American Paper Tiger

China Wants Confrontation in the South China Sea
By Gordon G. Chang

Last Wednesday, the USS Hopper, an Arleigh Burke–class missile destroyer, sailed within twelve nautical miles of Scarborough Shoal, a few rocks in the northern portion of the South China Sea.
We would not have known about the sail-by if we were relying on the Pentagon.

Beijing announced the event and then made threats.

The Chinese, we have to conclude, are itching for a confrontation.
Therefore, strategic Scarborough Shoal, a mere 124 nautical miles from the main Philippine island of Luzon and guarding Manila and Subic bays, could be the hinge on which America’s relations with China swings.
Think of Scarborough as perhaps this century’s Sudetenland. 

In the spring of 2012, Chinese and Philippine vessels sailed in close proximity of contested Scarborough. 

Washington brokered an agreement between Beijing and Manila for both sides to withdraw their craft. 

Only the Philippines did so, leaving China in control of the feature, which had long been thought to be part of the Philippines even though it was inside Beijing’s infamous “nine-dash line.”
Washington, unfortunately, did not enforce the agreement it had arranged, undoubtedly under the belief it could thereby avoid confrontation with China. 

The White House’s inaction just made the problem bigger, however. 

By doing nothing, the Obama administration empowered the most belligerent elements in the Chinese capital by showing everyone else there that duplicity—and aggression—worked.
An emboldened Beijing then ramped up pressure on Second Thomas Shoal, where China employed Scarborough-like tactics by swarming the area with vessels, and the Senkakus, eight specks under Japanese administration in the East China Sea.
In short, Washington, through timidity, ensured the Chinese took ever more provocative actions.
And ensured American allies questioned Washington’s leadership. 

Today, American policymakers complain that the current Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, has been cozying up to Beijing. 

Although thoroughly anti-American all his adult life, the Philippine leader has a point when he said his country, despite the mutual defense treaty with America, could not rely on Washington to defend his islands. 

The result of irresolute American policy is that China, which is dismembering the Philippines, is now more influential in Manila than the United States, the only nation pledged to defend the archipelago’s security.
In view of China’s growing confidence and assertion, it is no surprise that its reaction to the Hopper’s passage has been intense. 

State and party media, while replaying old themes of protecting “indisputable” sovereignty, went into overdrive with their most provocative language, that of inflicting indignity on the United States. 

“The reckless provocation ended in disgrace for the U.S. Navy,” wrote Curtis Stone of the Communist Party’s People’s Daily, China’s most authoritative publication.
The Global Times, the tabloid controlled by People’s Daily, predicted that if Washington did not change course, it would become “a lonely pirate” and “suffer complete humiliation.”
Washington’s reaction was, in keeping with its traditional posture, low-key. 

“All operations are conducted in accordance with international law and demonstrate that the United States will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows,” said Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Logan, without specifically mentioning Hopper’s patrol.
And when Washington policymakers did talk about the Hopper, they did so anonymously and in tones meant to avoid offense. 

A “U.S. official” said the transit was an “innocent passage” and not a freedom of navigation operation.
That stance allowed the Philippine defense secretary, Delfin Lorenzana, on Sunday to defend the U.S. Navy’s sail-by, because it did not impinge on his nation’s sovereignty.
Yet Hopper would have never made the transit if Manila were in sole control of the shoal. 

The motivating factor, of course, was China. 

“China’s goal in the South China Sea appears to be a gradual extension of its sovereignty to a maritime space the size of India,” Anders Corr, editor of the just-released Great Powers, Grand Strategies: The New Game in the South China Sea, told the National Interest.
In view of this expansive vision, an “innocent passage” is a counterproductive response.
“In our department in Newport, we’re always taking leaders to task for ‘self-defeating behavior,’” James Holmes of the Naval War College e-mailed me on Monday, commenting for himself and not on behalf of the U.S. government. 

“The anonymous official quoted in press accounts as saying the Hopper passage was an ‘innocent passage’ is guilty of that behavior.”
“Innocent passage is something ships do when passing within 12 nautical miles of sovereign territory,” Holmes, co-author of Red Star Over the Pacific: China’s Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy, points out. 

