Eugene Andojoyan 130195 Lucio Blanco Pitlo III

CHN 21 A

Introduction/background of your chosen topic (need not be too long as you have limited space)
Raise the question/s that you will address on your paper (make this very clear!)
Provide your analysis/assessment and support your answer with data and evidence
Conclusion and/or Recommendation

The relations between China and the Philippines has been rattling the minds and perception of
the world. The bigger picture shows that it is not merely a dispute between two countries but two
superpowers, the US and China. Moreover, it symbolizes the clash between two ideologies, communism
and democracy. Many fear the eventual clamp down of China as the overall ruler of South China Sea.
What worries Philippines the most is the breach of its sovereign waters and the claim of China over the
group of islands such as Scarborough Shoal and Spratlys.

A specter is haunting Asia—the specter of full Chinese domination in the

South China Sea. Latest reports suggest that China could soon move
ahead with building military facilities on the Scarborough Shoal, a contested
land feature it has occupied since 2012. This would allow China, according to a
Mainland source, to “further perfect” its aerial superiority across the contested
waters. By building a sprawling network of dual-purposes facilities, and more
recentlydeploying advanced military assets to its artificially created islands,
China is inching closer to establishing a de facto Air Defense Identification
Zone (ADIZ) in the area. Integrating the Scarborough Shoal into its
burgeoning defensive perimeter across the South China Sea will not only give
it an upper hand in the contested waters, but also allow China to place the
Philippines’ capital and industrialized regions within its strategic reach.

This is nothing short of a nightmare for the Philippines, which is

alreadystruggling to protect its supply lines in the Spratly chain of islands due
to growing Chinese military assertiveness in contested waters. Unlike most of
Chinese occupied features, which lie well beyond the immediate shores of
other claimant states, the Scarborough Shoal is located just about 120 nautical
miles off the coast of the Philippines, well within the country’s Exclusive
Economic Zone (EEZ)—and also its continental shelf. To put things into
perspective, the shoal lies nine hundred kilometers away from the closest
Chinese coastline. For Manila, the contested land feature is arguably what
James Shoal is to Malaysia and Hainan is to Mainland China.

Manila lost control over the shoal after a tense standoff with Chinese coast
guard forces in the middle of 2012. But for more than a century, the
Philippines has treated Scarborough Shoal as its northernmost outpost in the
South China Sea. In fact, as far back as the Spanish colonial era, the Southeast
Asian country has treated the shoal as the natural extension of its national
territory. During Cold War years, it was a gunnery range and regular area of
naval exercises for American forces, which accessed military bases in the
Philippines.

As a leading Filipino maritime-law expert, Jay Batongbacal, explains, it was

onlyafter the departure of American military bases (1991) that China began to
“take concrete action to assert its long-dormant paper claim to the shoal,
beginning with the issuance of amateur-radio licenses to hobbyists in 1994,”
the year China wrested control of the Philippine-claimed Mischief Reef. In
short, China’s assertion of its (supposedly) historical claim on the land feature
was hinged on coldblooded balance-of-power calculations. Cognizant of the
Philippines’minimal-to-nonexistent deterrence capability and the Obama
administration’sequivocations on the extent of its defense obligations to
Manila, China felt confident enough to usurp control over the shoal.

Meanwhile, the Philippines has been drenched in the ecstasy of presidential

elections, with growing indications that the next government could be on a
much more friendly footing with China, which giddily expressed its hope that
the “new [Philippine] government can adopt positive and well-thought policies
towards China, properly deal with relevant disputes, and improve bilateral
relations with concrete actions."

Yet it’s far from assured that the next Filipino president will continue
theincumbent administration’s alignment with America as well as its tough
posturing against China. With the Arbitral Tribunal at The Hague expected to
issue its final verdict on the Philippines’ case against China in coming months,
the predisposition of the incoming Filipino president has gained greater
salience. Above all, however, everyone is wondering about the United States’
next move: Will it stand by its ally and try to prevent China’s prospective
militarization of the Scarborough Shoal, or, alternatively, will it continue its
futile—if not counterproductive—policy of strategic ambiguity on the issue?
Time is of essence.

