Politics South China Sea Thread
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Last weekend, China’s coastguard and maritime militia carried out dangerous and aggressive manoeuvres against a small Philippines boat, blocking and blasting it with a powerful water cannon.
The vessel was trying to resupply a remote Philippines armed forces garrison on Second Thomas Shoal, in the South China Sea’s Spratly Islands, within the Philippines’ undisputed exclusive economic zone.
This brazen escalation by China is a test for the Australian government’s readiness to speak up in defence of the international rules-based order, and to show support for a key security partner in Southeast Asia—a region Canberra has identified as critical to Australia’s interests.
At the AUSMIN meeting last month in Brisbane between Australian and US defence and foreign ministers, the two nations committed to upholding a ‘global order based on international law’ and ‘fundamental principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity’.
They expressed their ‘strong opposition’ to destabilising actions in the South China Sea, including ‘the dangerous use of coast guard vessels and maritime militia’. They specifically denounced China’s excessive maritime claims as inconsistent with international law and reaffirmed their support for the landmark 2016 arbitral tribunal award in The Hague, which found in favour of the Philippines in its maritime legal dispute against China.
Washington reacted swiftly to the incident at Second Thomas Shoal, issuing a clear condemnation of China’s actions, simultaneously reassuring Manila and warning Beijing that any escalation to an armed attack on Philippines government vessels would be covered under the US–Philippines Mutual Defence Treaty. This was consistent with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s June commitment to the 2016 arbitral tribunal ruling at the Shangri-La Dialogue when he stated: ‘It is legally binding, and it is final.’
By contrast, Canberra has so far refrained from issuing a statement from either the foreign affairs or defence portfolio. The Australian ambassador to Manila did tweet concern about ‘dangerous and destabilising’ actions but, unlike her US counterpart, did not name China.
AUSMIN communiqués are important, but they tend to be general and not widely read. The test was always going to be holding specific actions to account. The longer this official reticence about China is maintained, the more it calls into question Australia’s willingness to live up to its rhetoric on the South China Sea when the Philippines has unambiguously been on the receiving end of bullying and intimidation by Beijing.
It is to the government’s credit that bilateral relations with China have improved and tensions have reduced. But the formulation of ‘cooperating where we can and disagreeing where we must’ is not sustainable if the policy means trying to reduce tensions by ignoring differences. This doesn’t deter Beijing’s destabilising actions; it emboldens them.
If Australia doesn’t strongly call out such a provocative and destabilising breach of international law, one has to wonder what constitutes an issue on which we ‘must’ disagree with Beijing. Consistency is vital in international relations. In this case, it would both demonstrate Australia’s commitment to the rules-based order and signal to all countries, including China, what actions we consider unacceptable. The danger of choosing what ‘must’ be dealt with on an ad hoc basis, rather than by principle, is the same diplomatic error that led major European powers to think a default of silence and inconsistent engagement in the face of Russian aggression would eventually lead Russia’s Vladimir Putin back to the straight and narrow.
International rules either mean something or they don’t. In the valid attempt to reduce regional tensions, signing onto communiqués that few read while failing to speak up when it matters most risks reducing trust in both Australia and the multilateral system.
We stood up for the Philippines in 2016 when the tribunal ruled against Beijing, and we should do so now. This is a core issue for Manila. Less than a month ago, Philippines Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo thanked the US and Australia for their support on the 2016 arbitral award. The Philippines has become one of Australia’s most important defence partners in the region. It was among the first to support AUKUS and has a bilateral visiting forces agreement enabling a high level of access, including Australian surveillance flights over the South China Sea. It is not in Canberra’s interests for Manila to doubt the strength of Australia’s commitment.
Failing to hold Beijing to account for maritime breaches would be another mistake in the mould of the misjudgement to end our World Trade Organization case against Beijing’s punitive tariffs on Australian barley. Abandoning the case spared China the indignity of another adverse international legal ruling that would have deterred Beijing and held it to account on economic coercion. It would also be a mistake to leave the condemnation to the US, as that serves Beijing’s strategic narrative that the issues at stake are only about great-power competition and US containment of China. We are all competing to shape the world in which we want to live—it is not a struggle limited to the US and China. Australia has a vital role by demonstrating that regional stability requires all nations to contribute.
Australia doesn’t have to fight every battle. But to win a competition, you have to play in it. The law-and-order principles set out in the AUSMIN communiqué go to the heart not just of our security and sovereignty, stretching from the seabed to space, but to the collective security of our region. If that isn’t worth standing up for, what is?
