Why Is China Pressuring the Philippines in the South China Sea?
You might not notice Second Thomas Shoal from the air. The disputed atoll near the Philippines is a bit larger than Manhattan and sinks beneath the South China Sea’s surface at high tide.
But diplomats and military officials pay close attention to clashes near the shoal between Philippine and Chinese vessels. The fear is that an incident could turn deadly and prompt the Philippines to activate its mutual defense treaty with the United States.
That could lead to a nightmare: a war between the United States and China.
In one previous dramatic episode, Chinese Coast Guard vessels confronted Philippine Navy ones near the shoal in June, footage released by the Philippine military showed. Some Chinese sailors carried knives, and one Philippine sailor was injured.
Here’s what’s happening in the South China Sea, and why it matters:
The sea is valuable and contested.
The South China Sea has some of the world’s most productive fisheries, as well as shipping channels that carry about a third of global ocean trade. Surveys suggest that it may also contain large oil and natural gas deposits.
The sea’s features were mostly beyond “the administration and often the awareness” of governments until the late 19th century, the scholar Gregory B. Poling wrote in a recent book. But in the mid-20th century, Beijing laid claim to most of the sea with a sweeping, U-shaped boundary.
Basic geography does not support those claims. The sea’s main island chains, the Paracels in the north and the Spratlys in the south, lie much closer to Southeast Asia.
Neither does international law. In 2016, an international tribunal ruled that China’s claims in the sea had no legal basis, stating that Second Thomas Shoal and other features were within the Philippines’s 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone.
China’s neighbors have few options.
Governments with competing claims in the sea — Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines — have limited options for resisting Beijing’s pressure. That’s partly because Chinese investments in those places put them in the difficult position of wanting to defending their maritime claims without damaging their economic interests.
“Everybody is treading water really carefully,” said Aristyo Rizka Darmawan, a law professor in Indonesia who studies maritime security.
Another deterrent is that China has the world’s largest naval and Coast Guard fleets, and a large maritime militia. It has also spent years reclaiming land on South China Sea atolls, and outfitting them with radars and runways long enough for fighter jets.
Chinese officials and analysts have described this buildup as defensive.
Song Zhongping, a military affairs analyst in Beijing, said that the United States — which has sent warships sailing through the sea and military aircraft flying over it — is the real “troublemaker.”
“The U.S., as an extraterritorial country, is going to turn the South China Sea into a sea of war instead of a sea of peace and stability,” he said.
The Philippines is a special case.
China typically likes to sort out disputes with its neighbors directly, and quietly.
Vietnam, for example, has reclaimed land in disputed areas of the South China Sea. But China has been “rather muted” about that island-building, likely because Hanoi has not involved the United States or other external players, said Le Hong Hiep, an expert on Vietnamese politics.
The Philippines poses a thornier challenge for China because it has a mutual defense treaty with the United States. That 1951 pact would require the United States to defend the Philippines if the country’s forces, ships or aircraft came under attack.
The current Philippine government is also far less conciliatory toward China than the one it replaced. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who took office in 2022, has beefed up the U.S. alliance and sought support from a wide network of partners, including Japan and Australia.
It’s hard to predict what will happen next.
For nearly three years, the Chinese authorities have interfered with Philippine efforts to resupply sailors on a World War II-era warship that the Philippine Navy ran aground on Second Thomas Shoal about a quarter century ago.
Weeks after the June clash near the shoal, China and the Philippines reached an apparent deal to prevent clashes there. The Philippines later conducted a resupply mission without incident.
But that hasn’t eased fears that a future provocation — or miscalculation — could lead to a conflict.
A hypothetical clash could be short but significant, like the one along the China-India border in 2020, said Pooja Bhatt, the author of a recent book on the South China Sea.
Then again, China and the Philippines both “appear quite ready to de-escalate,” and Beijing has little incentive to provoke a war over the shoal, said Collin Koh, an expert on maritime security in Southeast Asia.
“I guess both sides realize that they are pretty close to the real thing,” he said.
Muktita Suhartono, Olivia Wang and Shawn Paik contributed reporting.
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