Hillary Clinton Changes America’s China Policy
The Secretary of State pulls a 180 on Beijing.
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On Friday Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that the peaceful resolution of competing sovereignty claims to the South China Sea is a U.S. “national interest.” “The U.S. supports a collaborative diplomatic process by all claimants for resolving the various territorial disputes without coercion,” she said in Hanoi during a regional security conference, the Asean Regional Forum. “We oppose the use or threat of force by any claimant.”
Beijing quickly reacted. Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi characterized Clinton’s comments as “an attack on China,” and in a sense he was right. China has claimed virtually all that body of water as its own. By doing so, Beijing has said it has sovereignty over the continental shelves of the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan and Vietnam. Most of China’s claims there are baseless, and some are ludicrous. That is perhaps why the Chinese have resorted to force to grab islands and islets from other claimants. China seized the western Paracels from Vietnam in 1974 and Mischief Reef from the Philippines in 1995.
Beijing opted for the softer approach by signing a multi-nation code of conduct in 2002. It was seen as largely succeeding in its recent efforts to gain control by preventing other claimants from banding together. China had shrewdly maintained a policy of participating in only bilateral negotiations so that it could use its heft to maximum advantage.
Yet it was nonetheless meeting resistance from nations in the region–especially Vietnam–and so it changed tack recently. When Jeffrey Bader, the top Asia official at the National Security Council, and James Steinberg, deputy secretary of state, traveled to Beijing in March, Chinese officials for the first time said the South China Sea was one of their country’s “core interests” and that they would brook no American interference there.
Beijing has tried to paint Clinton’s words as the U.S. inserting itself into the region, but that could not be further from the truth. Up until now, Washington has been largely oblivious to Chinese attempts to make the South China Sea a “Chinese lake.” It ignored Beijing’s seizure of territory and even did little to protect ExxonMobil ( XOM - news - people ) when China, in 2008, tried to intimidate the company from entering into an exploration deal with PetroVietnam, the state energy company, in the South China Sea. In adjacent areas it has done virtually nothing to prevent China’s navy from harassing Japanese warships, as it did most recently in April, and to stop Chinese submarines from regularly violating Japanese waters, which they have been doing for most of this decade.
In short, America looked like it was acceding to Chinese demands for control over the South China Sea. Beijing had overplayed its hand in recent months, however, and nations in the region were looking to oppose the Chinese. Nonetheless, all of them were seeking safety in numbers, with none wanting to aggravate Beijing by leading from the front.
Up until now, the U.S. was reluctant to confront China as it waited for Beijing to assume a constructive role as a great power. The Chinese, however, interpreted Washington’s hope and patience as evidence of American weakness and decline. But in a few short sentences on Friday, Clinton changed that perception, both inside and outside China.
Her South China Sea declaration has been called a “landmark” and a “pivot.” It is, and it may end up as the moment she redirected not only America’s China policy but the China policies of nations in the region.
Beijing’s unimpeded advance to global domination has just hit resistance. And it’s about time.
Gordon G. Chang is the author ofThe Coming Collapse of China. He writes a weekly column for Forbes.