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/a... against Beijings bullying of the Philippines
Helen Clarke the dorothy in oz god mother of Labour wishes NZ to remain neutral, which has fallen on even the most deaf eared sinophiles in Labour whom plan to double the 1% on defense. It will not harm any of their imaginary election year promises as nothing they have ever said happened unless it involved banning small powerless sections of society. This labour 1% comes with great doubt.
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The Philippine Coast Guard’s highlighting of China’s harassment of its vessels near Second Thomas Shoal has undoubtedly boosted sympathy for Manila in its David-versus-Goliath struggle to maintain jurisdiction and sovereignty in the South China Sea. Under daily challenge from Beijing, the Philippines has run an effective name-and-shame campaign against China’s disruption and absorption tactics. Yet it remains to be seen whether increased international awareness of China’s predatory tactics will manifest in more than just moral support.
As the events of 5 August have made clear, the coast guard’s principled stand has done nothing to deter China from pressing its claims and determined efforts to force Manila to abandon its military outpost at Second Thomas Shoal. China evidently considers the coast guard to be fair game for increasingly brazen challenges by its maritime militia and its own coast guard vessels. Beijing has aggressively upped the ante at Second Thomas Shoal, in what could be the beginning of a sustained maritime blockade of the feature.
So, what should Manila do next? The immediate focus is likely to be on resupplying the beleaguered BRP Sierra Madre garrison, which the government has indicated it intends to do soon—for practical as well as political reasons. One important consideration is whether the Philippine Navy should take over the rotation and resupply role from the coast guard. That would be consistent with the Philippines’ lawfully exercising navigation rights and maritime operations within its exclusive economic zone.
It would also arguably be a calculated escalation, subjecting the Philippines to the risk that China will seize the opportunity, as it did at Scarborough Shoal in 2012, of militarising its blockade. That would bring Beijing the added advantage of proximity to the Chinese base at Mischief Reef, not far over the horizon from Second Thomas Shoal. China can overmatch any combination that the Philippine navy and coast guard can muster. Now that China has achieved ‘escalation dominance’, what can the Philippines do to press its case and maintain a tenuous hold on Second Thomas Shoal?
Given the capability asymmetry, the American back-stop role in this evolving situation is obviously critical to maintaining deterrence. Also overhanging the decision-making calculus at Second Thomas Shoal is the ghost of Scarborough Shoal, where the credibility of US defence guarantees was left in tatters, in Filippino eyes, when China took over effective control without suffering meaningful consequences. Washington’s reaction to the most recent incident at Second Thomas Shoal was contrastingly impressive in its speed and expression of common purpose with a treaty ally. But China may still be tempted to road test this renewed US commitment to deterrence.
One joint way forward for Manila and Washington would be to initiate joint naval patrols, including US Navy surface escort for resupply missions to Second Thomas Shoal. In extremis, the US could heli-lift supplies to the Sierra Madre from Antonio Bautista Air Base in Palawan. That would be expensive, but the base is a site approved under the US–Philippines Enhanced Defense Cooperation Arrangement, so it would help undergird the agreement’s importance to the Philippines, giving it a kickstart useful to both countries. The Philippines would, of course, need to agree. But some physical US involvement near Second Thomas Shoal may be essential for both deterrence and assurance.
Washington and Manila could also announce that they are consulting under Article III of the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty. That would politically reinforce a message of deterrence to Beijing, helping to fix in Chinese minds that Second Thomas Shoal would not be a rerun of Scarborough Shoal, even though some key US decision-makers from 2012 continue to serve in President Joe Biden’s administration.
Other countries can help by giving diplomatic support to the Philippines and should consider contributing to joint naval patrols. Australia and Japan are the obvious candidates among regional US allies. Within ASEAN, Vietnam increasingly finds itself in the same boat as the Philippines, fending off increased pressure from China in the South China Sea. Coincidentally, Australia is this week sending a small naval task group to the Philippines. While unlikely to be diverted from its scheduled exercises with the AFP and US military, its presence underlines the strengthening of defence relations with Manila in recent years.
China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, has offered bilateral dialogue with the Philippines as a means to ‘resolve differences’ in the South China Sea. But this will cut little ice in Manila, where faith in direct talks with China has all but collapsed. One prominent Filipino maritime expert advocated terminating the tortuous ASEAN–China code of conduct negotiations in the wake of Beijing’s latest provocations at Second Thomas Shoal, while the coast guard has declared its bilateral hotline with Chinese counterparts to be officially defunct following fruitless attempts at communication during the latest standoff.
