Unpacking China's "Win-Win" Promises in the S. China Sea
If the Marcos administration is committed to upholding its South China Sea claims in the face of Chinese revanchism, it cannot grow too comfortable with Beijing’s ‘cooperation’ approach.
[By Nick Danby]
On January 4, Chinese President Xi Jinping clasped hands with his Philippine counterpart under very different circumstances from the last time he welcomed a Philippine leader to Beijing.
During that September 2019 visit, which Xi hailed as a ‘milestone’, Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, told a crowd in the Great Hall of the People: ‘I’ve realigned myself in your ideological flow’ and ‘I announce my separation from the United States’.
Almost four years later, China’s incessant bullying and unsafe brinksmanship towards the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations over rival claims and privileges in the South China Sea have scuttled Duterte’s era of good feelings and drawn Manila even closer to Washington. Before landing in Beijing, Marcos admitted that ‘maritime issues … do not comprise the entirety of our relations’ but emphasized that saber-rattling in the South China Sea remained a ‘significant concern.’
Practicing the art of the geopolitical pivot, Xi largely side-stepped the South China Sea conflict during his meeting with Marcos and doubled down on previous promises of greater economic interdependence. A slew of initiatives emerged from the summit, including joint oil and gas development projects, renewable energy investment, increased trade and a crisis hotline to resolve maritime disputes.
This course correction towards calmer seas underpins Beijing’s decision to rehabilitate relations with Manila and other neighbors by reverting to its old narrative of non-interference and inter-Asian ‘cooperation’. Recent actions and statements, like a pledge that China would never use its military might to ‘bully’ smaller nations, reflect China’s acknowledgment that its decade-long pugnacious campaign to dominate the South China Sea has done more harm than good. By embracing ‘peaceful outcomes’, Beijing seeks to recast itself as a regional force for good, a hegemon that can spread economic growth and ensure Asian affairs are settled by Asian countries—not ‘aggressive’ foreigners like the US.
In doing so, this kinder, gentler China pledges to embrace cooperation, not confrontation, benevolence not belligerence, in pursuit of ‘win–win outcomes’. These outcomes, according to the Global Times, will usher in a ‘new golden age’ in Sino-Philippine relations. But as the saying goes, all that glitters is not gold. If the Marcos administration is committed to upholding its South China Sea claims in the face of Chinese revanchism, it cannot grow too comfortable with Beijing’s ‘cooperation’ approach.
China has pressed its expansive maritime sovereignty claims in the South China Sea since the late 1940s; it wasn’t until the early 2010s that these claims (often unfounded) gained a sharp set of teeth. In accordance with Xi’s ‘national rejuvenation’ goal, Xi-era Chinese military doctrine stresses control of the ‘near seas’, which these sovereignty claims support.
‘Near seas’ control offers manifold benefits. It would enable China to actualize its anti-access/area-denial concept, solidify power projection throughout the first island chain, and raise the counter-intervention risk calculus for Washington and its allies, all while expanding a security buffer zone to protect the mainland. In addition, unrivaled ‘near seas’ (or South China Sea) control legitimizes access to vast and untapped natural resources while safeguarding critical sea lines of communication, which China’s leadership believes could be threatened in a conflict with the West.
Yet after a decade of dredging disputed reefs into military bases, forcing sovereignty showdowns, sinking fishing vessels, harassing survey and resupply vessels, and touting its sovereignty over nine-tenths of the South China Sea, China’s ‘sea control’ campaign has come at a steep geostrategic cost.
In Manila alone, the security establishment has mounted a fierce resistance to China’s maritime encroachments, even pressuring Duterte to reverse rapprochement with China and rescind plans to slacken ties with the US military. The same goes for other Southeast Asian nations. According to the 2022 State of Southeast Asia survey report, which gauges Southeast Asian leaders’ temperature on a range of regional policy issues, only 26.8% of respondents trusted China to ‘do the right thing’. Of those respondents who didn’t trust China, half of them attributed it to China using its economic and military power ‘to threaten my country’s interests and sovereignty’. Concurrently, some ASEAN countries have distanced themselves from Beijing by strengthening partnerships within ASEAN and with the Quad alliance. Other states, like Malaysia, have increased their defense budgets to protect their South China Sea territory.
China’s renewed goodwill campaign should not be taken at face value. Cooperation doesn’t mean China will bury its ambitious South China Sea interests. It means China will try pursuing those interests peacefully to quell tensions until it can no longer achieve those interests without reverting to an aggressive posture—just like the last time it swapped ‘win–win’ cooperation for win–lose brinkmanship.
The Philippines will then find itself between a reef and a hard place. China will likely offer savory economic carrots to Manila. In exchange, it may seek Manila’s tacit approval to militarize Scarborough Reef, remove the embarked marine detachment on Second Thomas Shoal, or permit Chinese hydrocarbon survey and drilling operations in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, thus making it neither exclusive nor economically beneficial.
But Chinese control of the South China Sea is not a foregone conclusion, despite what Duterte believed. Beijing has already adjusted its risk calculus when the price of international opprobrium outweighed the benefits of maritime belligerence. The Philippines, ASEAN nations and the Quad alliance can continue imposing and signaling that cost. It will require the usual antidote of hard-power prescriptions: jets, corvettes, patrol boats, littoral craft and missiles.
Holding Chinese warships and activities at risk, however, demands more than just a platform and a weapon. The missile must be capable of striking the target. Quad partners should begin integrating the Philippines (and other willing countries) into parts of the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness to provide improved joint awareness, information-sharing and targeting solutions. Quad leaders should also offer economic programs to counterpoise China’s overtures.
