Tuesday, August 22, 2023

ANALYSIS: War Not Imminent on U.S vs China in PH, TW Seas

  

AS LONG AS MALACCA DILEMMA LURKS

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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