In parallel, the Philippines has recourse to legal options if China persists in harassing Philippine vessels within its EEZ. Manila could initiate proceedings before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea challenging China’s interference with freedom of navigation. That was noted in the US State Department’s 5 August statement. A provisional determination could theoretically be obtained within four to eight weeks if the tribunal acts with urgency.
After the Philippines’ mixed experiences following the 2016 arbitral tribunal award, the government may instead choose to prioritise a new domestic law that comprehensively delimits the Philippines’ maritime claims.
The coast guard has valiantly held the Philippines’ frontline claims in the South China Sea. But fundamentally the armed forces would bear the brunt of any armed flare-up with China. The marines garrison the Sierra Madre and therefore the secretary of defence and the Philippine government must plan beyond the short-term exigencies of resupplying the crumbling ship. Unless Manila replaces the Sierra Madre with another beached ship or more durable structure, ultimately it must withdraw. For its days as a viable outpost are strictly numbered, and China’s increasingly heavy-handed tactics are asking a fundamental question. In this context, Manila needs to swallow hard and accept some calculated risks.
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/t...es high-stakes options at Second Thomas Shoal
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A piece missing from Australian conversations on the China–US tangle over Taiwan is the island’s growing strategic importance to other countries in the region. What happens between Beijing and Taipei matters for Japan and South Korea.
Things are moving fast in Northeast Asia. Seoul has long been reluctant to speak out about China’s claims over Taiwan or its expanding military exercises in the Taiwan Strait. Under President Moon Jae-in, South Korea was wary of offending China, its largest export market, and had its hands full countering North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs without worrying unduly about Taiwan. It seemed inconceivable that Seoul would coordinate with Tokyo and Washington to oppose Chinese policy in the Taiwan Strait. And yet towards the end of his term, in May 2021, Moon issued a joint statement with President Joe Biden emphasising ‘the importance of preserving peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait’. That was a small step for Washington but a big step for South Korea.
Then, at Camp David earlier this month, South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol issued a joint statement with Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Biden affirming ‘the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait as an indispensable element of security and prosperity in the international community’. Declaring stability in the strait a concern for the international community is what China calls ‘internationalising’ the Taiwan issue, another no-no. This was hardly new for Yoon’s Japanese and American co-signatories, who issued a similar statement at the close of the G7 meeting in Hiroshima in April, but for Seoul it was another big step.
Between times, Yoon mooted developing a nuclear deterrence force but opted instead to visit Washington and secure express commitments from the American president on stationing nuclear weapons and on sharing sensitive information over North Korean missile activities. Another big step. Why?
The audacity and timing of Seoul’s comments point to a growing convergence between the tensions dividing China and Taiwan along the Taiwan Strait and those dividing the two Koreas at the 38th parallel. These two flashpoint fault lines are merging, geopolitically, around an unresolved and potentially explosive historical impasse concerning national division and reunification in Northeast Asia.
A fundamental principle of nationalism, understood as the everyday ideological underpinning of the international state system, is that nation-states should be whole, bounded and sovereign. A nation-state that regards itself as substantively incomplete, rightly or spuriously, is likely to be an unstable revisionist member of the international system. China is such a state, as are the two Koreas and post-Soviet Russia. Today these self-proclaimed incomplete states are concentrated in one volatile region, Northeast Asia, where irredentist sentiment can be heard clamouring on one side or the other for territorial unification.
Systemic instability of this kind need not portend conflict, but the likelihood of conflict rises and falls with other factors, including economic relations, ideological affinities, and relative military strength among revisionist and status quo states.
One factor is trade dependence. Claims of bilateral trade dependence on China are often overstated—as Australia discovered to its relief—but just 10 years ago dependence on China was very real in the case of Taiwan and South Korea. As value chains and supply chains move out of China, those claims are losing traction.
Taiwan’s policy options have long been thought constrained by its dependence on trade with China. True, China absorbs around 40% of Taiwan’s total exports, but final demand in China for Taiwan’s products is minimal. Jason Kao of the College of Management at Yuan Ze University in Taiwan estimates that 90% of Taiwan’s exports to China are processed for re-export from China for consumption elsewhere. If these value chains move out of China, Taiwanese firms are likely to follow them wherever they lead, taking the value with them. What’s more, says Kao, six of China’s top 10 exporting manufacturers are Taiwanese firms. If they were to leave, along with the value chains, it’s not Taiwan that would suffer but China.
