South China Sea

Captain Robert Francis is an officer in the U.S. Navy, specializing in surface ships, and a former military fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.  Lieutenant Commander Roswell Lary is a Foreign Area Officer in the U.S. Navy and a recent graduate of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. The United States, and Southeast Asian countries with competing claims to those of China in the South China Sea, have had difficulty responding to Beijing’s South China Sea gray zone tactics. Gray zone tactics, as defined by Michael Green of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, are acts beyond normal deterrence or assurances that attempt to achieve one’s security objectives while falling below the threshold that would elicit armed responses. In the South China Sea, Beijing is using the People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM), China’s armed fishing fleet, as a gray zone actor to assert Beijing’s claims to disputed territories. The PAFMM reinforces Beijing’s claims by keeping Southeast Asian fishermen out of their traditional fertile fishing grounds and reserving access for China’s massive fishing fleet. Beijing has asserted rights over a majority of the South China Sea through their depiction of the “nine-dash line.” This line suggests that more than 90 percent of the waters and features in the South China Sea belongs to Beijing. The line is contested by many Southeast Asian claimants and violates the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Jurisdictional, legal, and diplomatic issues limit the responses of the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard to these Chinese tactics; Southeast Asian nations with competing claims mostly do not have adequate maritime forces to counter these tactics. Regional organizations such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that rely on reaching a consensus to act will almost certainly never confront China’s use of its armed fishing fleet in the South China Sea, since some ASEAN members are close to Beijing. One solution to more effectively countering quasi-civilian forces like the PAFMM is to expose these gray zone activities through extensive social media campaigns throughout Southeast Asia, which would expose the PAFMM as more than just a fishing fleet and show how its activities are not only helping China stake claims to territory but hurting Southeast Asian economic interests. Beginning in 2012, Beijing began to increase its use of gray zone tactics in the South China Sea. This escalation included the 2012 seizure of Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines, extensive artificial island building between 2014 and 2017, and an increased use of the Chinese Coast Guard and PAFMM in the South China Sea. U.S. Navy and Coast Guard units have responded by taking more actions in the region. Freedom of navigation operations (FONOPS) increased from zero in 2014 to an all-time high of ten in 2019. The Navy, which maintains 60 percent of its fleet in the Indo-Pacific, conducted tri-carrier strike force operations in the region in 2017 and 2020, a herculean accomplishment given how much planning and resources goes into deploying so many aircraft carrier groups together. The increased U.S. and partner countries’ military presence in the South China Sea, and diplomatic statements condemning Beijing’s South China Sea actions, have had little effect in deterring China’s use of quasi-civilian forces such as the PAFMM. In April 2021, Beijing had 220 PAFMM vessels anchored in Whitsun Reef, a feature within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. This buildup of PAFMM was likely in response to the 2021 U.S.