Slaying The Dragon

Transcrição do Programa de Rádio:

Asia2025
Mar 14, 2007
The Chinese Economy

I’m Maryann Keady and you’re listening to Asia 2025.

Now last week I interviewed Jose Belo about violence in East Timor, which I have written a lot about in last year.

And a feature of my commentary has been the role of US-Chinese competition in the country, and how the violence is just one example of this geo-political tussle. And the importance of sea lanes around Timor, in this battle.

Well an academic from Darwin Kate Reid Smith, had this to say last week.
‘if China secured working control of East Timor’s sea lanes. the capacity to isolate Australia and Indonesia’s territorial and military assets could threaten China, and opens a regional Pandora’s Box.’

She also spoke of the inroads Beijing is making into Timor, and what this means for the tiny nation.

I spoke with Kate from Darwin, and began by asking her how China was creating a ‘satellite state’ in Timor.

Kate: I guess I’m basing that on China’s previous development and aid record, specifically from 1997 onwards, the Pacific, South Africa, you know, Gwadar and Pakistan, Cambodia, Myanmar. There is a certain trajectory that China appears to be pursuing and I believe that Timor Leste is just part of that future, that geo-strategic future that China is landscaping.

Asia2025: Right, but why East Timor? Why would East Timor be one place that it would be interested in?

Kate: I think geography has everything to do with it. Hydrocarbon rich Timor Leste does lie within maritime South East Asia. That tiny little former colonial backwater is completely swamped by vital maritime networks - global, regional - and really for China it makes perfect sense that it is at the southern tip of their back yard. They would want to be part of this untapped resource.

Asia2025: Well let’s talk about the resources later; I want to talk about the maritime sea lanes. Now I know the Ombei Wetar Straits are vital as are many of the sea lanes around East Timor. You’ve said it has the capacity, if China creates a foothold in East Timor, to isolate Australian and Indonesian territorial and military assets and open a regional Pandora’s Box.

Kate: Yes.

Asia2025: Can you explain that to me?

Kate: Well, I’m basing that on what’s happened in Myanmar and Cambodia again. As a strategic opportunity for China evolves, they could offer soft loans to Timor for Naval acquisition for example. It is a coastal state; China’s experienced in coastal operations.

If China wants to protect its assets as it has done in the Sudan and in Africa, it will deploy troops to protect its assets. Now, given that Chinese regional aid packages are a component of dual technologies, I think that Timor Leste, because of it’s small size people ignore it, the international community ignores it basically, and I believe the equatorial proximity of Timor Leste is just an untapped resource that China can possibly and this is a theoretical, if it wants to expand it’s commercial communications and satellite business Timor Leste would be an exploitable, marketable commodity to lease space for profit for example.

And if China wanted to tap into lower cost battle scenarios and share cost effective methods such as war against terror and asymmetrical warfare, I think China would be looking at somewhere that it could build another small, but you know, hidden electronic infrastructure, kind of what’s on Hainan Island where space tracking and other electronic facilities, listening facilities that sort of thing could come to play.

The other side too is China’s pursuit of fisheries aid, and a lot of their maritime reach such as Fiji, Namibia - where it’s other satellite tracking station is, all start off with fisheries. They do a lot of development technologies close, inshore fishing that type of thing.

Asia2025: Well, there’s two aspects to this, they are building the foreign ministry and the Presidential Palace for whoever wins the April 9 election, but Australia donates its own money, and I mean, we have eight hundred Australian troops in East Timor, Australia does, we have New Zealand troops, Australia has United States bases in our north, surely East Timor is well within our sphere of influence. I’m not saying there couldn’t be a critical juncture where they meet, but surely Australia’s taking notice of this.

Kate: I think Australia’s taking notice, but I think it’s more so taking notice because Timor Leste is geographically within a vast Indonesian maritime expanse. And Indonesia remains of enduring strategic significance to Australia, so any disruption of sea routes, for example if China was to deploy as anti-piracy measures to protect their fishing assets or whatever might be happening in the region, I think the growing trend of anti-Australianism that is emerging from Timor Leste according to media reports might actually be playing to China¡¯s regional hand given that China’s trying to pursue these vast maritime strategies, as in a blue water or a green water navy.