Tightening Noose

China is beginning to feel the heat. Earlier this year, the usually meek
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), after a retreat with U.S.
president Barack Obama at Sunnylands, released a joint statement, which can
be interpreted as a collective support for the Philippines’ arbitration case and,
more explicitly, growing regional worry over China’s revanchist activities in
the South China Sea.

Both American and ASEAN leaders expressed their shared "commitment to

peaceful resolution of disputes, including full respect for legal [author’s
emphasis] and diplomatic processes, without resorting to threat or use of
force, in accordance with universally recognized principles of international
law,” specifically the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
(UNCLOS). They also reiterated the centrality of "non-militarization and self-
restraint" in the disputed waters, in accordance to the 2002 Declaration on the
Conduct of Parties (DOC) in the South China Sea, which (Paragraph V)
discourages China and ASEAN claimant states from “inhabiting on the
presently uninhabited islands, reefs, shoals, cays, and other features.”

Shortly after the Sunnyland Summit, the ASEAN foreign

ministers reiteratedtheir earlier joint statement with America, expressing how
they have “remained seriously concerned over the recent and ongoing
developments [in the South China Sea] and took note of the concern expressed
by some ministers on the land reclamations and escalation of activities in the
area." During the recently concluded Group of 7 (G7) summit, the world’s
leading Western powers and Japan were even more specific in supporting the
Philippines’ arbitration case against China.

In their joint statement, foreign ministers of the leading industrialized

countries expressed their vigorous opposition to “intimidating, coercive or
provocative unilateral actions that could alter the status quo and increase
tensions,” an unmistakable jab against China’s activities in the South China
Sea. They also emphasized the centrality of the “peaceful management and
settlement of maritime disputes . . . through applicable internationally
recognized legal dispute settlement mechanisms, including arbitration,” an
unmistakable endorsement of the Philippines’ arbitration case against China,
which has boycotted the whole proceeding.

A besieged China lashed back, urging “the G7 member states to honor their
commitment of not taking sides on issues involving territorial disputes."
Worried about isolation in the region, China has also stepped up its efforts to
divide-and-conquer ASEAN, urging Brunei, Laos (the current ASEAN chair)
and Cambodia to decouple the South China Sea disputes from the regional
agenda. China’scontinued foray into Malaysian and Indonesian fishing
grounds has also provoked a massive diplomatic backlash, with Jakarta
threatening to revisit its relations with Beijing in light of what it views as a
direct assault on its territorial integrity and sovereign rights within its EEZ.
Malaysia may follow suit. China has practically alienated all key ASEAN
states, including (ethnic-Chinese-majority) Singapore, which has openly
accused Beijing of undermining regional unity on the South China Sea issue.

Though China’s plans for dominating the so-called First Island Chain go back
decades—mainly based on the strategic vision of Beijing’s Mahan, Liu
Huaqing,who was the commander of the Chinese navy from 1982-88—it is
only in recent years that China has developed the requisite capabilities and
mustered sufficient political will to push across its adjacent waters. But China
is also beginning to realize that it can’t dominate its adjacent waters without
losing the good will of its smaller neighbors. Relations with the Philippines
have been particularly toxicin recent years. In fact, under the Aquino
administration, the Southeast Asian country has been on the forefront of
efforts to build international pressure on China.

Great Uncertainty

The leaders in Beijing, however, seem optimistic that the upcoming elections
in the Philippines may lead to some favorable recalibrations. And it has a lot of
cards to play. For one, the shadow of an impending Chinese military base just
120 nautical miles off the coast of the Philippines is hovering above the
Filipino presidential elections. One can’t rule out the possibility that China is
trying to coax the Filipino presidential candidates into compromise by raising
the prospect of militarizing the Scarborough Shoal.

