This is an excerpt of a speech by veteran diplomat Bilahari Kausikan organised by the Institute of Policy Studies on Wednesday. This is his third lecture in the IPS-Nathan Lecture series. In the lecture, he examines the impact of US-China competition on Asean. In the extract below, he gives his reading of what has spurred China’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea in recent years.
On a global scale, China is not a clearly revisionist power. But Beijing wants to reclaim something of its historical centrality in East Asia. The United States has emphasised that it intends to remain an East Asian power.

The strategic challenge for China is therefore how to shift the US from the very centre of the East Asian strategic equation and occupy that space, but without provoking responses from the US and Japan that could jeopardise Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule. For the US the strategic challenge is how to accommodate China, while reassuring friends and allies that it intends to hold its position without stumbling into conflict.

The South China Sea (SCS) is not the only issue in US-China relations; it is perhaps not even the most important issue in their relationship. But the SCS is today the issue where the parameters of US-China competition and their interests are most clearly defined. Like it or not, the region will draw conclusions about American resolve and Chinese intentions from the SCS issue, which will also shape perceptions of Asean.

http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/pavlovian-conditioning-and-correct-thinking-on-the-south-china-sea