-Philippine Balikatan (Tagalog phrase for “shoulder-to-shoulder”) Exercise, since China’s actions came just before the exercise. Fortunately, the presence of so many forces around Whitsun Reef did not escalate into a wider conflict. It is a losing strategy to send U.S. or Southeast Asian warships to settle disputes like the PAFMM Whitsun Reef tactics. First, it risks escalation. While the Philippine Navy might be able to sink the PAFMM boats, China’s Navy and Coast Guard units, which patrol just beyond visual range of the reef, could respond with even greater force if the PAFMM boats were attacked. Second, an armed response by the Philippine (or other Southeast Asian) Navy, or an armed response by U.S. warships, would potentially be a public relations nightmare. Even if the People's Liberation Army Navy and Coast Guard chose not to respond, images of Philippine or U.S. military units attacking what seems to much of the world like unarmed fishing vessels could be portrayed by Beijing as an excessive use of force. A better way to respond to China’s use of quasi-civilian units in the South China Sea would be to impose a high public diplomacy cost on Beijing for such tactics. Imposing this cost would require a strategy that centered the voices of fishermen affected by the PAFMM and showed that these PAFMM units are actually military tools enforcing Chinese claims and also damaging fishermen’s livelihoods. Regional governments like the Philippines, Vietnam, and others, perhaps with some financial backing from regional leaders like Japan and the United States, could develop more coordinated social media campaigns, helping fishermen capture their harassment in the South China Sea, and then developing videos, images, and stories from the South China Sea on regional and global social media outlets. Right now, there are some stories and videos that emerge on social media from fishermen harassed in the South China Sea, but they lack any organized social media campaign that places their stories in a larger narrative, explains more fully the role of the PAFMM, and provides extensive information about how badly the PAFMM affects regional livelihoods. If regional governments, working with and centering the fishermen (who of course would have to consent to being involved in this strategy, since it could put them at further risk), could create narratives focused on how relatively low-income Southeast Asian fishermen are being disadvantaged by the PAFMM, they could expose the PAFMM as much more than a unit of fishing boats. They also could win regional and global sympathy. Think, for example, of videos of assertive Chinese vessels tossing the catch of a struggling Philippine or Vietnamese fisherman overboard, and these videos then promoted through comprehensive social media campaigns. In addition, Beijing’s actions in the South China Sea do not only impact Southeast Asian fishermen—they also impact an entire industry of people who process and sell the fish in the region. Specific resources required for this effort would include audio/visual equipment such as cell phones or internet-accessible devices loaded with the right applications for fishermen at sea, training sessions for users on how to make, edit, and distribute quality videos through social media, and reliable internet access for vessels at sea that would allow them to broadcast interactions live. Given that such a social media effort would portray Beijing in a highly negative light, and would challenge Beijing’s interests in the South China Sea, China would probably launch a vigorous response. This response could include PAFMM sailors destroying the audio/visual equipment of fishermen, arresting fishermen, and Beijing responding with its own social media campaign. But since many of Beijing’s social media campaigns have proven simplistic and often counterproductive, these tactics could backfire against China in terms of regional and global opinion. Such a social media strategy could be a relatively cheap and simple way for Southeast Asian states facing growing PAFMM use to highlight and contest maritime disputes. Furthermore, it potentially places Beijing in the unenviable position of using disproportionate force against those fishermen who choose to challenge their claim, or do nothing and appear to be weak in response.