I don’t think Australia is ignoring what’s going on in Timor Leste, I just don’t think Australia’s looking at it significantly, and I think we’re taking far too much for granted that the status quo will remain the same. By that I mean that Indonesia and Australia will remain as the South East Asian regional maritime nexus but I think Timor Leste is a new player on the block that’s not actually being taken too seriously.

Asia2025: Let’s talk about what future scenarios.

I have spent the last year in America and I know people there were concerned about the maritime build up of China. You say there’s a possibility that East Timor could be a staging post or could be an area of conflict in the future in the region, in between these interests of the United States and China?

Kate: I think so, because I think for many years Indonesia has relied on the maritime theory that those major maritime powers who had the most interest in keeping the sea lanes open, such as the United States, would continue to do so. However, with China coming in, that has to be factored as well because after the tsunami in 2004 we see where there were restrictions placed upon American MEU’s, Maritime Expeditionary Units, where before they could traverse, you know - criss cross fairly easily, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, all put restrictions on where the deployment of the United States and Australian maritime assets could actually be in regards to their EEZ’s and EFZ’s.

Asia2025: Can you just explain what they are?

Kate: EEZ is the Exclusive Economic Zone and ESZ is the Exclusive Fishing Zone, usually twelve nautical miles, and depending on where they are of course, but then again they’re pretty fluid and not all states adhere to them. Indeed if they’re not signatories to the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea then it really doesn’t matter anyway. But I think the issue that the maritime networks are out of direct line of sight of Jakarta and Canberra, and Washington to some extent, particularly the mineral areas that Timor Leste is crowned by as well which is all Indonesia, uranium, tin, gold - you name it, you know, and that stretches from the south of the Philippines to the West Papuan coastline where significant Chinese fishing interests have, in the recent past, have reportedly been in skirmishes with the Indonesian Navy, so it’s interesting to see that the skirmishes between fishing vessels under Chinese flags are increasing as well.

Asia2025: It seems that economics plays a large part in this, because China is desperate for resources, desperate for oil and gas, and so this is a significant part of its expansion of its needs really, as much as the military.

Kate: Yes, I agree, and given the issues with the Middle East, I think it’s logical that China will be looking for a myriad of global areas for alternate oil supply and gas supply. Timor Leste fits the bill nicely.

Asia2025: One piece of evidence that China seeks to influence Timor is that Petro China is funding a seismic study for oil and gas in East Timor.

But isn’t it natural though that East Timor would clearly acquiesce to this, as a sovereign country, as a young country, surely you would want to go to someone who wants to, who’s going to pay the highest price? If you look at Australia, we’ve also welcomed Chinese investment in our country, in the North West shelf. So in one way, East Timor’s only doing what other countries are doing in the region.

Kate: I completely agree, bearing in mind that Timor too is the first new nation of the post cold war twenty first century, it’s not a product or a by-product of old cold war rivalries. There are no polarized alliances systems that it’s got to work its way through, if you know what I mean.

It doesn’t have that inherited cold-war mentality and I think Timor Leste has been very prudent the way that it has actually dealt with, and encouraged and accepted China’s charm offensive, specifically with the hydro-carbon resources, because it’s both off-shore and on-shore that Petro China has been involved in deep water technologies, specifically looking for hydro carbon of course, aside from the Timor gap. So there is a vast range of other areas, and I know that it’s a very emotive issue when we keep talking about the Timor gap, but there are a vast amount of other areas within Timor Leste’s maritime responsibilities such as off the coast of Oecussi they believe there is vast oil and carbon there, also along, just up towards Aturo Island there’s reports that there is other oil there.

There are, I guess because everything’s been focused on Timor gap there’s been a bit of an issue too, because that kind of detracts from looking elsewhere if you know what I mean? On Ombei Wetar Strait.

