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By:

Commodore S.L. Deshmukh

31 October 2024 at 3:00:19 am

The Dragon’s Expanding Sea

China’s creeping conquest of the South China Sea is testing the limits of international law and the resolve of the world’s democracies. Few lines have caused as much anxiety in the cartographic theatre of our times as the one China insists on drawing across the sea. The “nine-dash line,” an ambiguous crescent looping deep into the South China Sea, transcends the limits of a mere maritime claim. It is Beijing’s geopolitical doctrine and a challenge to the post-war international order....

The Dragon’s Expanding Sea

China’s creeping conquest of the South China Sea is testing the limits of international law and the resolve of the world’s democracies. Few lines have caused as much anxiety in the cartographic theatre of our times as the one China insists on drawing across the sea. The “nine-dash line,” an ambiguous crescent looping deep into the South China Sea, transcends the limits of a mere maritime claim. It is Beijing’s geopolitical doctrine and a challenge to the post-war international order. Strategic Waters Stretching across waters contested by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia, the line encompasses almost the entirety of the South China Sea, one of the world’s busiest maritime arteries through which trillions of dollars in trade pass through it annually. Beneath its waters lie fisheries, hydrocarbons and strategic routes vital to Asia’s economic future. To Beijing, these waters are part of China’s “core interests” - a term also reserved for the sanctities of Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan. China’s justification is steeped in history. Official narratives frequently invoke the Western Han Dynasty and ancient Chinese mariners supposedly traversing these waters as early as the second century BCE. Historical memory, in Beijing’s telling, confers sovereign legitimacy. Yet modern international law is rather less sentimental. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), maritime rights are governed not by imperial nostalgia but by clearly defined territorial and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) principles. But that has not restrained Beijing. Over the past two decades China has pursued what strategists call a ‘salami-slicing’ campaign, incremental moves without provoking outright war. Collectively, however, China’s steps amount to a slow-motion redrawing of Asia’s maritime map. China is increasingly behaving like an archipelagic state akin to Indonesia or the Philippines, claiming rights over waters between island groups as though they were internal seas. Yet UNCLOS recognises only a limited set of nations under such a framework, and China is not among them. Nevertheless, Beijing has persisted in treating contested waters as sovereign space, demanding deference from foreign vessels and aircraft. More visible has been the transformation of reefs into fortresses. Across the Spratly and Paracel island chains, submerged atolls have been dredged into artificial islands complete with airstrips, radar stations, missile systems and harbours. What were once coral outcrops are now unsinkable military bases. Beijing then uses these engineered features to buttress wider EEZ claims, despite international rulings rejecting such interpretations. Pressure Tactics The strategy extends beyond conventional naval power. China has mastered the art of “grey-zone” coercion: pressure tactics deliberately designed to remain below the threshold of war. Instead of deploying destroyers alone, Beijing relies heavily on coast-guard vessels, fishing fleets and maritime militias. Swarms of fishing boats descend upon disputed waters, intimidating rival claimants while providing Beijing plausible deniability. For smaller Southeast Asian states, the imbalance is stark. Filipino or Vietnamese vessels often find themselves shadowed, blocked or harassed by heavily armed ships of the China Coast Guard. Fishing communities that once operated freely now navigate an increasingly militarised sea. Beijing’s most audacious manoeuvre, however, has been juridical. China routinely twists the language of UNCLOS to justify claims that the treaty itself plainly undermines. In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague delivered a sweeping rebuke, ruling that China’s expansive ‘historic rights’ claims had no legal basis under international law. The tribunal also determined that several contested features in the Spratly Islands were incapable of generating full EEZ entitlements. China has simply ignored the verdict. Western powers, led by the United States, have attempted to challenge Beijing through Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPS), sailing naval vessels through disputed waters to demonstrate that these are international seas, not Chinese lakes. Yet such symbolic missions are sorely limited in efficacy. Many analysts increasingly argue that occasional naval patrols and ritual diplomatic protests are insufficient against a power willing to combine patience, economic leverage and military intimidation. While China’s strategy is cumulative and long-term, the response to it often appears episodic and reactive. Nor is Washington’s position entirely uncomplicated. America champions UNCLOS while never having ratified the convention itself, a contradiction Beijing has eagerly exploited. Meanwhile, perceptions of declining American resolve, heightened by Middle Eastern entanglements, domestic political polarisation and wavering strategic consistency, have emboldened Chinese assertiveness. The QUAD grouping of India, Japan, Australia and America has yet to evolve into the cohesive strategic bloc many once imagined. India, too, occupies an increasingly pivotal role in this maritime contest. Though not a claimant in the South China Sea disputes, it has deep stakes in preserving freedom of navigation and resisting any precedent that allows powerful states to unilaterally redefine maritime norms. Beijing’s ambitions no longer stop at the ‘near seas.’ Through ports, infrastructure projects and naval deployments stretching from Gwadar to Djibouti, China is steadily expanding its footprint into the Indian Ocean and the wider Indo-Pacific. If Beijing succeeds in normalising its expansive interpretation of maritime sovereignty, other revisionist powers may follow suit. The result would not merely be regional instability but the erosion of the very rules underpinning global commerce and navigation. The South China Sea has thus become a laboratory for a new kind of geopolitical contest being fought through attrition and incremental encroachment. China’s genius lies in understanding that global attention spans are short, democracies divided and institutions slow-moving. That leaves the international community with an uncomfortable choice. Either it collectively reinforces the legal norms embodied in UNCLOS and the Hague ruling, or it tacitly accepts a world in which might quietly supersedes right. (The author is a retired naval aviation officer and a defence and geopolitical analyst. Views personal.)

