World Politics Review: What is driving France’s recent military deployments in China’s backyard? How much staying power does the French Navy have in the Asia-Pacific?

French sailors aboard aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle as it leaves the naval base in Toulon, France, March 5, 2019. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier

Jean-Pierre Cabestan: France's recent naval deployments in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait show its willingness to promote and defend international norms—in this particular case, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS. Like the United States and most other naval powers, France is attached to freedom of navigation in all international waters.

France's Pacific fleet is very small, comprising only two frigates and three patrol ships. As a result, the French navy has relied on its ships anchored in France, usually in Toulon, to conduct many of its deployments in the Asia-Pacific.

In the past few years, the Jeanne d'Arc mission, an annual spring deployment for newly promoted naval cadets, has taken place in the region. For example, in 2017, the Jeanne d'Arc mission included two ships, the amphibious assault ship Mistral and the La Fayette-class stealth frigate Courbet. These two vessels sailed through the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, the former heading toward Sasebo, in Japan, and the latter making a port call in Shanghai.

But on their way, as soon as the Mistral and Courbet had left Vietnam, they were shadowed by two Chinese frigates that informed them that they had entered "Chinese seas," without specifying the nature of these seas. The French ships replied that they were navigating in international waters and continued their journey without altering their itinerary.

Contrary to the US Navy, the French navy has exercised caution by not conducting "freedom of navigation operations" per se. It refrains from entering the 12-nautical-mile zone around the artificial islands that China has built in the South China Sea, the area that China claims as its territorial waters.

Aware of the importance of its relations with China as well as its limited naval power in the Asia-Pacific, France has decided to avoid provoking Beijing, preferring to remind it to fully abide by UNCLOS.

In France's view, China must cease its efforts to force other countries to accept its territorial claims over virtually the entire South China Sea and recognize the legitimacy of the 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague regarding the nature of disputed land features in the South China Sea. According to that decision, none of the land features located in the Paracel or the Spratly Islands have territorial waters.