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China-Philippines relations
This Week in AsiaOpinion
Lucio Blanco Pitlo III
Lucio Blanco Pitlo III

Opinion | Beijing’s South China Sea boldness puts the Philippines’ foreign policy balancing act under pressure

  • An increasing number of Chinese incursions in waters the Philippines claims as its own are only being made public days or weeks after the fact
  • Such reporting lags may indicate a desire for discretion – or show that Manila is timing its announcements to raise the stakes against Beijing

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A Chinese ship shadows a Filipino coastguard vessel conducting patrols near Scarborough Shoal. Photo: Philippine Coast Guard Handout via AFP
Lucio Blanco Pitlo III
After coastguard vessels from the Philippines and China were involved in a near-collision in early March in the disputed South China Sea, it took almost a month before the public was made aware of the incident. A similar delay occurred in making the activities of a Chinese surveillance ship public after it sailed through the Philippines’ Sulu Sea in late January and early February.
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Such considerable reporting lags may indicate a shared desire by both Manila and Beijing to manage sea incidents discreetly, even as the Philippines has been vocal in recent years about Chinese activities in its waters while forging a closer bilateral relationship. Manila has filed 241 diplomatic protests against China since 2016 – 183 of which were filed last year alone. But the fact that these incidents were made public does hint at mounting discontent over their repeated occurrence. It also demonstrates how Manila is timing its announcements to garner domestic and international support and raise the stakes against Beijing. Take the March 2 incident for example, when Philippine coastguard vessel BRP Malabrigo, conducting a routine patrol mission in the Scarborough Shoal – known locally as Bajo de Masinloc – had its close encounter. A Chinese coastguard ship with bow number 3305 came within 21 yards (19 metres) of the Philippine vessel, an unsafe manoeuvre in clear violation of the 1972 International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea.

The incident took place near a shoal that Manila considers part of its territory, lying 124 nautical miles off the country’s main island of Luzon and within the country’s western exclusive economic zone. But Beijing, since a tense stand-off in 2012, has had a near-constant presence in the area, leading to occasional brushes with Filipino fishermen and presenting a perennial irritant to bilateral ties.

A Chinese ship, left, approaches a Philippine coastguard vessel conducting a patrol near Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea on March 2. Photo: Philippine Coast Guard Handout via AFP
A Chinese ship, left, approaches a Philippine coastguard vessel conducting a patrol near Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea on March 2. Photo: Philippine Coast Guard Handout via AFP

The Philippine coastguard only got clearance from the inter-agency National Task Force on the West Philippine Sea to publicly release what had transpired almost a month later, on March 27.

The announcement came a day before the start of the annual joint military exercises between the Philippines and its treaty ally, the United States. Two days later, Manila filed a diplomatic protest. This signals Manila’s cognisance of the enduring value of its alliance with the US to check China’s growing power projection in the maritime flashpoint. This year’s incidents are not the first in which Manila has held off on publicising disputes in favour of behind-the-scenes diplomacy. On September 30, 2019, a Liberian-flagged, Greek-owned oil tanker manned by a Filipino crew passed through Bajo de Masinloc on its way to China, challenging Chinese control over the feature. The case was not reported until early November, only a few days after the fifth Philippines-China bilateral consultation mechanism on the South China Sea was convened in Beijing.

That same year, a nighttime mishap involving a Filipino and a Chinese fishing vessel that occurred on June 9 near the disputed Recto (Reed) Bank was not reported until three days later – causing an uproar among the public, as the Philippines was celebrating its 121st Independence Day. But Beijing is getting bolder. Between January 20 and February 1, a Chinese Dongdiao-class electronic reconnaissance vessel with bow number 792 was spotted loitering in undisputed Philippine waters in the Sulu Sea.

The ship was likely observing joint Philippines-US exercises taking place off eastern Palawan. It defied repeated demands by Philippine Navy frigate BRP Antonio Luna to leave the area. While China has been known to monitor US-led naval exercises elsewhere from a distance in the past, the Sulu Sea incident marked the first time China had dispatched a surface ship to monitor such drills deep in Philippine waters.

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