Asia2025: Well that’s the deepest submarine, that’s the deepest underwater trench isn’t it?

And that’s very important as I understand it for the United States, and for any country……

Kate: Any conventional or nuclear submarine can transit that deep water passage without having to surface. It’s the only one in our regional maritime networks, and it’s the fourth most strategic important waterway after Malacca and Lombok Straits.

I remember Prime Minister Alkatiri, not long after Timor Leste gaining independence actually highlighted the fact that China - Petro China in particular, had been awarded the contract for off-shore exploration, off the coast of Oecussi which sits on the Ombei Wetar Straits.

Little facets of maritime technology that seem to be subdued in the wider emotive argument of the Timor Sea, I think it’s actually, I think the China/ Timor Leste relationship may already be a diplomatic moot point, and I think Indonesia and Australia are having trouble coming to terms with the fact that there are two new major players in our geo-strategic region, that being of course China and Timor Leste as an emerging player.

Not because of it’s size, but just because of its geography, because of where it is.

It’s close to these strategic networks, like other areas in South East Asia such as the Philippines, when President Arroyo, when she withdrew her troops in support from Iraq to secure the release of that Pilipino truck driver the US decreased foreign aid by more than a quarter. Now Beijing stepped in and offered more aid to the beleaguered Arroyo, and within a few months there were the reciprocal visits all funded by China between the President, her Defense Ministers and their Chinese counterparts, and then following a protocol where China was given to explore for oil inside the Philippines Exclusive Economic Zone.

And this includes further Chinese millions of US dollars in military assistance, Chinese language training programs, engineering equipment what-have-you. And you see this is a complete turn around from 1995 when China actually militarily seized areas in the Philippines EEZ and established a People’s Liberation Army Navy presence.

So all these little things, I think, that Timor Leste has very cannily been taking on board because there’s no longer that cold-war rhetoric of, you know, playing off one against the other, the United States against Russia for example, to gain better aid. And I know that Kiribati is doing the same thing, playing off the issue of Taiwan against China, but China in 2002 is not the same China it was in 1980 - you know what I mean? And I think all these little tactics that Timor Leste have learned from the smaller nations.

Asia2025: However, I was talking to Dr Mahathir Bin Mohamad actually a couple of weeks ago, and I put to him, as I did to Sir Michael Somare, however that people are playing the United States and China off as far as I see it. That in fact everyone is playing the game and seeing what they can benefit. That said, at the moment, I would say that the United States is far ahead strategically than China since 2001 because of the moves, and the diplomatic moves it’s made back into Asia, correcting the balance that China had made previously. How would you view it?

Kate: I think it’s pretty much getting to the stage where there’s going to be an on par issue.

I don’t mean open conflict between the United States and China, but certainly the tables have been turning for China in the region.

And also the way China has been conducting international relations now bearing in mind that Timor Leste and China are members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries or CPLP.

Now that is a mutual friendship, a multilateral forum for those nations across the world where Portuguese is the official language. And China is a member of that exclusive club because of Macau. Now it supported of Macau’s succession to this community of Portuguese speaking countries, but it withdrew Hong Kong from the Commonwealth after reunification in 1997.

So there are these little hidden international relationships that China has throughout the region and Timor Leste being one of them as a Portuguese speaking country, and that they’ve been talking about other things such as mutual military cover operation and a multilateral deployable CPLP joint force, and I don’t think a lot of strategic think tanks in the United States, indeed in Australia, are actually looking at these other linkages that China is forging ahead with.

So, I take your point and I do agree that the United States has attempted in part to regain it’s own strategic footholds in South East Asia, but I think, at the end of the day, China is somehow a bit cannily, perhaps it’s a holistic view of things, usurping them in other areas, I mean after all, Timor Leste is another independent nation that can support China at the United Nations. So I don’t think the United States is that far ahead as it would like to be, but it is definitely ahead at this stage.

And that was Kate Reid Smith, from Charles Darwin University.
And that’s it for this week.
Thanks for listening.