MANILA – Just days after new Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang arrived in Manila to troubleshoot increasingly strained bilateral relations, another major incident erupted in the hotly-contested South China Sea.
According to the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), two Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) ships intercepted their vessels on April 23 during a routine “sovereignty patrol” near the Second Thomas Shoal. A PCG statement on the incident said the CCG “exhibited aggressive tactics” and engaged in “dangerous maneuvers.”
The incident marked at least the 5th such incident in the past year alone, as the new Ferdinand Marcos Jr administration pivoted back to traditional allies including the US. It also came just days before the Filipino president, who recently attended massive Philippine-US wargames, heads to the White House amid blossoming new bilateral military cooperation.
Marcos Jr has emphasized that trade and investment, rather than geopolitics, will be the central theme of his five-day visit to Washington, where he is expected to meet US President Joe Biden, congressional leaders, top business groups as well as deliver a speech at the influential Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank.
Marcos Jr landed in the US on April 30, marking his second trip to America since winning office last year. The upbeat tone of relations with the US marks a notable and sharp contrast with Manila’s recent dealings with Beijing.
During his maiden visit to Manila as China’s new diplomatic chief, Foreign Minister Qin received a relatively lukewarm visit from his Philippine hosts.
Long gone are the days of bonhomie when top Chinese and Filipino diplomats confidently spoke of a “golden era” in bilateral ties, especially in the initial years of the pro-Beijing Rodrigo Duterte presidency (2016-2022).
The Chinese Foreign Ministry described the trip as aimed at “enhancing mutual trust” and “properly handling differences” between the two sides. “China looks forward to strengthening communication with the Philippines through this visit,” the Chinese foreign ministry added in a press briefing last month.
For its part, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) also emphasized the need for diplomatic solutions to “[r]egional security issues of mutual concern” and the need to continue ongoing negotiations on expanding bilateral trade and investment.
During his trip to Beijing in January, Marcos Jr secured more than US$22 billion in new investment pledges. There are growing worries, however, that China might yet again fall short in delivering on its promises, especially as the Philippines boosts America’s military presence on its soil, notably close to the South China Sea and Taiwan’s southern shores under an expanded Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).
By all indications, the Chinese foreign minister’s troubleshooting visit, which coincided with large-scale US-Philippine wargames near the South China Sea, failed to produce any major breakthrough. Capping his short trip to Manila, the two sides only managed to agree on the need to establish “more lines of communications.”
Yet recent history, including during the “golden era” of bilateral ties under pro-Beijing Duterte, shows that even cordial diplomatic ties often fail to prevent dangerous escalation in the South China Sea, witnessed most notably during the 2019 Reed Bank crisis when a suspected Chinese militia vessel sank a Filipino fishing vessel in the contested area.
Shortly after the Chinese envoy’s departure, Marcos Jr became the first Filipino president in recent memory to personally attend the Balikatan (shoulder-to-shoulder) exercises between the US and the Philippines. This year’s drills, which simulated the sinking of a hostile vessel, saw a record 17,600 troops and personnel, including from Australia and Japan, participate.
According to the Malacañang Palace, the Filipino leader, “witnessed the live-fire sea drills involving the sinking of an old Philippines Navy ship, hoping the country could benefit from enhanced cooperation with the United States.”
The April 23 coast guard incident is indicative of China’s response. Back in February, just a week after Manila announced the full implementation of EDCA during US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s visit, a Chinese vessel pointed a military-grade laser at a Philippine coast guard vessel.
From Manila’s perspective, Beijing seems to be more interested in using intimidation tactics, rather than offering real concessions, to undermine the Southeast Asian nation’s rapidly expanding security partnership with the US. As such, Marcos Jr’s White House visit this week, the first in almost a decade by a Filipino leader, is especially significant.
The Filipino president has underscored the need for the Philippine-US alliance to “evolve” in accordance with the exigencies of the era.
“We have to evolve it, it has to evolve because it is evolving, we need to adjust it because there is evolution here, the situation we are facing in the South China Sea, the situation in Taiwan, North Korea are evolving),” Marcos said in a mixture of English and Tagalog just days before flying to Washington DC.
During a pre-departure briefing, Foreign Affairs spokesperson Ma Teresita Daza reiterated Manila’s growing sense of anxiety by emphasizing the “need for partnerships not only with the United States to evolve and it is important because the conditions are changing. There are a lot of challenges that are emerging and to be relevant any partnership has to evolve.”
Tensions over neighboring Taiwan will surely be a major topic, especially since the expanded EDCA grants the Pentagon access to nearby facilities in the northern Philippines. The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) has made it clear that a further expansion of EDCA is possible should the need arise.
“If we are to protect our sovereignty and territorial integrity, including the protection of maritime resources that should be enjoyed by our people, we need a 360-degree protection capability for the [AFP],” Colonel Medel Aguilar, the AFP’s spokesperson, told media last week.
“Aside from equipment, modernization also means getting facilities – such as runways, barracks for our soldiers, and where to store equipment during times of emergency,” the AFP spokesman added. “In the end, we are the ones who really benefit from EDCA facilities.”
Marcos Jr may discuss tensions over Taiwan with US counterpart Joe Biden at the White House next week, but the talks will focus on trade and investment, a top Filipino diplomat said last week.
Despite a century-old alliance, the Philippines and the US have relatively modest trade relations compared to neighboring countries, including communist Vietnam, which is now America’s 7th largest trading partner.
Last year, the Philippines exported just $11 billion worth of goods to the US while several neighboring countries exported ten-fold more to the world’s largest market. Similarly, US foreign direct investment (FDI) stock in the Philippines stood at $5.2 billion in 2020 while US companies poured tens of billions into other Asian economies.
Accordingly, Marcos Jr will raise the need for either a bilateral free trade agreement or further substantiation of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), a vaguely-defined set of principles and agreements aimed at expanding America’s investment and trade footprint in Asia.
As the Filipino president made clear shortly after securing the presidency last year, “Trade, not aid – we always go back to that [in our relations with the US].”
“We have to open as much of the economy as we can to trade and that’s where this kind of treaty will come in,” he added, referring to his decision to join the US-sponsored IPEF.
Follow Richard Javad Heydarian on Twitter at @Richeydarian