Already, Marcos’s decision this month to grant the US temporary and rotational access to four military bases and resume joint maritime patrols in the South China Sea was a wise one because it will help strengthen the Philippines’ defense capabilities, interoperability with allies and commitment to resisting Beijing’s aggressive maritime behavior. More of that cooperation and coordination is needed, although Marcos has made it clear that the burgeoning US–Philippine military ties pose no direct threat to China, despite being a direct response to China’s militarization and disruption of the South China Sea.
For now, Marcos is right to balance China and the West with economic agreements for the former and military pacts with the latter. Frank, clear dialogue can cool tensions. But all parties interested in upholding a rules-based order in the South China Sea must keep fielding an appropriate defense of that order, regardless of what ‘win–win outcomes’ China may promise. Then, and only then, can everybody win.
Nick Danby is an intelligence officer in the US Navy, where he is assigned to a forward-deployed carrier strike group based out of Japan. The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the position of the US Navy or US Department of Defense.
This article appears courtesy of The Strategist and may be found in its original form here.
The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.
Opinion: China's Fumbles in S. China
Sea Boost U.S.-Philippine Ties
To understand why the warming US–Philippines relationship is China’s own doing, it is helpful to look back to the foreign policy stance of Ferdinand Marcos’ populist predecessor.
[By Makoi Popioko]
The Philippines recently granted the United States access to four more military bases, reportedly including at least one strategic location facing Taiwan. It’s an agreement sealed less than a year into the first term of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr – a decision compelled by China’s own behaviour.
To depict Marcos’ approach towards the United States as a mere reversal of former president Rodrigo Duterte’s China policy would be short-sighted. A more appropriate characterisation of the reset in US–Philippines relations would be to look at it as a consequential evolution of Duterte’s foreign policy legacy.
To understand why the warming US–Philippines relationship is China’s own doing, it is helpful to look back to the foreign policy stance of Marcos’ populist predecessor.
In 2016, China had a promising window of opportunity to keep the Philippines within its sphere of influence, with Duterte flipping the Philippines’ pro-American status quo upside down soon after his election. His tradition-breaking foreign policy pivot towards China officially kicked off right when Manila won its case against Beijing in an international tribunal in The Hague over the latter’s sweeping maritime claims in the West Philippine Sea (the name the Philippines government calls certain parts of the South China Sea). The daring policy decision did not come without legitimacy challenges but was largely muffled by Duterte’s popularity and political dominance over the three branches of government.
The pursuit of trade, aid and economic interests was the subtext of Duterte’s China policy. His flagship Build, Build, Build Program was a massive US$160-billion infrastructure undertaking that demanded more resources than were then available from existing economic partners. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was a promising resource for Duterte’s infrastructure ambitions.
Under Duterte’s predecessor – the late president Benigno Aquino III, who took China to court over South China Sea claims – Chinese funding was largely inaccessible. So to woo China, Duterte needed to stage a loud, scandalous divorce drama with the United States. He pursued this by cursing former US president Barack Obama over his comments on Duterte’s harsh anti-drugs campaign, and repeatedly threatening to terminate and eventually abrogate the Visiting Forces Agreement.
Decoupling from the United States was an easy task for Duterte who has long held an anti-American worldview, aggravated by US criticism of the strongman’s murderous war on drugs.
China’s President Xi Jinping reciprocated with a warm welcome for Duterte during a “milestone” visit to Beijing soon after the Filipino president’s election. Pledges were made, and some projects commenced. However, many of the pledges remained promises.
Fast forward to 2022, Duterte stepped down from office with disappointing dividends from his attempts to benefit from BRI. Beijing refused to cease harassing Filipino fisherfolk operating within the contested waters and even expanded its militarisation of the artificial islands in South China Sea.
Duterte’s experience showed that China is proving to be an unreliable partner. And signs of a widening chasm between China and the Philippines were abundant in the former president’s last year in office, which also marked the beginning of US-Philippines realignment. Washington poured in resources to Manila. The Philippines was the largest recipient of US military assistance in the Indo-Pacific region. Duterte in July 2021 restored VFA after a visit by US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin. The Philippines’ Defence chief Delfin Lorenzana was back in Pentagon a month before the elections won by Marcos.
Beijing left Marcos with little choice but to break away further. China ignored the Philippines’ pending loan applications even after Manila relayed an ultimatum. Incidents of Chinese aggression against the Philippine Navy and some fisher vessels happened within Marcos’ first few months.
In a further sign the shift cannot be all down to a change of administration, Marcos’ key defence and foreign policy architects are Duterte-appointed officials retained or reassigned into allied positions. Duterte’s ambassador to the United States also continued in the role. Marcos’ Defense chief was first appointed by Duterte as Armed Forces chief in 2018 and later as peace adviser and vaccine czar. The largely American-trained Philippine Armed Forces played a countervailing role in Duterte’s China policymaking.
It would not be surprising if the internal workings of the recent US agreements signed less than a year since Marcos took office actually began in the concluding months of Duterte.
To mend the policy fumble, Beijing will need to do more than just increasing, and even making good on, the overdue BRI pledges. Marcos appears to prioritise ensuring political legitimacy over daring policies.
Marcos has so far displayed a risk-averse decision-making style. None of this is much of a surprise. He chose to take on rather than discard the system built by his predecessor, whose daughter, Sarah Duterte, is next in line. A misstep might just cost Marcos his seat.
Makoi Popioco worked for CNN and other media outlets in the Philippines, and reported on infrastructure, human rights, security and geopolitics.
This article appears courtesy of The Lowy Interpreter and may be found in its original form here.
The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.
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