Strategic constraints keep risk of China-US conflict low: Expert

SINGAPORE — The risk of imminent conflict between China and the United States is low because of the geographic limitations on their conventional forces, nuclear deterrence, and the shared strategic objectives between the two countries, said an expert on Sino-US relations yesterday.

Speaking during a lecture held under the auspices of the Tan Chin Tuan Chinese Culture and Civilisation Programme at Yale-NUS College, Professor Bates Gill, Visiting Professor of the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, explained that China’s geo-strategic position is not particularly advantageous. Not only due to the fact that four of its closest neighbours South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and Thailand, are US treaty allies, but also because its sea-borne import and export routes are vulnerable to attack or disruption. At the same time, both countries have a significant nuclear arsenal and this is also a key factor holding them back from full-scale conflict.

“China’s (nuclear) capability is growing stronger with each passing year, and in the harsh logic of nuclear weapons, it is probably a stabilising factor in US-China relations,” said Prof Gill, who is also a director at China Matters, a not-for-profit advisory based in Sydney.

But above all, he stressed, both countries do share common strategic objectives. “The US and China do share common aims: Combating violent extremism, limiting nuclear proliferation, bolstering the global economy, (and) mitigating climate change ... Most importantly, they share the goal of avoiding an overt US-China conflict,” said the professor.

Yet, Prof Gill cautioned, there is always the possibility for inadvertent conflict between Washington and Beijing — particularly when it comes to the issue of China’s territorial disputes with US allies like Japan or the Philippines in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, respectively. If a US treaty ally in the region acts well beyond what Washington wants to see, it may drag the US into a conflict that it does not want with China, he warned.

China has been operating ships within Japanese territorial waters near the Senkaku Islands, claiming the islands as Diaoyu, as well as carrying out land reclamation work in the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.

Fortunately, as Prof Gill observed yesterday, Washington has so far been able to urge restraint upon its allies — such as Japan, Taiwan and, increasingly, the Philippines. Similarly, China has also acted very cautiously in handling its disputes with US allies.

Beijing claims most of the South China Sea, through which more than US$5 trillion (S$7.1 trillion) in ship-borne trade passes every year. Territorial disputes involving China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei have flared on and off for years. Tensions flared again recently when Beijing conducted three plane test-landings last week on an island it has built in the disputed South China Sea, prompting diplomatic backlash from Hanoi, Manila, London and Washington.

On how countries should best navigate their relations with China, Prof Gill says the most pragmatic and feasible solution would be to continue engaging China economically, while preparing for the possibility of armed conflict. He said China’s growing military and economic might can shape its relationship with other countries in ways — especially in territorial disputes — that are more favourable to itself.

As such, countries in the region are turning to the US to act as a balance against China, he observed. An example is how Manila has resurrected its military alliance with Washington after a hiatus of more than a decade.

“The US obviously is a more powerful country ... that in fact does not have direct territorial, or even direct strategic interests in some of the more ‘meddlesome’ territorial issues (in Asia),” said Prof Gill. “It is because they (the smaller states) want to play an engagement hedge game, but can’t by themselves. They need more support to do so, and I think the US is prepared to offer that carefully,” he said.