Taiwan asked a question this week, and the answer came back wearing the uniform of a tradition. On Tuesday, China announced that one of its frigates would hold a joint exercise with an Indonesian warship in the sea east of Taiwan. The drill happened the next morning. Taiwan’s foreign ministry asked Indonesia to explain itself. Jakarta replied that the exercise was a passing exercise, a piece of routine naval etiquette, and not war-fighting in nature. That question and its answer, taken together, describe Taiwan’s position in the region better than any map: it can ask, but it cannot press.
The facts are small and precise. The Chinese ship was the Honghe, a guided-missile frigate from the Eastern Theater Command of China’s navy. The Indonesian ship was the KRI I Gusti Ngurah Rai, a frigate sailing home from Vladivostok, where it had taken part in the annual Orruda exercise with Russia’s navy. The two vessels practiced formation sailing, maritime communications and replenishment at sea on Wednesday morning, in waters that Taiwan regards as its exclusive economic zone, and then went their separate ways.
Beijing’s announcement was the first irritant. The Defense Ministry said the two navies would deepen practical cooperation and jointly safeguard regional peace and stability, but it named the location with an exactness it left out of the schedule: east of Taiwan. Taipei read the announcement as a claim, and said so. The foreign ministry said it had immediately contacted relevant parties after Beijing unilaterally claimed that Indonesia would take part, and asked Jakarta for an explanation. Its language for China was anything but neutral. It sternly condemned what it called Beijing’s arbitrary and irresponsible behavior, and noted that, among the states of the first island chain, only the Beijing authorities behave in ways it called maliciously provocative and irresponsible.
Then Indonesia answered, and the answer was addressed to no one in particular. The navy’s information service described the drill as a passing exercise, a goodwill gesture that warships conduct as an expression of naval brotherhood and of the maritime diplomacy associated with warships. The statement leaned on Jakarta’s free and active foreign policy, which permits cooperation with any country. It did not mention China. It did not mention Taiwan. It said nothing about the water those ships had just used for training. In Jakarta’s telling, the exercise was a formality between two vessels that happened to be passing, and the country whose coast lay beneath them had no part in the sentence.
That is the answer Taiwan cannot use. The two countries have no formal diplomatic relations. They have representative offices, $11.27 billion in annual trade, and more than 335,000 Indonesians living and working in Taiwan. Taiwan’s only realistic move was a request for clarification, phrased with the care owed to a partner it cannot afford to alienate. It received a definition of naval etiquette.
The timing makes the episode heavier than one frigate. Japan and the Philippines have spent months negotiating the borders of their maritime claims in these same waters, a quiet arrangement Washington encourages. China has answered with stepped-up coast guard patrols east of Taiwan and, this month, a frigate’s exercise with Indonesia. John Dotson of the Global Taiwan Institute reads the move as Beijing pushing against the slow-forming quasi-alliance between Tokyo and Manila, cultivating partners of its own, and treating the region’s tensions as a reason to push its navy deeper into the waters east of Taiwan. He called it a small step that carries a lot of symbolism. Washington, speaking on background, urged Beijing to stop its continuous military pressure on Taiwan and called on other countries not to amplify Beijing’s destabilizing narratives. That sentence was aimed, in the circumstances, at Jakarta.
The symbolism is precisely what Taiwan cannot answer. Indonesia chose to drill with China’s navy in waters Taiwan claims, and called it a tradition. The choice was made in full knowledge of where the ships were; a frigate’s crew knows which state’s waters it is sailing through. Jakarta’s calculation is not hostile to Taiwan. It is worse than hostile: it is indifferent. Indonesia wants Chinese investment, a quiet western Pacific, and friendship with everyone, and its foreign policy is built to deliver all three at once.
Taiwan’s question was real, and the answer it received was the point. When a country must ask politely why another navy drilled inside its claims, and accepts the word passing as the reply, the first island chain has told Taiwan something it did not need to hear from Beijing: the neighborhood will not stand with it, and even its friends will call the event a tradition. The frigate has sailed on, reported to be heading next toward Philippine waters. The question Taiwan asked will follow it, unanswered.
Sources: The Diplomat, Focus Taiwan (CNA), Taipei Times, Reuters