Philippine Foreign Minister Teodoro Locsin Jr. was peeved at Beijing. It was early May, and hundreds of Chinese vessels had been regularly intruding into the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea, where the Chinese government has made expansive maritime territorial claims. After lodging numerous complaints through formal diplomatic channels to no avail, Locsin took to Twitter and unleashed an expletive-filled tirade. “China, my friend, how politely can I put it?” he wrote. “Let me see… O…GET THE [F**K] OUT.” (Locsin didn’t bother with the asterisks.) It was not only Philippine officials and diplomats who were angry at Beijing’s willingness to raise tensions in disputed waters. In a poll conducted by the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore earlier this year, before the latest Chinese incursions into Philippine waters, roughly 87 percent of Filipino respondents said that they considered China’s encroachments into other countries’ exclusive economic zones and continental shelves to be the “top concern” in the South China Sea. The same proportion, 87 percent, said that if forced to align with either the United States or China, they would choose the U.S.—the highest share of any country in Southeast Asia. But even as Filipinos of all stripes vent their anger at Beijing, they should be equally furious with their own leader. His policy toward China has failed to either protect the Philippines’ national security or to boost its economy. Since taking office in 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte has courted Beijing, playing down its construction of military facilities on reclaimed islands in the South China Sea and the aggressive behavior of China’s maritime militia vessels. He has also ignored, for the most part, a 2016 international tribunal ruling that unequivocally rejected China’s stated claims to sovereignty over most of the South China Sea. At the same time, Duterte has consistently undermined his country’s alliance with the U.S. He has stalled on renewing the Visiting Forces Agreement, or VFA—which allows U.S. troops to maintain a presence in the Philippines—after initially trying to kill it. Duterte also vetoed the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, a deal that would make it easier to move U.S. troops and weapons into bases near the South China Sea. To be sure, the Philippines and the U.S. still enjoy strong strategic ties, and security officials who value the alliance provide a counterweight to some of Duterte’s impulses. It was likely the country’s military and national security establishment that pushed Duterte to buy a new supersonic cruise missile that would provide a deterrent capability against China, to backtrack from trying to jettison the VFA and to make other quiet efforts to restore warmer ties with the U.S. Yet Duterte remains intent on currying favor with Beijing. After Locsin’s outburst, Duterte declared in a briefing that “China remains our benefactor.” The following day, Locsin took to Twitter again, this time to apologize to his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, “for hurting his feelings.” But the reality is that Duterte’s mostly hands-off approach to the South China Sea has failed to change China’s behavior. In fact, when it comes to territorial issues, Beijing has treated the groveling Duterte the same way it has treated leaders of countries like Vietnam, which have taken a more hard-line approach toward disputed maritime claims. The incident that prompted Locsin’s Twitter tirade was just one of many occasions when China has sent hundreds of boats into the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone during Duterte’s presidency, intimidating Philippine naval vessels and making it easier for Chinese forces to seize contested islands and fortify them. Last year, as COVID-19 ravaged the Philippines, including its top military commanders, Beijing declared administrative control of the disputed Spratly Islands. It also continued building up military facilities on reclaimed islands in the South China Sea and sent ships to encircle and menace Thitu, the most strategically vital of the disputed archipelagos that the Philippines still controls. China has also increasingly used aggressive fleets to turf Philippine fishers off rich fishing grounds. Duterte seemingly hoped that, by shifting toward Beijing, aid and investment would flow into the Philippines, bringing jobs, growth and much-needed infrastructure projects. Yet his approach has brought few economic benefits during his single six-year term, which ends next year. In splashy announcements in 2016, Beijing pledged tens of billions of dollars in new investments in the Philippines. But construction has only begun on two proposed Chinese infrastructure projects—a bridge and an irrigation system—and they remain far from completion. China’s vaunted plans for energy, rail and other infrastructure projects have not even broken ground. As the analyst Richard Heydarian has noted, much of the investment that China has actually delivered on in the Philippines under Duterte has gone to online casinos and modest projects like small bridges. For the most part, these projects have utilized Chinese workers rather than local labor, even as the Philippines is suffering its worst economic downturn since 1947. The lack of follow-through on investments China promised to the Philippines in 2016 contrasts sharply with other Southeast Asian states. In Indonesia, China is financing a multibillion-dollar high-speed railway project connecting the capital, Jakarta, with Bandung city, as well as another high-speed rail line in Thailand. Both projects were contracted on relatively favorable financing terms. China’s development aid to the Philippines also remains small by comparison with other major donors. A recent report on aid inflows prepared by the Philippine government’s economic planning body showed that Japan remained by far the country’s biggest donor. During the first half of 2020, Japan provided nearly 40 percent of the Philippines’ official development assistance—about 17 times more than what China provided. Aid from the Asian Development Bank and South Korea also surpassed Beijing’s. More recently, China has stepped up to provide Manila with some COVID-19 vaccines, though the effectiveness of the Chinese shots remains somewhat uncertain. Duterte’s approval ratings remain very high, but the Philippine public has noticed how little he has gotten from his dealings with Beijing. A wide range of opinion polls show heightened levels of anti-China sentiment among Filipinos. Perhaps aware of that trend in public opinion, several candidates for next year’s presidential election, including the boxer-turned-politician Manny Pacquiao, have been talking tough on China. If elected, he could reorient the country’s foreign policy back in a direction skeptical of Beijing, closer to the United States, and in favor of building a multilateral coalition to defend freedom of navigation and territorial rights in the South China Sea. The front-runner for the 2022 presidential election, though, remains Duterte’s daughter, Sara, mayor of the southern city of Davao, though she has not confirmed her intention to run. Sara Duterte’s views on China are not as openly favorable as her father’s. But if she does run and succeed him in office, inheriting his political machine as the bulwark of her support, she would be hard-pressed to reverse her father’s China policy, no matter how disastrous it has been for the country. And no matter who wins the presidency next year, Beijing will have spent Duterte’s term in office strengthening its hold on disputed maritime features that are critical to Philippine national security, in addition to providing livelihoods to the country’s fishers. The damage from Duterte’s disastrous China policy has already been done.

