Jin Yi'nan: Summary of China's military hot spots of 2012 (3)

Hot spot C: Founding of China's Sansha city

China faced severe challenges and threats in safeguarding its sovereignty, territorial integrity and maritime rights and interests in 2012, as evidenced by the disputes over the Diaoyu Islands between China and Japan and the standoffs over the Huangyan Islands between China and the Philippines. Facing these threats and challenges, China gave tit for tat and took a series of measures to safeguard its national interests. For example, the Sansha city, China's youngest city, was set up on July 24, 2012 and the Sansha Garrison of the PLA was also organized and established accordingly. At the same time, China's maritime surveillance and fishery departments strengthened their rights-protection escort and patrol missions in the waters near the Diaoyu Islands and realized normalized alternating patrols. What is the enlightenment of these rights-protection actions?

Jin Yi'nan held that these rights-protection actions bring a good enlightenment, i.e. it is impossible to achieve the goal by relying on kindness only. China planned to set up the Sansha city long time ago, but was very restrained in consideration of the reactions from various parties especially Vietnam. What is the final result? Vietnam took the lead to declare its Law of the Sea and delimited all of China's Xisha, Zhongsha and Nansha into Vietnam's marine territory range. Under such circumstance, China's setting up of Sansha city was actually a passive reaction.

Many people including Americans said that China's setting up of Sansha city is an expression to advance to the South China Sea. We answered "no". China's setting up of Sansha city is still a defensive measure to safeguard China's national sovereignty.

China's reactions are passive ones on not only the Diaoyu Islands disputes, but also the standoff incident of the Huangyan Islands. Under the conditions that other countries' actions severely challenged China's national sovereignty and China's preset guideline of jointly developing the disputed areas were completely discarded by other parties, China had no other choice but to do so.

These actions actually made China's rights-protection in the South China Sea and the East China Sea a great pace forward. Especially, China declared the territorial sea baselines of the Diaoyu Islands on September 10, 2012, and the maritime surveillance ships of China's State Oceanic Administration entered the 12-nautical-mile territorial sea of the 24-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone of the Diaoyu Islands on September 14, 2012, making major progress in safeguarding China's rights and interests over the Dianyu Islands.

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