“So if we’re depicting the Hopper passage by Scarborough Shoal as an innocent passage, we are conceding precisely what a freedom-of-navigation operation is supposed to dispute: that China is the lawful sovereign over Scarborough and that it’s entitled to a 12-mile territorial sea around the shoal.”
Scarborough is well within the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines, and China is essentially asserting squatter’s rights. 

Moreover, Philippines vs. China, the July 2016 Hague decision applying the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, holds that the shoal does not confer a twelve-nautical-mile band of territorial water. “Our passes by Scarborough must show that they are not innocent in legal terms,” Holmes notes. 

“We must get our language straight, stay on message, and remind everyone regularly that the Hague tribunal smacked down China’s unlawful claims with extreme prejudice back in 2016. That’s how we avoid defeating ourselves.”
American officials, for years, have been characterizing freedom of navigation exercises around Chinese-held features as “innocent passages,” hoping not to rile Beijing. 

That strategy, unfortunately, has produced the opposite result.
The Trump administration, however, is changing four decades of America’s soft approach to China. That “pivot” is evident in the National Security Strategy, unveiled in December, and the National Defense Strategy, a summary of which was released Friday.
China in these landmark policy statements is essentially characterized as an adversary.
Yet historic changes in policy take years to implement.
“My belief is that we still have a long way to go to undo the pernicious impact of the policy of appeasement,” James Fanell, a former U.S. Navy intelligence officer with the Pacific Fleet, told the National Interest in strong, but nonetheless accurate, terms.
“We have several generations of government workers who have been trained to be more attuned to ‘not provoking’ or ‘not offending’ the Chinese than in openly challenging their expansionist activities. This is despite two new policy documents, the NSS and NDS, that clearly intend to challenge Beijing’s outrageous expansionism.”
American policymakers are struggling to come to terms with Beijing’s open hostility to the United States.
Obviously, Chinese officials could have ignored the Hopper’s passage, but their choosing to make an issue of it suggests they are determined to pick a fight.

The death of Liu Xiaobo marks dark times for dissent in China

By Ishaan Tharoor 

It has been a week since the death of Liu Xiaobo, the famed Chinese dissident who was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for Peace while imprisoned.
Late last month, Chinese officials announced that the prominent writer, who had been detained since 2009, was being moved to a hospital to receive treatment for late-stage liver cancer. 

Despite the entreaties of his family, friends and foreign governments, Beijing refused to release him to seek care overseas. 

He died July 13, becoming only the second Nobel laureate to perish in custody (Carl von Ossietzky, an anti-Nazi pacifist, died in 1938).
In a move that sparked the ire of Chinese activists, authorities apparently ensured that his ashes were buried at sea and not on Chinese soil. 

Acclaimed artist Ai Weiwei, who lives in Germany, said the move was aimed at denying Liu’s supporters “a physical memorial site” and that it “showed brutal society can be.”
“It is a play,” said Ai. 

“Sad but real.”

Liu Xiaobo’s wife, Liu Xia, prays as his ashes are buried at sea off the coast of Dalian, China, on July 15.

Indeed, for China’s authoritarian leadership, what Liu represents is all too real. 

The poet and essayist was admired by many among the Chinese diaspora and the international community. 

“He fought for freedom and democracy for more than 30 years, becoming a monument to morality and justice and a source of inspiration,” Wen Kejian, a fellow writer, told my colleague Emily Rauhala.
“Liu Xiaobo was a representative of ideas that resonate with millions of people all over the world, even in China. These ideas cannot be imprisoned and will never die,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, in a statement.
Ironically Liu’s legacy and oeuvre are more visible abroad than at home, where even Internet searches of his name are censored and tributes to his life were hurriedly erased from social media.
But what further underscores the tragedy of his life was the nature of his politics. 

Liu was not calling for radical change or an overthrow of the regime. 

The putative reason for his 2009 imprisonment was his co-authorship of “Charter 08,” a manifesto calling for reform and greater freedom of expression within the Chinese system.
“Inevitably, some in the West will think that honoring Liu Xiaobo is an act of offense against China (or, more practically, a potential risk to relationships with the government). That’s a mistake,” wrote Evan Osnos, author of the National Book Award-winning “Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China.” 

