China's handling of other countries can be so deft, but sometimes so ham-fisted.
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We saw a good example of its tactlessness just before this week's regular meeting of south-east Asian countries in Jakarta, when it decided to rile at least three of them all at once. Beijing chose that time to publish a map reasserting its claims to what they see as their territory in the South China Sea.
No one is expecting south-east Asian countries to form anything like a bloc of resistance to China, but Beijing isn't helping its cause to turn them into vassals by treating them as though they already are.
A future of being dominated by China is their shared risk, but they vary markedly in their stances. Most, notably Indonesia, prefer to pretend that there is hardly any problem.
Part of their calculation, never discussed, is whether the US can be relied on indefinitely to resist China in East Asia and the Western Pacific. For without its help they have no hope.
The meeting brought together leaders of the Association of South East Asian Nations. China published the map a week before, knowing full well that reassertion of its claim to almost all the South China Sea would annoy ASEAN members as they entered the meeting and that they'd share their grievances with each other.
Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia denounced the map. Indonesia, which will lose not territory but some of its exclusive economic zone if China can enforce its claim, was more muted. Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said any line on a map had to conform with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea - which China's claim certainly does not.
It's really a mere invention. An international tribunal more or less said so in 2016.
What's actually happening in the South China Sea is simply Beijing trying to use its relative strength to take what it wants from weak neighbours.
That's a foretaste of what we can all expect if it is not contained.
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The outrageous South China Sea claim was first made before 1949 by China's then Nationalist government, whose Communist successor maintained the same territorial pretension. The original motivation was probably just national self-aggrandisement.
These days, controlling the South China Sea offers Beijing definite military advantages. First, long-range missile batteries on artificial islands are very good tools for keeping anyone else's warships and warplanes out of the zone and therefore away from China's southern coast.
No, that's not a reasonable aspiration for China. Any country with a coast would feel safer if it could seize hundreds or thousands of kilometres of adjacent sea, but by international convention that is not done. For example, Australia doesn't claim the Arafura and Timor seas to fortify them against Indonesia.
We own the first 12 nautical miles (22 kilometres) from our shore and cannot grab more by building new islands further out and planting Australian flags on them.
For China, another advantage of controlling the South China Sea is creating what's called a bastion for hiding its ballistic-missile submarines, weapons for nuclear war. US and Japanese maritime aircraft can't hunt for them in a sea area that's infested with Chinese fighters from nearby island bases. And US and Japanese attack submarines looking for missile subs will be in danger if China can flood the area with its own maritime aircraft.
Again, that's not a reasonable aspiration for China. The US doesn't claim possession of the Caribbean Sea for such a purpose, nor does Britain assert that it owns the Norwegian Sea. Instead their missile subs hide in the vastness of the open ocean.
Then there's the military advantage that should have south-east Asian countries terrified. By operating bases in the sea next to them, China has all of them in easy reach for bludgeoning.
Malaysia is 1400 kilometres from China, but only 330 kilometres from the fortified airfield that Beijing has built on Mischief Reef. The Indonesian territory nearest a Chinese base has not 1600 kilometres of buffer space, as it used to, but only 780 kilometres. China hasn't yet built a base on Scarborough Shoal, just 230 kilometres from the Philippines, but you can bet it soon will.
To an outsider, what's needed is obviously collective defence in south-east Asia or even all of East Asia, including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. But there's no inclination to build an alliance on this side of the world like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which preserved the independence of democratic Europe against the Soviet Union in the Cold War.
Still, what can be hoped for is gradual stiffening of resistance in one south-east Asian country or another, each perhaps encouraged by the growing boldness of others.
That's where China has been foolish in stirring up Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and, to some extent, Indonesia.
The Philippines and Vietnam already have some backbone, the former now gratefully receiving stepped-up military assistance from the US, Japan and Australia.
Alone, the Philippines is particularly weak, yet it can offer the US and US allies the invaluable advantage of access to territory not far from China and Taiwan.
There would be great advantages in putting US and allied teams wielding strike missiles in other countries around the South China Sea, too. No more offers of territorial access are on the table. But every time China treats south-east Asian countries with contempt, the possibility improves.
- Bradley Perrett was based in Beijing as a journalist from 2004 to 2020.