls by the Chinese like in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh to surround India
– mutual nemesis of China and Pakistan – divides militarily the attention of
India to Pakistan.
CHINA-MYANMAR
ECONOMIC CORRIDOR
In 2013 the Chinese has been
building the CMEC. It is a number of infrastructure projects that connect
Myanmar (former Burma) and China. It is an economic corridor of the vaunted
Belt and Road Initiative of the Sinos. CMEC calls for building road and rail
transportation from Yunnan Province in China through Muse and Mandalay of the
seaport city's Kyaukpyu in Rakhine State. The transportation route follows gas
and oil pipelines built in 2013 and 2017. A port and Special Economic Zone is
planned at Khaukphyu. The largest construction project along the areas is the
431-kilometre (268 miles) Muse-Mandalay Railway, a project estimated to cost
US$9 billion. The newly built railway would connect the Chinese railway network
at Ruili, Yunnan Province.
THE DISPENSABILITY OF THE MALACCA STRAIT
As you see the maps I provided on
this article, the completion of the CMEC, CPEC and the port in Djibouti could
solve the Malacca Dilemma – coined by China President Hu Jintao at a CCP
economic work conference in 2003 - and could further emboldened the Sinos to
assert their claim on Taiwan and the islands and shoals like the Ayungin where
an armed dilapidated rusty “ghost” war ship of Philippines Navy is nestled.
The United States’ Energy
Information Agency estimates that the South China Sea holds about 190 trillion
cubic feet of natural gas and 11 billion barrels of oil in proved and
probable reserves.
WAR FLASH POINT: STRAIT OF HORMUZ
In case war with the U.S and
China ensue, the flashpoint will be in the Strait of Hormuz where the Chinese tankers
use it as route get most of their crude –supplies in Saudi Arabia and in the
Indian Ocean where warships, submarines and naval drones of the US and India –
a bitter enemy of China because the latter annexed some of her territories in Depsang
Plains and Arunachal Pradesh - surreptitiously wait to ambush these tankers
including their PLAN escort warships. In this war, the Malacca Strait’s choke
point is already non-strategical because the Chinese have already established
their bases in Djibouti, Myanmar, Pakistan and other countries like Maldives and
Somalia.
With these relocation of routes protected by these facilities cum bases, the desire
of the Sinos to invade Taiwan and encroach more islands and shoals on its Nine
Dash – Line heightens.
(Author is a Professor of
Political Science in the Philippines and has a Master in Public Administration
(MPA). He has been an Op-Ed Writer for more than two decades. He can be contacted at totomortz@yahoo.com).
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