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A breakthrough in the Sino-Malaysian South China Sea dynamics
Malaysia and China will handle their bilateral issue on the South China Sea with dialogue and diplomacy.
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Naval muscle: Royal Australian Navy guided-missile frigate HMAS Parramatta (left) sails with United States Navy Amphibious assault ship USS America, Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill and Arleigh-Burke class guided missile destroyer USS Barry in a joint exercise in the South China Sea, on April 18, 2020. (Reuters/US Navy/Petty Officer 3rd Class Nicholas Huynh)
W
hile Japan and South Korea do not have a problem with China using the term East China Sea, the duo are often worried about the South China Sea, and rightly so.
But perhaps this issue has been blown out of proportion. It is time to get a handle on what the South China Morning Post, one of the leading English news portals in China, meant in its publication in the Oct. 17, 2024, version of the newsprint on "practical breakthrough" in the South China Sea.
First and foremost, the paper reported that China and Malaysia had agreed that an oil rig belonging to Malaysia's Petronas, one of the largest oil and gas companies in the world, should continue to operate in the South China Sea.
The paper did provide any exact location of this mutual approval. Beijing has made a generic claim over the South China Sea based on historical assertions that go back hundreds if not thousands of years.
While it is important to learn history, distorted views can be dangerous, as countries can become hypernationalistic, with expansionist or revisionist aims.
Even chairman Mao of China once told a high-powered Japanese delegation to Japan in the early 1970s that the latter "should stop apologizing" to China. To which Mao continued: "You are a nation-state after all. Too much it is not good for yourself too."
In other words, it was time for Japan and China to move on, to move up (the value chain). As Deng Xiaoping would have it in 1980, it was nothing short of a prerogative to create a prosperous China. As originally stated in their national development program in 1982, known as Xiao Kang Sher Hui, a sufficiently prosperous country.