“Honoring Liu is an act of dedication to China at its best. He was, to the end, unwilling to renounce his principled commitment to China’s constitution — to the freedoms enshrined in law but unprotected in practice.”
Osnos also offered an anecdote from when he met Liu: “If you never had a chance to meet him, it was easy to misread him as a cynic. On the contrary, in person, Liu could be unnervingly optimistic. On that day when I met him, in 2007, at a teahouse near his apartment, he told me that as China became stronger and more connected to the world, he imagined that the ‘current regime might become more confident.’ He went on, ‘It might become milder, more flexible, more open.’ In that prediction, he was, for now, wrong, and he paid with his life.”

People sign their names at a memorial event for late Chinese Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo in Hong Kong on July 19. 

“Although the regime of the post-Mao era is still a dictatorship, it is no longer fanatical but rather a rational dictatorship that has become increasingly adept at calculating its interests,” Liu once said in 2006, in another illustration of his optimism about the capacity for change.
“In calculating those interests, the regime has decided that it was safer to turn Liu into a dead martyr than to allow his ideas to spread unchallenged,” wrote Jamil Anderlini of the Financial Times. 

“This conclusion is probably correct in the short term. Thanks to the party’s efforts, the vast majority of Chinese people have never heard of Liu and most of those who have heard of him think he was a hopeless troublemaker. His death will not spark a revolution.”

Under Xi Jinping, the invasive, authoritarian control of the ruling government has expanded, while the space for civil society has contracted. 

Dissent and critical expression have been chilled, and it seems increasingly clear that Chinese officials aren’t bothered by censure from abroad.
“What is really important isn’t so much that the party is tightening its control — that is happening anyway,” noted Steve Tsang of the Chatham House think tank in London. 

“What is more important is that the party is not that worried about how the Liu Xiaobo case affects international opinion.” 

A budding global hegemon, China can withstand the clucking of outside powers over its human rights record.
It also doesn’t help that there is an American president who has explicitly argued against fighting for universal values and rights elsewhere. 

On the day of Liu’s death, Trump happened to hail Xi as a “terrific” and “talented” leader.
“It is especially shameful that Donald Trump praised Xi Jinping at the moment when Liu Xiaobo was dying,” said Teng Biao, a Chinese human rights lawyer living in exile in the United States. 

“Xi Jinping is not a respectable leader. He is a brutal dictator.”
“Western countries have adopted a policy of appeasement,” said Hu Jia, a prominent dissident who served more than three years in prison, to the New York Times. 

“The Communist Party has the resources to whip whomever they want.”
Hu, who still faces regular surveillance from police, offered an ominous warning: “Some have turned to believe in violent revolution. It makes people feel the door to a peaceful transition has closed.”

Despair for Cause of Democracy After Nobel Laureate’s Death

By JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZ

A memorial to Liu Xiaobo in Hong Kong this week. In mainland China, attempts to pay tribute to Mr. Liu, a Nobel Peace laureate, have met with censorship and arrests. 

BEIJING — For years, the fiery band of activists pushing for democracy in China looked to Liu Xiaobo, the jailed Nobel Peace laureate, as a source of inspiration. 

They created social media groups devoted to his iconoclastic poetry. 

They held up his photos at rallies, demanding justice and transparency.
But Mr. Liu’s death last week of liver cancer, after a final, futile attempt by friends to bring about his release, has dealt a withering blow to the pro-democracy movement. 

Some say it is now at its weakest point since the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989.
“It’s a turning point,” said Yan Wenxin, a human rights lawyer in Beijing. 

“The feeling of powerlessness among activists has peaked.”
Under Xi Jinping, the government has imprisoned dozens of lawyers, journalists and advocates and tightened controls over the internet. 

Now, the ruling Communist Party’s feverish attempts to erase Mr. Liu’s legacy have raised fears that Xi will intensify his campaign against activists pushing for ideas like freedom of speech and religion.
The authorities, wary of turning Mr. Liu into a martyr, have in recent days censored online tributes and arrested activists who have sought to publicly remember him.

The dearth of foreign leaders willing to publicly criticize Mr. Xi has added to a sense of despair and isolation among activists. 

Many say they feel abandoned by the United States in particular, and they worry that Trump will prioritize trade with China at the expense of human rights.
“People are full of sorrow, anger and desperation,” said Zhao Hui, 48, a dissident writer who goes by the pen name Mo Zhixu. 

