South China Sea

The U.S. Navy’s dominance of the world’s oceans has made it an indispensable foreign policy tool and a guarantor of global trade, but a mix of challenges is raising difficult questions about its future.

The success of the U.S.-Japan-Philippines trilateral summit underscored the Joe Biden administration’s dedication to building partnerships in the Indo-Pacific, but Southeast Asian nations are less interested.

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.