South China Sea
On 08 March 2009 five Chinese vessels harassed an unarmed US Navy ship in the South China Sea. The American ship was conducting routine operations 75 miles south of Hainan Island. US officials protested to China about the naval incident in which American authorities said the Chinese sailors' conduct was "reckless" and "unprofessional." Chinese vessels maneuvered dangerously close to the USNS Impeccable, waving Chinese flags and ordering it to leave the area. The US ocean surveillance ship was unarmed and staffed by civilians conducting routine operations at the time. Some accounts said the Impeccable was towing sonar equipment to monitor Chinese submarine traffic. When the Chinese vessels moved dangerously close to the Impeccable, the U.S. military said the Americans sprayed water from the ship's fire hoses at one of the Chinese vessels. Crew members on the deck of the approaching patrol boat stripped to their underwear when they were sprayed with water, but US officials said the Chinese vessel did not change course, stopping only when it was about eight meters from the twin-hulled American vessel.
China takes the position that all maritime data collection activities, including military intelligence and hydrographic collection activities, fall within the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea [UNCLOS] provisions for marine scientific research and therefore require coastal-state consent before they could be carried out in the two-hundred-nautical-mile EEZ.
On March 24, 2001, one week before the EP-3 incident described above, a Chinese frigate came within 100 meters of the U.S. Navy’s unarmed hydrographic survey vessel Bowditch collecting data in the Yellow Sea and forced it to stop operating in China’s EEZ and depart. And in May 2001 T-AGS 62 Bowditch, another oceanographic survey vessel, had been at sea between Japan and China in the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea doing oceanographic survey operations. Bowditch was performing hydrographic performance acousticdata tests. Such tests are performed using sonar-like equipment to determine the salinity, temperature, existence of currents and other water characteristics that affect the movementof sound under the surface. The collected data is useful in tracking submarines. The Chinese sent out a long-range maritime patrol plane to have a look. A Chinese surface vessel came out periodically during the course of its underway period to have a look as well. And the master of the Bowditch thought that it was their better course of action to depart the area at that point and he did so.
Again in September 2002, PLAN war ships directed the USNS Bowditch – an unarmed oceanographic research vessel manned by 25 civilians – to exit an area of international waters well outside Chinese territorial waters in the Yellow Sea. China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman at thetime refused to specify her country’s specific basis for requiring Bowditch to depart, andcited only her state’s “relevant rights” in the exclusive economic zone as a basis for the PLAN’s actions.
In January 2003 China enacted a new decree extending its control over the 200-mile economic zone from its coast. "This is a Chinese domestic law that is inconsistent with international law and the law that we follow," said a defense official. "We have continued to maintain over the years that our military surveys are a high-seas freedom and are not subject to restrictions placed within any" exclusive economic zone."
In May 2003 China sought to intercept the Bowditch and force it away from its shores, claiming that the ship is violating China's "exclusive economic zone." China changed its tactics against the Bowditch, now using fishing boats to deliberately bump into the US vessel as a way of scaring it off. The Bowditch suffered some damage in one such intentional crash.
China claims most of the South China Sea as either territorial water or Exclusive Economic Zone. China's claims cannot be reconciled with the claims of other states in the South China Sea area. The other states have conflicting claims that can be harmonized, the way there were compromises among the conflicting claims for the Gulf of Guinea in Africa. In the South China Sea, each of the littoral states claims areas that are immediately contiguous to their territorial seas, and it would be possible to "split the difference" on competing claims. But China claims the entirety of the South China Sea, so there is no possibility of compromise with China's position, since it is all or nothing.
Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) coastal states have the right to establish sovereignty over adjacent waters out to a maximum of 12 nautical miles from the nation’s coastline, including the coastline of offshore islands. These enclosed waters are known as the coastal state’s territorial sea.
During the negotiations of the text of the 1982 UNCLOS military activities in the EEZ were a controversial issue. Some coastal States such as Bangladesh, Brazil, Cape Verde, Malaysia, Pakistan and Uruguay contended that other States cannot carry out military exercises or maneuvers in or over their EEZ without their consent. In June 1998, the PRC passed the “Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf Act.” This Act created an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) with 200 nautical mile limits from its coastal baseline, and claimed the right, inter alia, to broadly undefined powers to enforce laws in the EEZ, “including security…laws and regulations.” Based on the Act, the PRC does not recognize the airspace above its EEZ as “international airspace” and has interfered with and protested US reconnaissance flights over its EEZ. The US has protested this sovereignty claim as a violation of international law numerous times since this law was passed.
The US Government has long conducted a vigorous freedom of navigation program through which it has asserted its navigational rights in the face of what it has regarded as excessive claims by coastal states of jurisdiction over ocean space or international passages. When remonstrations and protestations are unavailing, elements of US military forces may sail into or fly over disputed regions for the purpose of demonstrating their right and determination to continue to do so.
