Malaysia urged to get tougher with Beijing over South China Sea claims

Malaysia should take a more proactive approach to defending its rights in the South China Sea, an American expert on China who has advised the Pentagon warned – urging the Southeast Asian nation to reject Beijing’s “excessive claims” over the disputed waters and protect its own long-term strategic goals.

Prioritising short-term trade benefits poses serious risks that could ultimately result in greater long-term costs, said Toshi Yoshihara, a senior fellow at the Washington -based Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments think tank who has written extensively on China’s military and maritime policy.

He said these costs could come in various forms, from economic penalties to loss of territorial integrity and increased regional instability, undermining Malaysia’s national interests and security.

“Accommodating China is basically paying later with extra penalties, and frequently the penalty will come in the form of blood, sweat and tears,” Yoshihara told This Week in Asia on Monday, a day before he was expected to brief the Malaysian Armed Forces Staff College’s National Centre for Defence Studies on the same topic.

The resource-rich waters of the South China Sea are claimed by Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines and Vietnam. China’s claims over the disputed waters, demarcated on Beijing’s maps by its “nine dash line”, crosses into all of these countries’ exclusive economic zones.

Although the boundaries of exclusive economic zones are upheld by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and a 2016 arbitral decision in The Hague, China has dismissed these international rulings in favour of what it claims to be its historical rights over the region.

China has repeatedly encroached into the waters of Malaysia’s exclusive economic zone, particularly around Sabah and Sarawak. These incursions, often involving Chinese coastguard ships, have intensified in recent years following the discovery of significant oil and gas reserves.

Yoshihara’s comments came in response to remarks made last month by former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, which were widely interpreted as a call to let China’s claims over the disputed waters go unchallenged.

“They [China’s government] claim that the South China Sea belongs to them, but they have not stopped ships from passing through,” Mahathir said at the Nikkei Future of Asia conference in Tokyo last month.

“As long as there is no stoppage of the passage of ships through the South China Sea, then it’s good enough.”

With Malaysia’s economy heavily reliant on trade from both the United States and China, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has been accused of playing down Chinese vessels’ encroachments into Malaysian waters, asserting that his country has no issues with Beijing.

“If they have problems with China, they should not impose it upon us. We do not have a problem with China,” Anwar said.

China has been Malaysia’s largest trading partner for the past 15 years, currently accounting for some 17 per cent of the country’s total trade volume.

Yoshihara, author of the 2022 book Mao’s Army Goes to Sea, which details the founding of the Chinese navy and the start of Beijing’s maritime and island-building campaigns, suggested that Kuala Lumpur could learn from Manila about how to “deal with peacetime coercive intimidation tactics” in the South China Sea.

Manila’s tactics include documenting its maritime territorial conflicts with Beijing. He noted that the Philippine navy has been releasing footage of its clashes with the Chinese coastguard around the Second Thomas Shoal, which Yoshihara described as a “public relations disaster” for China.

During several clashes, Chinese ships have shot high-pressure water cannons at Philippine forces, resulting in vessels being damaged and crewmen being injured.

“The violent force of the water cannons suggested they can inflict casualties and perhaps even death. China is sort of struggling to deal with this new narrative,” Yoshihara said.

At the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore on Friday, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr said the death of any of his citizens or servicemen would come very close to constituting “an act of war” – and vowed to respond accordingly.

“Once we get to that point, certainly we would have crossed the Rubicon. Is that a red line? Almost certainly it’s going to be a red line,” Marcos Jnr said.

In response, China asserted its claims over the South China Sea and accused Manila of jeopardising the security and stability of the region through its close ties with the US, including the placement of mid-range missile systems in the Philippines as part of a joint military exercise in April.

“China has exercised great restraints in the face of such infringements and provocations,” said Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jan at the forum.

The Philippines, a former US colony, signed a mutual defence treaty with Washington in 1951, dictating that both nations would support each other if either were attacked by an external party.