Political and business leaders in South Korea appear to be drawing similar conclusions. Yoon’s decision to align with Japan and the US over Taiwan points to a major strategic reassessment by South Korea that its future is tied, not to China as it appeared a decade ago, but to an open global trading system governed by markets and the rule of law, with mobile value chains. As the China-dependence argument loses weight, its passing carries strategic implications as well as lessons for economic policy and businesses strategies.
This can’t be separated out from ideological differences. Ideological issues are gaining weight in political decision-making in the region’s key mover, China, as John Garnaut pointed out more than six years ago. Ideological differences alone are unlikely to cause interstate conflict, but they hamper efforts to resolve it, the more so when they map directly onto divisions between states or alignments among them. In this case, geopolitical divisions separating each aggrieved state map closely onto their differences as either highly personalised dictatorships or constitutional democracies, and are reflected in evolving alignments among them, with the dictatorial states merging on one side and the democracies aligning on the other. It should be noted that none of the democracies proposes to invade or seize territory from its counterpart on the authoritarian side. Yet each faces a bullying neighbour that threatens to absorb or cut away at it.
A third factor is relative military strength, including nuclear capability. The most glaring difference separating the two aligned sets is that all three dictatorships are independently nuclear-armed while none of the democratic states they threaten possesses nuclear weapons. So the lessons that Sweden and Finland took from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have not been lost on South Korea: whereas Stockholm and Helsinki scrambled for cover under NATO’s nuclear umbrella, Seoul doubled down on its commitment to US comprehensive deterrence.
And then there’s Japan. The region’s three incomplete revisionist states are not only nuclear-armed and aligned, but they share a deep hostility towards the other major non-nuclear democracy in the region, Japan. Taiwan and South Korea are on relatively good terms with each other and with Japan, giving Tokyo a stake in both converging issues, particularly the dispute between Beijing and Taipei.
In recent years, Japan’s leaders have declared peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait a matter of life and death for their country. On 8 August, former Japanese prime minister Taro Aso reaffirmed his country’s commitment to non-nuclear principles, in a keynote address to the Taipei Ketagalan Forum, even when facing ‘the most severe and complex security environment since the end of World War II’. Echoing Kishida’s projection at the 2022 Shangri-La Dialogue—‘Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow’—he said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine showed that unilateral changes to the status quo could happen overnight and East Asia could be next in line. This matters for Taiwan, obviously, but it matters no less for Japan. Referencing the Hiroshima G7 statement, Aso said that peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait was an ‘indispensable element in security and prosperity in the international community’.
Aso’s message reinforced a statement he made two years earlier that an invasion of Taiwan by China would pose a ‘threat to Japan’s survival’. He is not alone in this assessment. Few former leaders of Japan are quite as outspoken, but many concur with his assessment of the risks to Japan if a hostile government in Beijing were to take Taiwan. China would control commercial shipping in the Taiwan Strait, much as Russia now seeks to control cargo vessels in the Black Sea. That would threaten sea lanes vital to Japan and South Korea, and it could slice away the string of islands linking the main islands of Japan to the seas east of Taiwan, much as Russia is chipping off oblasts in eastern Ukraine. For Japan, as for South Korea, credible nuclear deterrence is a matter of national survival.
Only the US can provide that level of deterrence and, as the Hoover Institution’s Larry Diamond and James Ellis point out, US credibility is on the line in Taiwan. Yoon went to Washington to secure further nuclear guarantees in the conviction, shared with his Japanese peers, that at this moment in history American comprehensive deterrence is essential for preventing the region from blowing itself apart.
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/w...m=Why Japan and South Korea care about TaiwanTaiwan was not party to those conversations, nor was it invited to the Camp David summit, but with the growing convergence of interests among conventionally armed democracies facing nuclear-armed revisionist dictators, Taiwan can no longer be left out of consideration when Japan, South Korea and the US meet and act in the region. They each have good reason to care about Taiwan.
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The Japanese and South Koreans must mend fences. Together with the Aussies, Taiwanese, the Philippines and India, China is quite outmatched.
