China’s conquest by ‘Adiz’

China just announced that fishing by foreigners in the vast South China Sea needs its permission (Front Page, 1/9/14). This appears to be a corollary to its thrust to conquer territory by Adiz (air defense identification zone) and some other means.

Late last year, the Chinese government issued an Adiz over the East China Sea, covering Dioyu islands that Japan claims as theirs and calls Senkakus, and some submerged rocks near South Korea. China requires foreign aircraft to submit their flight plans before undergoing flights that would cross a part or parts of the Adiz.

The initial reaction of the United States, Japan and South Korea, was to challenge the Chinese Adiz by sending their military planes or bombers. China’s military did not immediately act. Japan asked its civilian airlines to suspend compliance. But while protesting the Chinese Adiz, the United States advised its airlines to respect it.

The Chinese Adiz is, in effect, a territorial conquest; it is a grab of the airspace, the territorial waters below it (including its contiguous and economic zones and the soil beneath them), and the land surrounded by those waters. The Chinese Adiz is backed up by a threat of force, in defiance of United Nations principles on peaceful settlement of disputes.

Territorial aggrandizement used to be simple. In the good old days, a pope divided the world into two—the eastern part belonged to Portugal, the western to Spain. Spain violated the protocol, went East with a Portuguese navigator, Ferdinand Magellan, and colonized the Philippine islands. Other western countries, like wolves, joined the fray. Holland took the East Indies; Belgium gobbled up some countries in Africa.

Britain, with Francis Drake, proved that the Spanish Armada was not invincible after all. Lord Nelson defeated the French fleet in the Mediterranean, routing the French and Spanish navies at Trafalgar, with one eye and one arm, giving Britain gold and glory. For himself Nelson received peerage and medals, Westminster Abbey and a monument in death. Thus the expressions: “Britannia rules the waves”; “The sun never sets in the British Empire.”

The United States emerged as the modern imperialist. But at least, it paid cession money to Spain for Cuba and the Philippines—imposing a military bases agreement on the latter for 99 years, and perpetual occupation of Guantanamo base on the former. During World War II, the United States ended Japan’s pretension to air superiority at Midway, and to naval arrogance in Leyte Gulf—the biggest naval battle in history. Japan’s dream of a Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere vanished.

Incidentally, ahead of China, the United States proclaimed its own Adizes over its contiguous zones, Hawaii and Guam. Countries having American troops, like Japan and South Korea, followed suit; their Adizes overlap that of China. China’s Adiz was a blatant air-sea-land grab in modern history, unless its rights are proved under international law and in an appropriate forum. Japan and South Korea have to answer the same charge, unless they, too, similarly validate their rights.

—NELSON D. LAVIÑA,

retired ambassador,

nlavina3@fastmail.fm