This summer, an increasing number of Chinese tech companies have been pulled into geopolitical incidents involving Beijing.

Huong Le Thu is a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. July 2020 marked a significant shift in developments regarding the South China Sea. The Trump administration announced a series of high-level statements that explicitly reject China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea as inconsistent with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The U.S. statements further reaffirm the 2016 tribunal ruling, from The Hague, against China’s claims. The U.S. shift from being officially neutral and not taking the side of claimant states in the South China Sea to rejecting Beijing’s claims as unlawful and excessive are advantageous to the Southeast Asian claimant states. Yet, across Southeast Asian capitals, views on the United States’ new statements are divided. A few have publicly and directly referred to the statements, but many are worried that the United States’ seeming position change is less related to upholding international law and has more to do with Washington trying to escalate tensions with China. Marking the fourth anniversary of the 2016 tribunal ruling in the South China Sea case between the Philippines and China, on July 13 U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared the “U.S. Position on Maritime Claims in the South China Sea.” The statement issued by Pompeo reiterated support for the 2016 ruling and for the 1982 UNCLOS but stood out from previous U.S. statements by explicitly saying, “[China] has no legal grounds to unilaterally impose its will on the region” and that the “PRC’s maritime claims…have no basis in international law.” (Notably, the United States has never ratified UNCLOS.) The following day, the Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, David Stillwell, opened the tenth annual South China Sea conference at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where he doubled-down on the newly forceful U.S. approach to the South China Sea. He named instances in which Beijing reportedly has denied Southeast Asian neighbors’ access to resources in the Southeast Asian states’ claimed exclusive economic zones. A week later, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper spoke to an International Institute for Strategic Studies audience, in lieu of the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, where he reaffirmed the United States’ intention to keep sending naval assets to the South China Sea to counter China’s increasingly assertive behavior. Australia also has become more assertive in pushing back regarding the South China Sea. Canberra issued a Note Verbale to the United Nations on July 23, the wording of which was very similar to the U.S. State Department’s statement. The timing of Australia’s note attracted attention; it preceded the 2020 Australia-United States Ministerial Consultation—the bilateral 2+2 meetings in Washington that included Pompeo, Esper, Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne and Australian Minister for Defense Linda Reynolds. The note also was publicized soon after Canberra launched a new Strategic Update 2020 and Force Structure Plan, which articulated Australia’s growing concerns about China and Australia’s planned stronger defense posture. The recent shifts in Washington and Canberra are neither novel nor surprising. They reiterate in a more decisive language the positions that both the United States and Australia have held regarding the 2016 ruling. Given the deteriorating trajectories of both countries’ relations with China, the statements are not sudden either. Nevertheless, they mark an important milestone regarding the South China Sea. They are clearer in their rejection of China’s claims and explicit support for the role international law. These developments have been welcomed by the Vietnamese government, even though Vietnam’s foreign affairs spokesperson has remained restrained in responding to the U.S. and Australian moves. There are many reasons for Vietnam to be enthusiastic about this shift in U.S. and Australian rhetoric regarding the South China Sea. With other Southeast Asian claimant states like the Philippines and Malaysia limiting their public critiques of China’s actions, Vietnam increasingly felt isolated regionally. Given global attention to COVID-19, and China’s influence over Southeast Asian states, Vietnam’s recent efforts to attract greater international attention to what it perceives as Chinese abuses and coercion in the South China Sea seemed futile to Hanoi, at least until recently. And without any limits on Beijing’s actions, Vietnam has suffered both strategically and economically. Meanwhile, the repercussions of Beijing’s continued economic pressure and the limits to Vietnam’s exploration of oil and gas within its claimed exclusive economic zones have cost the country, according to one estimate, roughly $1 billion. However, just because Hanoi welcomes tougher U.S. and Australian rhetorical approaches to the South China Sea does not necessarily mean Vietnam will use this moment to launch long-considered litigation against China or even fast-track a U.S.-Vietnam strategic partnership that would build on the existing U.S.-Vietnam comprehensive partnership. Hanoi will refrain from major decisions until the U.S. presidential election is decided, and still worries that Washington is taking this approach to the South China Sea to escalate tensions with Beijing. It hopes, however, that the new U.S. and Australian statements will mean a clear commitment by these two powers to a more forceful approach to the South China Sea. What follows now becomes a test for Vietnam’s diplomatic and strategic skills. Hanoi needs to embrace this potential shift in external actors’ approach to the South China Sea, but also avoid the pitfalls created by warring giants.

