Earlier this month, China conducted its largest-ever military exercise in the South China Sea, raising new concerns about the future of freedom of navigation and overflight in the contested maritime region.
The exercises put a new spotlight on the Philippines, with the United States and its key regional security allies now bidding to step up their strategic cooperation with Manila.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s warming ties with China, with ongoing discussions over energy and other resource-sharing arrangements in contested areas, has raised US concerns over China’s rising influence over its smaller neighbors.
While Duterte has reached to Beijing, his security establishment and other prominent Filipinos have remained more circumspect. Those divergent views have been on full display in recent months, witnessed in a flurry of strategic exchanges with the US and its regional partners.
Despite Beijing’s overtures, including rich promises of economic assistance and investments, the Philippines has cause for concern.
No less than Chinese President Xi Jinping, dressed symbolically in army fatigues, addressed military personnel who participated in the recent mass maritime exercises.
Over 10,000 sailors, 48 warships and 76 aircraft took part in what Chinese state-owned media described as “the biggest maritime military parade since the foundation of the new China and a heroic display of the PLA Navy in the new era.”
China also leveraged the unprecedented drills to install equipment capable of jamming communication and radar systems of rival states on land features under its control in the Spratly islands, including on the Philippine-claimed Mischief Reef.
It’s becoming clearer that China wants to discourage and deter any challenge to its expansive South China Sea claims, outlined in its controversial nine-dash line map. Recent moves aim to restrict other claimants and external powers’ ability to operate their military assets in the area.
For Washington and other regional powers, continued security cooperation and engagement with Southeast Asian nations is crucial to preventing complete Chinese domination of the waters, through which over US$5 trillion worth of global trade travels every year.
China’s reported installation of jamming technology on Mischief Reef provoked a political backlash in Manila, with Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano promising to take the necessary diplomatic measures to protest China’s latest perceived provocation in nearby waters.
Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, who has consistently expressed reservations about China’s intentions in adjacent waters, promised to verify and examine whether national communication and weapons systems could now be in jeopardy. That review is ongoing.
Just days after China’s large-scale drills, the US, Japan and Australia deployed warships to Philippine bases in Manila and Subic Bay in their own show of force.
Washington deployed USS Theodore Roosevelt to Manila Bay, its second aircraft carrier to visit the Philippines in the span of a month.
In February, the USS Carl Vinson made a high-profile visit to the Philippines ahead of its freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea, the latest in a series of US pushbacks against China in the maritime area.
Earlier this year, the Pentagon made the unprecedented move of challenging China’s de facto control of the Philippine-claimed Scarborough Shoal by deploying warships within 12 nautical miles of the contested land feature.
Other US allies are pitching in. The Royal Australia Navy’s guided-missile frigate HMAS Anzac, accompanied by the auxiliary oiler replenishment HMAS Success, arrived in the Philippines on April 11 for a five-day-long visit.
Two days later, Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Forces’ Akizuki-class destroyer made a separate three-day good will visit.
“I think there are times when we should speak loudly and clearly,” declared the United States’ Ambassador to the Philippines Sung Kim from aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt while it was docked at Manila Bay.
“Our friendship has never been stronger and we have been and remain an Indo-Pacific nation. And our commitment to this region and its well-being is enduring,” he said.
Underlining the two sides’ deep historical ties, the American diplomat also pointed out the presence of 400 Filipino-Americans aboard the warship, part of the large number of first- and second-generation Filipino-Americans who have jointed the US armed forces in recent decades.
Commander of the Carrier Strike Group 9 Rear Admiral Stephen Koehler welcomed some 300 prominent Filipinos from the business community, government and academia on the aircraft carrier, also known as the “Big Stick”, alongside the US ambassador.
The naval commander emphasized the importance of ensuring that international waters like the South China Sea are “a rightful place for everybody” – a not so subtle swipe at China’s perceived threat to freedom of navigation and overflight in the area.
“It’s a showcase of the capability of the US armed forces, not only by sea but also by air,” Philippine army Lieutenant General Rolando Bautista said during his visit to the USS Theodore Roosevelt. “The Americans are our friends. In one way or another, they can help us to deter any threat.”
While Duterte has expressed his commitment to warmer relations with China, often at the expense of strategic ties with the US, many prominent Filipinos – including Duterte’s known rivals – continue to value the country’s longstanding alliance with America.
Among those in attendance at the aircraft carrier ceremony was interim Supreme Court Chief Justice Antonio Carpio, opposition Senator Antonio Trillanes, former Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) spokesman Major General Restituto Padilla and Harvard-educated tycoon Don Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala.
…but some of the other countries are ok, the people there are really sleazy…and immoral…or amoral take your pick…
Mon Mah very true
Mon Mah, Change their fate? You mean China steal their lands including those of Vietnam and other Asia nations? I got it and so don’t they! LMAO! ????????????
Mon Mah, How you look at it and how it would turn out don’t jive.
It’s already happening….where have you been?
