南シナ海にさす台湾問題の影―中国の対外戦略が形成する海洋政策の観点から

抄録

This article argues that China’s South China Sea policy is subject to the most important security goal of China, which has changed over time, rather than serving as an independent political objective of maritime advancement, as believed in the literature in Japan.

During the period in which China perceived the Soviet Union as its greatest threat, China selected Vietnam—an allied country of the Soviet Union—as the sole target in the South China Sea from the 1970s until the Mischief Reef Incident in 1995. China promised the Philippines that it would peacefully solve South China Sea disputes. However, China has not physically responded to the development of administrative control over the features of the Spratly Islands of the South China Sea since the 1970s.

As relations with the Soviet Union improved in the middle of the 1980s, Chinese maritime experts and military officers began insisting on protecting maritime interests under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). However, China continued to select Vietnam as its sole target in the South China Sea and engaged in battle with Vietnam in 1988 in the Spratly Islands. Deng Xiaoping avoided challenging the Philippines—an allied country of the U.S.—in the South China Sea because he prioritized maintaining a sound relationship with the West, which enabled China to focus on economic development. The 1995 Chinese seizure of the Mischief Reef claimed by the Philippines signaled a China’s shift in South China Sea policy. However, China’s top leaders largely prioritized the preservation of a stable international environment; thus, China continued to apply low-profile policies in the South China Sea, as shown by its signing of the Code of Conduct with the ASEAN. The Xi Jinping administration clearly ended this low-profile policy by seizing the Philippines-claimed Scarborough Shoal and subsequently defining the goal of building a strong maritime nations in 2012.

However, in recent years, the Xi Jinping administration began following its predecessors more closely by shaping the South China Sea policy subject to suit the Taiwan issue. China’s harassment of the resupply missions for the Philippines grounded on the Second Thomas Shoal and its simultaneous fueling of the fear of the Philippine public being entangled in the Taiwan contingency represent China’s calculated punishment of the Philippines due to the U.S.–Philippines security cooperation relationship, through which the U.S. has gained access to four additional basing sites in the Philippines under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).