hankyoreh

East Asia is roiling at the moment, and one of the reasons for this is the unprecedented military cooperation between China and Russia. What they showed at their summit on May 20 could well be called a kind of alliance. That same day, they launched a large-scale combined naval exercise in a section of the East China Sea that overlaps with the South Korean Air Defense Identification Zone (KADIZ). China is on track to import US$400 billion (around 409 trillion won) in Russian natural gas by 2018. Last week, China began drilling for petroleum near the Paracel (Xisha in Chinese) Islands, the subject of territorial dispute with Vietnam. The situation has been serious, with some 9,000 Chinese pulling out of the area by May 20 over protests by the Vietnamese.

The background for all of this is the rivalry between the US and China for dominance in East Asia. The Chinese-Russian naval exercises are targeting the US and Japan; the choice of an area near the Senkaku (Diaoyu in Chinese) Islands, the subject of another dispute between China and Japan, was intentional. China’s provocative oil exploration in the South China Sea comes across as a response to Washington’s “rebalancing Asia” policy. It suggests that Beijing is willing to risk conflicts with its neighbors to break through the network that the US has used to encircle it since the days of the Cold War. Both countries have indicated that they won’t shy away from a head-on conflict. On May 19, the US Department of Justice indicted five soldiers with the Chinese People’s Army for hacking into US corporate computers.

For the other countries of East Asia, the rivalry poses some serious questions. Vietnam may cooperate with the US, but it is unlikely to get into any direct clashes with China. For all their bickering, their trade amounts to over US$50 billion a year. Vietnam is in a position where it has no choice but to weigh the balance between Washington and Beijing, principle and pragmatism.

South Korea is in much the same place. If the China-Russia and US-Japan blocs do get into a head-on conflict in the East China Sea, we stand to suffer the consequences. The issue of the KADIZ overlap also demands that we tread lightly. At the moment, the airspaces of all three countries, South Korea, China, and Japan, have areas that overlap.

Dialogue between Washington and Beijing is crucial if regional stability is to be achieved. Both sides need to stop acting inconsiderately and address the issues of their “new model of great power relations” in a mutually respectful way. For territorial disputes and other regional issues, a principle of peaceful resolution must be upheld. South Korea is in a position now where it can serve as a catalyst for US-China cooperation. It needs to draw the line when China goes too far, but it also needs to work quickly to build up its three-way alliance with Washington and Tokyo, and to avoid antagonizing China. We especially need to understand that the issues now affecting the Korean Peninsula become much harder to solve when the region itself is unstable.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]