Soft power?

China is not the only Asian country that has declared an Air Defense Identification Zone, or ADIZ.

Japan declared its ADIZ way back in 1969, extending its boundaries several times, most recently in June this year to include contested islands. South Korea, Vietnam and Taiwan also have their ADIZ. Like common waters, the ADIZ of several countries can overlap.

Unlike other states, however, Beijing’s unilateral declaration of an ADIZ is ratcheting up tension in the region. This is because Beijing is claiming nearly all the waters around it as its own. If it could get away with it, Beijing would probably draw up a 20-dash line and claim all waters all the way to Palau for China’s shark’s fin and turtle soups.

If Beijing declares an ADIZ over the East China Sea, it may not be long before it declares an ADIZ in the airspace over its so-called nine-dash line in the South China Sea. We may soon see Chinese military jets flying over Palawan’s airspace, protecting Chinese fishing boats, oil explorers, and gatherers of scaly anteaters, birds’ nests and corals.

An airspace, in international terms, means the sky over land territory plus waters up to 22 kilometers from the coast. The ADIZ is supposedly a more defined, restricted airspace where a country monitors and identifies approaching aircraft.

Defining territorial airspace while up in the sky can of course be tricky. Miscalculations and accidents can lead to confrontation and escalate into armed conflict, especially between countries with a long history of rivalry.

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This is the concern expressed by the United States in China’s unilateral declaration. But Chinese President Xi Jinping, meeting with US Vice President Joe Biden this week, reportedly stood firm. We can guess that Xi has his people’s support in this, since China’s ADIZ covers airspace claimed by Japan, South Korea and Taiwan – not exactly Beijing’s best friends. Xi will lose face if he backs down on this issue.

Closer to Earth, China has also finally deployed its first aircraft carrier – a refurbished one pre-owned by Ukraine.

Photos showed the Soviet-era Varyag, now renamed Liaoning, with no aircraft on board.

An American naval official reportedly described the Liaoning as a “museum.” US navy officials have also told me that it will take years before the Chinese can have the trained crew for a fully operational aircraft carrier.

But the Liaoning’s deployment was an expression of Chinese annoyance after the US flew two unarmed B-52 bombers over the Senkaku/Diaoyu island chain claimed by both Japan and China. The bombers were deployed after Beijing declared its ADIZ.

Chinese officials in Manila and Beijing have told me that they are fully aware of the limitations in their defense capability and are not competing with the world’s lone superpower. The Chinese, incidentally, consider the superpower concept a relic of the cold war.

They prefer to project “soft power,” the Chinese say. But even in this aspect they stumbled when it came to timely assistance for the areas devastated by Super Typhoon Yolanda. Because China’s initial aid commitment was a pittance compared to what much of the world sent ASAP, its deployment of a hospital ship, although much appreciated by the typhoon victims, was seen here largely as (in Pinoy slang) a “forced to good” gesture.

China insists it has no hegemonic ambitions in the region. But its ADIZ declaration fuels concerns about what US officials see as an “emerging pattern of behavior” for the Asian giant.

That behavior is prompting several countries in the region, the Philippines included, to strengthen security cooperation with the US and its other close allies Japan and South Korea.

A concern for Filipinos is that the Liaoning will show up one day soon off Zambales in the West Philippine Sea.

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David Carden, America’s first resident ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, wishes that US ties with the region could go beyond the China issue.

Carden was in Manila earlier this week for the ASEAN Youth Summit. Meeting with a small group of journalists, he expressed his government’s concern over China’s ADIZ declaration and reiterated support for Manila’s arbitration case filed with the United Nations.

But he also emphasized that China must be a partner in regional growth. He pointed out that China has been a partner of ASEAN in many aspects apart from trade, including education, connectivity and infrastructure development.

“We applaud China’s engagement in the region,” Carden said. “I think that there are clear opportunities that exist in our interactions with one another.”

He lamented that whenever people discuss the US pivot to Asia or rebalancing of forces, “they always talk about the military aspect.”

US interests in the region, Carden emphasized, go beyond security issues. “The most immediate focus is an ASEAN economic community by 2015,” he said as he prodded the Philippines to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

“It’s our hope and our expectation that our Filipino friends will see it in their best interest to be part of the TPP,” he said.

The TPP will be a platform not only for economic integration but also for empowering the Asia-Pacific to address four major challenges, Carden said: education, corruption, environmental issues and inequitable growth.

America, which Carden says bears “some of the responsibility” for the challenges, is also promoting the “four freedoms” – of expression and religion, and from fear and want.

Carden pointed out that everything is interconnected – environmental problems affect public health and food security, for example – and the world has gotten to the size “where we’re all neighbors now… we’re all in this together now.”

“It matters not only that you grow but also how you grow,” he said.

He could tell that to the Chinese, now the world’s second largest economy and still growing, but he’ll probably be told to mind his own business.