The risk of a military confrontation between the United States and China in the South China Sea is growing. In a new Center for Preventive Action report, Oriana Skylar Mastro details how the United States could prevent a clash, or take steps to de-escalate if one should occur.

The risk of a military confrontation between the United States and China in the South China Sea is growing. In a new Center for Preventive Action report, Oriana Skylar Mastro details how the United States could prevent a clash, or take steps to de-escalate if one should occur.

Responses to China’s post-COVID overtures are largely falling along pre-existing political fault lines.

The rapid spread of COVID-19 in Southeast Asia, where the pandemic recently has hit Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines (as well as other regional states like Singapore) hard, has not stopped jockeying over the South China Sea. In fact, while handing out COVID-19 aid to Southeast Asian states—and many other countries—Beijing reportedly has upped its pressure on other claimant states in the South China Sea. It has sailed the survey ship Haiyang Dizhi 8 off the Malaysian coast, to closely shadow a Malaysian ship exploring for state oil giant Petronas, in waters near areas claimed by both Malaysia and Vietnam. The actions by the Haiyang Dizhi 8, which previously shadowed Vietnamese ships in waters claimed by Vietnam, are hardly China’s only sign that it is stepping up its pressure in the South China Sea. The New York Times reports that last weekend Beijing “announced that it had formally established two new districts in the South China Sea that include dozens of contested islets and reefs.” In recent months, Chinese vessels and forces also have conducted new exercises in the Sea, made incursions into waters claimed by Indonesia and near the Natuna Islands, and, according to Hanoi, rammed and sunk a Vietnamese ship, among other steps. To some extent, Beijing may be trying to gain advantage at a time when the locus of the pandemic has shifted to other countries and away from China. It is doing so even if this attempt undercuts China’s efforts to gain regional and global goodwill through aid to neighboring states and promoting China’s cooperation with other countries in the fight against COVID-19.   At the least, Beijing may be wanting to demonstrate that COVID-19 has not incapacitated its increasingly powerful naval, coast guard, and air forces. Outside of the South China Sea, Beijing is appearing to demonstrate force too: In recent months, Chinese military aircraft also have flown close enough to Taiwan to lead Taiwanese forces to intercept them. As Richard Heydarian notes, many Southeast Asian civilian and military leaders are basically incapacitated, sick themselves or in self-isolation, leaving countries like the Philippines—which already was tilting toward Beijing and has little ability to protect its South China Sea claims anyway—with even less ability to defend itself. (Philippine army chief Felimon Santos Jr. has been diagnosed with COVID-19.) Even if Southeast Asian leaders themselves are not isolating, many of their senior military staff are, and civilian leaders are focused on the pandemic, creating a distraction that has become a potential opportunity for China. Or, the continued assertiveness in the South China Sea shows the bottom line, indeed, is that no crisis, no matter how large, will stop Beijing from advancing its regional agenda. Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines—all increasingly dependent on Chinese investment and infrastructural aid—have mostly tried to stay mum about China’s assertive actions, even as some military leaders in these countries want to push back harder. At this point, it seems unlikely that U.S. forces can deter Beijing, despite the Trump administration’s intensive pushback in the South China Sea, which recently has included sending the U.S. ships America and Bunker Hill (along with Australian vessels) into waters near Malaysia.

Singapore, one of the world’s wealthiest and most trade-dependent countries, punches above its weight in regional and global affairs.

The People’s Liberation Army is aiming to become the dominant force in the Asia-Pacific, strengthening China’s hand toward Taiwan and international disputes in the South China Sea.

This year, an armed confrontation over disputed maritime areas in the South China Sea was included as a top tier priority in the Center for Preventive Action’s annual Preventive Priorities Survey.