BEIJING APPLYING ’3 WARFARES’ TO SOUTH CHINA SEA DISPUTES

June 2014 

WantChinaTimes.com

Knowing China through

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

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Beijing applying ’3 warfares’ to South China Sea disputes: academic

China is expanding its “three warfares” policy in dealing with Taiwan to its territorial disputes in the South China Sea, reports our Chinese-language sister paper Want Daily.

Richard Hu, deputy executive director of the Center for Security Studies at Taipei’s National Chengchi University, told the paper that the People’s Liberation Army first officially coined the political warfare concept of the “three warfares” back in 2003, being public opinion warfare, psychological warfare and legal warfare.

The three warfares strategy has long been adopted by Beijing for cross-strait affairs, but now the battlefield has shifted from the Taiwan Strait to the South China Sea, Hu said.

According to Hu, China has already begun adopting the strategy against the Philippines, which filed a 4,000-page arbitration case at The Hague under the United Nations Law of the Sea against Beijing’s territorial claims to the disputed Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea.

On June 3, Manila requested that Beijing submit a response to the complaint by Dec. 15, but China has already stated that it will not participate in the arbitration, which Hu believes is a sign of the three warfares at work.

Even though China has refused to accept the case or participate in the arbitration, Hu said, it will acknowledge and grasp international discourse by utilizing academic research or documents to provide solid evidence to support its case through unofficial channels while also making strong statements in the international arena to influence public opinion.

In order to succeed, however, China still needs to seek assistance from Taiwan, Hu said. China had tens of thousands of historical files documenting its territorial claims in the South China Sea, but they were split with Taiwan during the civil war, Hu said. The Taiwanese government still has in its possession thousands of documents on the claims in its Ministry of the Interior, Foreign Ministry, Ministry of National Defense and research departments, all of which are invaluable to Beijing, he added.

The territory and natural resources linked to these claims affect sovereignty and national interests on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, but how they cooperate to use the documentary evidence to their collective advantage will be a test of intelligence for both governments, Hu said.

Six countries — Taiwan, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei — claim in whole or part to the South China Sea and its island chains and shoals.