You create a patsy for China’s militarizing the SCS when there is no comparison whatsoever. The US embargoed sales of raw materials needed to run a modern state to stop Japanese aggression. The US literally could shut down Japan whenever it wanted to (about 90% of all oil and copper and about 2/3 of scrap iron). This was caused by the Japanese occupation of southern French Indochina in 1941 (a limited embargo had been enacted in 1940 after the occupation of the other half of Indochina). However, the embargo brought Japan to the negotiating table where they agreed to withdraw to the regions they controlled prior to the 1937 war with China and some other minor concessions. Still, Roosevelt was not satisfied and demanded that Japan return Manchuria to the Chinese as well. This demand was obviously unacceptable to Japan, so the peace party lost power in Tokyo, leading Japan hurtling on its path to war. It also didn’t help that the Pacific Fleet was moved from San Diego to Pearl Harbor in 1941 as a show of force. The US forced Japan to either give up its empire or go to war. And it was impossible to back down without the militarists losing all credibility. And in this provocation of Japan, whether intentional or not, the USA entered WWII, saving millions of lives in Asia.
Kevin-Maricko McCoy ,,,, so where did China leave you behind!
Poverty! China was the epitome of poverty before the United States extended it’s hand to free trade with the World in 1973!! Now China has prospered using the Capitalist system all the sudden it is King of the Roost? Ungrateful is the best description!!!
Ken Nguyen, There you go again always wanting to blame America for all the woes of the World! If course, this fits you’re narrative as a CCP mouth piece. LMAO!!
Who else but Tidbit government in exile…
Everybody, with the exception of female anchors in CNN are racially prejudice towards blacks. Everyone does. These people have a right to their own racial integrity don’t they?
***Dutertes Philippine***
Well… There’s still plenty Aquino III factions in the Philippines who hates our guts (Chinese) and who wanted Dutertes out anywhichway it can be done. These Aquino III factions of the Philippines loves to be seen as puppet to the United States and are willing to go all out to maintain that strange relationship.
As long as this faction gets it pad on the back by the Americans, they could care less if their country is titled [nation of servants]. Neither does it bothers this faction any to see cute little Filipino girls exploited (aired) by OXFAM, WFCF, and by PBS as children having to pilferage in the dumps of Manila in order to put food on the table.
Dutertes saw through all of that humiliation. He have the Intelligence in him to try and work with China and others of Asia to try and change that fate…
You do know Asiatimes is headquartered in Bankock which is why there are so many Indians in this site. Years ago, if my recollection is on the ball, it was headquartered in TW and was overwhelmed by Filipino posters but has since changed politics and affiliations from East Asian contents to purely Asia complete.
China’s interest in the SCS — principally — is all about [Guam] and about the threats posted China by US bases revived during the Obama Administration and agreed upon by the last Aquino Government.
In the very inital stages of the building of those Islands, I told everyone that those are not merely Island for Chinese beachcombers to loosen themselves on but that they are Forts Parcels and Forts Spratelys for. China. Of course, everyone laughed at me and said I’m crazy if I think those are Chinese bases. Now whose getting the last laugh here?
If a direct confrontation materializes between the US and China, Guam and those bases in the Phippines is the first to go is how I look at it.
Duterte of course knows this but hands tied due to agreements inked between US and Aqiono-III government so not a pretty picture there…
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Dutertes, Philippines, and China:
Asia for Asians, Filipinos are Asians, and, like Dutertes, I’d bet every Filipino in the Philippines have a tint of Chinese to them, the results of eons of interbreeding via trade or via sagas as the Swiss Family Robinson’s therefore if it’s within our means to better the lives of Filipinos, then why not?
I’m for a mutually harmonious Asia for all Asians with the exception of civet poopers…
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Even if the Philippine wants to shift course now, it is too late. Best to flow with the tide.
Richard Javan Heydarian..such an interesting topic of discussion. Comments are flooding..lol
The headline states "China’s show of force pushes Philippines back to America", but the second paragraph states "The exercises put a new spotlight on the Philippines, with the United States and its key regional security allies now bidding to step up their strategic cooperation with Manila."
How did the author of this OpEd conflate US worry over PH alliances with CN with China’s actions pushing the Philippines toward renewed ties with the US?
Duterte has been quite clear about strengthening ties in the Orient. He cleary sees how untrustworthy the US has become.
John Tee
China does not export illegal drugs but chemicals which are used to produce medicines, cosmetics, additives, etc. Such chemicals are also exported by Europe, US, Japan, Soith Korea, Singapore, etc.
Opium production tripled in Afghanistan after the US invasion and occupation. Philippines suffers from very, very serious drug and prostitution problems from the long term US occupation and free rein for the CIA drug operations.
Joseph Lapinski Well now here in the U.S we haven’t brought anything to the world since the country was founded, with its endless wars and trying to create an empire,pehaps some in the Philippines have a sense of their history, and the thousands upon thousands that we slaughtered back in 1900/1901, and its been one of our colonies ever since.!!