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China will take what ever is given to them. After unleashing that plague on all the world they should have already been totally blockaded and all commerce world wide suspended. The world has never needed China and I suspect when the US handed over Most Favored Trade Partner there were more than a few back pockets in our government packed with cash. If everyone is naive enough to believe the half wit joe biden is the only thief and crook in our government then they need to go back to school. I said before if and when the US goes conventional with China I only hope we have leaders willing to fight dirty just like these scumbags from China have been doing for so long. I can't even imagine fighting any war with the scoundrels we now have in our government. Most would have to be removed for breaking constitutional laws under oath as they were sworn in. It is clear China is on a mission to take on the world as a bully and armed thug, but that could change real fast after world leaders stand together and commercially crush them. All of us world wide are now paying a ransom for living and subsistence so not buying Chinese products would not effect anyone world wide, we're already facing shortages and cost due to their manufacturing everything we need including medicines.. All these paid off politicians who allowed this to happen should be all rounded up and hung together, especially the ones that gave their approval and vote to allow China to provide our meds. Anyone with half a brain would have to know officials were paid huge sums of money to even consider this. I have developed into a ball of hate due to having to listen to all the tripe on national news lately especially here at home. Our worst enemies are the people living among us. I need to get back to my hobbies and stop watching or worrying about things I have no control over. Expressing my personal views does give me some relief.
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China’s military sent 103 warplanes toward Taiwan in a 24-hour period in what the island’s defense ministry called a recent new high.
The planes were detected between 6 a.m. on Sunday and 6 a.m. on Monday, the ministry said. As is customary, they turned back before reaching Taiwan. Chinese warplanes fly toward the self-governing island on a near-daily basis but typically in smaller numbers. The Taiwan ministry didn’t explain what time period it meant by a “recent” high.
China, which claims Taiwan as part of its territory, has conducted increasingly large military drills in the air and waters around Taiwan as tensions have grown between the two and with the United States. The U.S. is Taiwan’s main supplier of arms and opposes any attempt to change Taiwan’s status by force.
https://apnews.com/article/taiwan-c...wan (AP) —,turned back before reaching Taiwan.
The planes were detected between 6 a.m. on Sunday and 6 a.m. on Monday, the ministry said. As is customary, they turned back before reaching Taiwan. Chinese warplanes fly toward the self-governing island on a near-daily basis but typically in smaller numbers. The Taiwan ministry didn’t explain what time period it meant by a “recent” high.
China, which claims Taiwan as part of its territory, has conducted increasingly large military drills in the air and waters around Taiwan as tensions have grown between the two and with the United States. The U.S. is Taiwan’s main supplier of arms and opposes any attempt to change Taiwan’s status by force.
https://apnews.com/article/taiwan-c...wan (AP) —,turned back before reaching Taiwan.
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A trap for U.K. submarine. Mods please move if needed.
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There by the grace of God, go us. Aussie subs have been sitting up in those waters since the 1970's in the Oberon class of my day and the Collins class of today. Stories have been going around the fleet for decades of escapades even up the through the Yangtze, the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea
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Taiwan’s political and military leadership are all hands on deck in anticipation of a cyberwar with Beijing— and Washington is ready to back their networks up, a senior White House official said at the POLITICO Tech Summit on Wednesday.
“From President Tsai [Ing-wen] on down, they’re very focused on increasing the cybersecurity and digital resilience of Taiwan,” said Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies.
Neuberger, who has generally been tight-lipped on Taiwan, added the island is well aware of China’s formidable cyber capabilities, especially when it comes to cyberattacks and espionage. And things are only looking to get more tense in the region, with Taiwan preparing for a presidential election in January.
To provide timely support to Taiwan during a major cyberattack, Neuberger said the U.S. will send its best teams to help hunt down the attackers, the same approach typically used to help global allies in cyberspace.
“The support we typically provide international partners around the world would be putting our best teams to hunt on their most sensitive networks to help identify any current intrusions and to help remediate and make those networks as strong as possible.”
Neuberger also said the U.S. is working closely with Taiwan through ongoing military tabletop games and exercises to prepare for any potential crippling cyberattacks.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/27/taiwan-chinese-cyberattacks-white-house-00118492
“From President Tsai [Ing-wen] on down, they’re very focused on increasing the cybersecurity and digital resilience of Taiwan,” said Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies.
Neuberger, who has generally been tight-lipped on Taiwan, added the island is well aware of China’s formidable cyber capabilities, especially when it comes to cyberattacks and espionage. And things are only looking to get more tense in the region, with Taiwan preparing for a presidential election in January.
To provide timely support to Taiwan during a major cyberattack, Neuberger said the U.S. will send its best teams to help hunt down the attackers, the same approach typically used to help global allies in cyberspace.
“The support we typically provide international partners around the world would be putting our best teams to hunt on their most sensitive networks to help identify any current intrusions and to help remediate and make those networks as strong as possible.”