Selective Outrage

India’s left-liberal media has long prided itself on being the torchbearer of secularism, dissent and moral rectitude. In the aftermath of ‘Operation Sindoor,’ the precision military strike launched by the Modi government against Pakistan-based terror camps, it has revealed its not a principled commitment to peace or truth, but a disturbing penchant for ideological prejudice, performative sanctimony and selective outrage.


The operation itself was a textbook display of calibrated force and geopolitical prudence. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, often caricatured as ‘authoritarian’ by the ‘liberal’ English-language commentariat, chose patience over provocation. He consulted opposition leaders, held detailed discussions with defence chiefs and took key international stakeholders, notably the United States and Russia, into confidence before authorising limited military action. The symbolism of ‘Operation Sindoor’ was also carefully crafted: a pointed reminder that the attack’s real victims were Hindu women widowed by Pakistan-sponsored militants in Kashmir. The government’s briefings were also strategic and symbolic as two ranking female officers, one of them Muslim, were made the public face of the mission, underlining a new Indian confidence that blends military muscle with democratic pluralism.


But this was unacceptable for India’s entrenched ‘left-liberal’ press, steeped in academic jargon, Western validation and a knee-jerk hostility to anything remotely ‘Hindutva.’ That a Muslim officer briefed the nation on ‘Operation Sindoor’ was branded ‘tokenism’ by such commentators. Others crudely alleged that the April 22 Pahalgam massacre was the logical culmination of reported atrocities against Muslims since Modi came to power in 2014.


The semantic nitpicking over ‘Operation Sindoor’ was maddening. An editor of a prominent magazine dubbed the operation’s name as ‘patriarchal’ and coded in Hindutva tropes. In a bizarre case of moral inversion, sindoor was likened to symbols of ‘honour killings’ and gender oppression, ignoring both its cultural resonance and the cruel reality that these women had lost their husbands in cold blood. For years, India’s ‘secular’ commentariat nurtured a preordained binary: the Congress may be flawed but was at least ‘secular’ while the BJP was an inveterate ‘fascist.’ Thus, the 2002 Gujarat riots are always focused upon but the Congress-backed pogrom of the Sikhs in 1984 is either downplayed or rationalised. Terrorism in Kashmir is tragic, but state retaliation is ‘jingoism.’ A strong Muslim voice in government is ‘tokenism’ but its absence is ‘exclusion.’ Even journalistic rigour is selectively applied. When Pakistan claimed to have downed Indian jets, some Indian outlets rushed to amplify the story before verification, inadvertently echoing enemy propaganda.


Dissent is vital in any democracy. But when its becomes indistinguishable from disdain, when editorial choices are dictated by ideological conformity, then the press becomes a caricature of itself. Ironically, many of these journalists enjoy robust free speech and loudly lament India’s supposed slide into ‘fascism’ from the safety of their X handles. Yet they turn a blind eye to Putin’s repression, Erdogan’s purges or Xi Jinping’s camps. In their eyes, Modi remains the greatest threat to democracy even as they broadcast their outrage freely, without fear of censorship or reprisal. ‘Operation Sindoor’ was a statement of cultural self-confidence. That confidence has rattled those who have spent their careers gatekeeping Indian discourse. Today, their monopoly is over. The people are watching and they no longer believe that the emperor has clothes.

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