More specifically, with the arbitration verdict expected soon, Beijing may be
trying to intimidate the incoming Filipino administration against fully using
the likely favorable outcome for the Philippines. Many legal experts expect the
Arbitral Tribunal to nullify China’s claims over low-tide-elevations (LTEs)
such as Mischief Reef and Subi Reef, providing a perfect legal pretext for
expansive American-led Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs) against
China. The arbitration panel may even go so far as deciding on the validity of
China’s notorious nine-dashed-line claims, which covers much of the South
China Sea, as well as the validity and legal basis of its ‘historical rights/waters’
claims.

At the very least, China may be seeking to cajole the next Filipino president
into keeping mum on the arbitration outcome, that is to say, to treat it as an
advisory opinion and a relic of the past administration’s strategy rather than a
binding legal decision under the aegis of the United Nations Convention on
the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Interestingly, both leading presidential
(Rodrigo Duterte) and vice-presidential (Ferdinand Marcos Jr.) candidates
have signaled their interest in engagement rather than confrontation with
China.

On his part, Marcos Jr., the only son of the late dictator, has consistently
called for robust engagement and compromise with China. Even before taking
the lead in the vice-presidential race, he called on the Philippine government
to “make arrangement with China”, which involves negotiations on the
Philippines’ fishing rights in contested waters but, crucially, “not the
contentious issue of who owns the territories,” essentially, he expressed
openness to a compromise over the sovereignty question. Echoing the vice-
presidential frontrunner, Duterte has not only expressed his openness to
direct talks with China as well as a possible joint development deal, but
recently even stated that if China will "build me a train around Mindanao,
build me train from Manila to Bicol . . . build me a train [going to] Batangas,
for the six years that I'll be president, I'll shut up [on the sovereignty
disputes]."
Both candidates don’t seem to be gung-ho on the Philippines’ arbitration case
against China. So it’s possible that the next Philippine government will not
fully leverage the arbitration outcome against China, and in exchange might
seek guarantees from the latter on the nonmilitarization of Scarborough Shoal.
But given the great anti-China sentiment in the Philippines, coupled with
bitter experiences with join-development arrangements with China in the
past, the Aquino administration’s successor will have relatively limited room
for maneuver, especially if China decides to build military facilities on the
Scarborough Shoal and/or escalate its para-military and fishing activities
within the Philippines’ EEZ.

At this point, everything boils down to how far the United States is willing to
go to aid its beleaguered ally. There is growing pressure on the Obama
administration to openly extend the Philippine-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty to
Scarborough Shoal in order to deter further Chinese belligerence. After all,
America’s current policy of strategic ambiguity doesn’t seem to have worked.
As America ramps up its military presence in the Philippines under the
Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, it has no interest in seeing China
establishing military bases eerily close to Philippine shores.

More directly, the Philippines also has the option of deploying frigates and
coast-guard vessels to block any efforts by China to build military facilities on
the contested shoal, with America providing back up support—through
reconnaissance missions and aerial patrols, inter alia—by maintaining a
robust presence ‘just over the horizon’. The two allies have been already
conducting joint patrols in contested waters. America is currently augmenting
its military footprint, particular air power, in the Philippines, signaling
preparations for potential contingency interventions in coming months. In the
Scarborough Shoal, America is expected to come to the Philippines’ rescue if
Philippine “armed forces, public vessels or aircraft in the Pacific” come under
attack by a third party (China) in an event of armed clashes. The United
States, along with allies such as Japan and Australia, are also expected to
assume the de facto role of enforcers once the arbitration verdict is out.
Whether it wants it or not, the Philippines is now at the center of Asia’s new
strategic battlefield.

Richard Javad Heydarian is an Assistant Professor in political science at De

La Salle University, and formerly a policy adviser at the Philippine House of
Representatives (2009-2015). The Manila Bulletin, a leading national daily,
has described him as one of the Philippines’ “foremost foreign policy and
economic analysts.” He is the author of Asia’s New Battlefield: The US, China,
and the Struggle for Western Pacific (Zed, London), and a regular to the Asia
Maritime Transparency Initiative of the Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS).

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