Neuberger also said the U.S. is working closely with Taiwan through ongoing military tabletop games and exercises to prepare for any potential crippling cyberattacks.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/27/taiwan-chinese-cyberattacks-white-house-00118492
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On 22 October, two separate collisions took place near Second Thomas Shoal, an underwater feature that an international tribunal in 2016 ruled is part of the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone and continental shelf. A China Coast Guard ship rammed a much smaller civilian vessel contracted by the Philippine Navy to resupply troops stationed aboard BRP Sierra Madre.
In videos released by both sides, the coastguard vessel can be seen blocking the path of the resupply ship, which attempted to evade it by crossing its bow and was struck. Separate videos show the second collision. The Qiong Sansha Yu 00003, a professional maritime militia vessel operated by China’s state-owned Sansha Fisheries Development Company, pulled alongside and then collided with a stationary Philippine Coast Guard ship. The incident appeared to involve no serious damage, and a second Philippine resupply vessel managed to reach the Sierra Madre. But these were just the most dangerous interactions in a pattern of unsafe conduct that recurs monthly around Second Thomas Shoal.
The situation around Second Thomas highlights a key feature of China’s foreign policy—its refusal to acknowledge that the Philippines and other small states have their own agency in disputes with Beijing. This worldview was aptly summed up in a piece by the nationalist Global Times, which concludes: ‘By escalating the tensions, the Philippines likely wants to draw support from the US, or the entire farce was staged by the US in the first place.’
When Chinese leaders confront a middle or small power that challenges or offends Beijing, they often accuse the smaller power of working in tandem with or being used by the US to drive an ‘anti-China’ strategy. This is the same sentiment with which Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi infamously shouted down Singaporean counterpart George Yeo at the 2010 ASEAN Regional Forum. ‘China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact,’ he said.
This sentiment is also the reason that Beijing sought to undermine the arbitration case brought by the Philippines in 2013 by insisting that it was engineered by the US and Japan. And it’s why after every Philippine diplomatic objection over the violence at Second Thomas, Chinese officials ignore the substance of the complaints and lecture their Filipino counterparts about being pawns in a US plot.
When another China Coast Guard vessel nearly collided with a Philippine ship in September, Beijing read from this familiar script. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr aired his frustrations at the annual ASEAN summit that same week, saying that the Philippines rejected narratives of the South China Sea disputes that revolved around US–China competition. Marcos asserted, ‘This not only denies us our independence and our agency, but it also disregards our own legitimate interests.’
A month later, after the Philippines complained about another violent incident between itself and China, the Global Times ran an editorial cartoon showing the Philippines as a stick being used by the US to stir up the South China Sea.
Beijing isn’t ready to acknowledge that Manila, or any other Southeast Asian claimant, has legitimate grievances that must be addressed to peacefully manage disputes. Beijing seems to believe that other states are less committed to their sovereignty and rights, defy China only because of American interference and will eventually buckle in the face of sustained pressure. Running the same coercive play over and over at Second Thomas Shoal seems unlikely to change Philippine policy and will only lead to further collisions and risk escalation.
There are two driving forces behind this aspect of China’s regional foreign policy: Beijing’s vision of regional hierarchy and its fear of US containment. In China’s long-embedded view of regional hierarchy, smaller states are historically and necessarily subservient to Beijing in the Asian pecking order. Long legacies of traditional tributary state relations with China, as well as the historical dominance of Chinese culture, language and economic power in the region, still linger in the minds of Beijing’s decision-makers.
Chinese leaders also genuinely see the US as an architect of a long-term containment strategy that seeks to undermine China’s regional influence—or worse, to bring about the collapse of the Chinese Communist Party. This view, which dates to the years just after the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, now colours much of Beijing’s thinking about its external environment. As Chinese President Xi Jinping stated in March, ‘Western countries led by the United States have implemented all-around containment, encirclement and suppression of China, which has brought unprecedented severe challenges to our country’s development.’
Beijing’s unwillingness to treat the concerns and grievances of its regional neighbours as legitimate has now become one of the most prominent challenges to its management of external relations. As US officials admit privately, the Biden administration’s progress in strengthening relations with countries across the region, from Australia to India to the Philippines, is less a story of diplomatic acumen and more one of Chinese truculence. Should Beijing adjust course and begin treating regional actors as partners, not irritants, the Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy may face its greatest challenge yet.
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/b...hilippines plays right into Washingtons hands
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China Warns Philippines
At some point the Chinese may want to reflect on the outlandish nature of their expansive claims. Like...consult a map?
At some point the Chinese may want to reflect on the outlandish nature of their expansive claims. Like...consult a map?
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.. Hmmmmm
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