“We hope the democratic activists who still remain can keep the flame alive. But bringing about change to the bigger picture might be too much to ask.”

Wu Qiang drove hundreds of miles to be near Mr. Liu as he was dying. Many of Mr. Wu’s fellow dissidents now have a desire to “turn sorrow into strength,” he said.

The passing of Mr. Liu, who preached peace and patience, has provoked debate about the best path toward democracy. 

Many activists argue that more forceful tactics are necessary to counter what they see as unrelenting government hostility. 

Some have pushed for mass protests, while a small number believe that violence is the only option, even if they do not endorse it outright.
“Some have turned to believe in violent revolution,” said Hu Jia, a prominent dissident who served more than three years in prison for his activism and still faces routine surveillance. 

“It makes people feel the door to a peaceful transition has closed.”
Mr. Liu’s allies remain incensed by the Chinese government’s handling of his case. 

Officials disclosed that Mr. Liu, 61, had advanced liver cancer only when it was too late to treat it, prompting accusations that his medical care was inadequate. 

The authorities have also prevented his wife, Liu Xia, an artist and activist, from speaking or traveling freely.
The scrutiny facing government critics is likely to grow even more suffocating in the months ahead.
The Communist Party will hold a leadership reshuffle this fall, at which Xi is expected to win another five-year term and appoint allies to key positions. 

In the run-up to the meeting, the party is tightening its grip on online communications and escalating pressure on critics.
Human rights advocates say that the party appears increasingly hostile toward dissent and intent on quashing even small-scale movements. 

Over the past two years, dozens of human rights lawyers have been jailed and accused of conspiring with foreign forces to carry out subversive plots. 

Xi’s government, wary of grass-roots activism, has also increased oversight of domestic and foreign nonprofit organizations.
Yaxue Cao, an activist who grew up in China but is now based in the United States, said Mr. Liu’s death was “the climax of a long and continuous stretch of ruthless elimination.” 

She recited a long list of critics who had been sidelined since Xi rose to power in 2012, which she said had led to a culture of fear and intimidation.
“The party has been working systematically to block the path forward,” she said. 

“A few hundred or a few thousand activists are nothing for the party.”
Advocates say they were startled that foreign leaders did not speak out more forcefully about the treatment of Mr. Liu. 

While American diplomats called on China to allow Mr. Liu to travel abroad for cancer treatment, Trump did not speak publicly about the case.

The Chinese authorities released this photo of Mr. Liu’s wife, Liu Xia, taken as his ashes were lowered into the sea last week. She has been prevented from speaking or traveling freely.

“Western countries have adopted a policy of appeasement,” Mr. Hu said. 

“The Communist Party has the resources to whip whomever they want.”
The Chinese government has defended its treatment of Mr. Liu and accused foreign critics of meddling in its affairs.
While China has seemed less responsive to foreign pressure on human rights issues in recent years, several activists said they thought it was still important for world leaders to speak out.
“We hope the West can maintain its moral position,” Mr. Zhao said. 

“Even though the pressure is not as effective as it should be, it needs to be expressed.”
Despite the government’s efforts to limit dissent, some of Mr. Liu’s supporters say they have emerged more energized in the days since his death. 

They see hope in a middle class that is increasingly outspoken; grass-roots activists who are taking on issues as varied as pollution and forced demolitions of homes; and a generation of young advocates who have taken on causes like feminism and rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender citizens.
“How long can such an approach last before discontent boils over?” said Maya Wang, a researcher at Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong. 

“One only needs to look at the protests, particularly in the countryside, to see the enormous grievances there are out there.”
In the aftermath of Mr. Liu’s passing, his admirers have found ways around the government’s controls on speech to honor him. 

Several supporters uploaded photos of the ocean this week as a tribute to Mr. Liu, whose ashes were spread at sea.
Wu Qiang, a dissident intellectual, drove about 400 miles last week from Beijing to the northeastern city of Shenyang, where Mr. Liu was being treated, to be near him in his final days. 

Mr. Wu, 46, said Mr. Liu’s death had left many of his admirers with a desire to “turn sorrow into strength.”
“On one side is darkness; on the other side is hope,” he said. 

“We need to find a new way forward.”