By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Beijing is ramping up efforts to cow neighbors such as the Philippines in the South China Sea but is getting nowhere fast.

China has sharply ratcheted up its harassment of other nations in the South China Sea in recent days, with particular belligerence reserved for the Philippines. 

While China’s aggressive behavior—including chasing away fishing vessels, attacking other ships with water cannons, and virtually smothering other countries’ vessels with a swarm of Chinese coast guard and navy vessels—has been going on for at least a decade, Beijing’s nonstop aggression in the South China Sea risks becoming a likelier flash point for conflict than even the brewing great-power contest over Taiwan.

In just the past week, the number of Chinese navy ships on station nearby doubled, expanding their harassment campaign to include military exercises around another small atoll, Sabina Shoal, that is even closer to the Philippines (and where Manila suspects Beijing might be trying to build another artificial island). Chinese harassment campaigns further afield, targeting Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia, continue apace, but not with the same intensity as that reserved for the Philippines.

What’s notable about the latest Chinese efforts is the lengths they seem prepared to go to interfere with routine Philippine operations. In late May, Chinese sailors in small craft resorted to stealing airdropped food supplies for Philippine marines aboard the Sierra Madre, a grounded vessel that Manila uses to physically assert its claim to Second Thomas. That same month, China also interfered with Philippine efforts to medically evacuate a marine from the grounded ship.

“With the Philippines, China is stretching the toolkit of measures—they are doing things they haven’t done to Vietnam or Malaysia,” said Collin Koh of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. “They are stretching the toolkit to everything short of force.”

The low-intensity battles for control of the South China Sea, one of the world’s most important shipping lanes and a promising source of undersea oil and gas, have been going on for years and really picked up pace last year. Beijing claims the entirety of the sea for itself on specious historic grounds, using its “nine-dash line” map and other artifices to lay title to tiny rocks and atolls hundreds of miles away from the Chinese mainland. Other nations, including the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia, have their own robust territorial claims that rankle Beijing’s expansive visions. For a decade, for instance, China has tried to chase away Vietnamese drilling rigs seeking to operate in Vietnam’s waters.

The reason China’s maritime harassment is becoming less background noise and more concerning now is not just because the pace of Chinese operations is ticking upward. So, too, is belligerent Chinese rhetoric—matched by growing Philippine resolve, backed by a decades-old defense treaty with Washington.

Since this spring, and especially over the past week, China has intensified its efforts to harass and chase away Philippine vessels operating in their exclusive economic zone. More than 100 Chinese coast guard ships and so-called maritime militia vessels have continuously interfered with resupply missions to a Philippine outpost at Second Thomas Shoal, a tiny feature about 105 nautical miles off the country’s western coast.

At the Shangri-La Dialogue security conference in Singapore over the weekend, China’s defense minister railed at what he saw as U.S. support for Taipei and Manila, warning that “we will not allow any country or any force to create conflict and chaos in our region.” Other Chinese generals decried the foreign “wolves” trying to interfere in their backyard.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. told the same conference that the Philippines will defend its rights in the disputed waters, citing a landmark and binding 2016 arbitration ruling from The Hague, and he warned that any Chinese actions that lead to the death of a Filipino could trigger the mutual defense pact with the United States. Washington already affirmed, in the last two administrations, that any such event in the South China Sea would activate the mutual defense treaty.

That alone would be bad enough, but there is also the risk of accidental escalation from repeated unsafe military maneuvers by Chinese vessels and aircraft in recent years as they try to swat away U.S., allied, and third-country ships and planes in the region.

 

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