South China Sea in 2024: Still The World’s Most Dangerous Lake

Beijing warns Manila as Marcos moves to mobilize regional support

By: Viswa Nathan

As the world enters 2024, could the Philippines and China drag Asia into a catastrophic war? Statements coming from both sides are unnerving as regional players start to align themselves across the South China Sea. The French have announced a plan to hold joint patrols with the Philippines, as did India as well, both of which were immediately denounced by Beijing.

Last month in Tokyo, leaders of Japan and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, commemorating 50 years of friendship, pledged maritime security cooperation and supply chain security. Beijing responded swiftly. Any effort by anyone to assert territorial claims in the South China Sea, its foreign ministry spokesman said, “will take the toll.” More pointedly, Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned in a telephone conversation with his Philippine counterpart, Enrique Manalo, that China would “respond resolutely” if the Philippine side “misjudges the situation…or colludes with ill-intentioned external forces.” Returning home from the Japan-ASEAN summit, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was equally firm: The Philippines won’t give up its territorial rights.

The red lines reaffirm that anything seems possible.

China’s claim to the South China Sea began when the Kuomintang ruled the mainland. Devising an 11-dash line, it laid claim to almost the entire South China Sea. The Communists who overthrew the Kuomintang and founded the People’s Republic revised it to 9-dash and later 10-dash. However, no communist leader from Chairman Mao Zedong to President Hu Jintao, moved to impose this claim, and it lost relevance when China signed the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in December 1982. The Philippines also signed the convention that month.

Now, all countries are signatories to it – although the United States, committed to enforcing it, is not – and the Convention came into force in 1994 as the basis for determining territorial waters and exclusive economic zone (EEZ). It stipulates the territorial waters as 12 nautical miles (22.224 km) from the low waterline, and the EEZ, within which the coastal states have jurisdiction over all resources and features, extending 200 nautical miles (370.4 km) beyond the territorial waters. Thus, a coastal state’s jurisdiction extends 212 nautical miles (392.624 km) from its baseline.

When China signed this covenant, the country was under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, followed by Jiang Zemin, who both pursued a non-confrontational foreign policy. But all that changed when Xi Jinping ascended in the hierarchy. Xi was the vice chairman of the Central Military Commission when China in 2012 occupied Scarborough Shoal which is within the Philippines’s 212-nautical-mile UNCLOS-defined jurisdiction. The following year, when the Philippines under President Benigno Aquino III brought the Scarborough issue to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague, Beijing with Xi as head of both the Communist Party and the nation, began building military bases on Mischief Reef and Subi Reef, both within the area under Manila’s UNCLOS-defined legal rights. It was a haughty display of might is right.

The Manila-Beijing relationship worsened further after Marcos succeeded the China-friendly Rodrigo Duterte. He redefined foreign policy, declared he would not preside over any process that will abandon even one square inch of Philippine territory to any foreign power, reversed Duterte’s policy of distancing Manila from the United States, announced that he could not see the Philippines without the US as a partner, and doubled the number of military facilities where US soldiers and weapons could be based in the Philippines.

Thus, 2023 has been challenging for Manila. China has repeatedly used water cannons and military-grade laser beams against Philippine vessels carrying food and provisions to the dilapidated ship BRP Sierra Madre that serves as an outpost on Ayungin Shoal, which lies within Manila’s 212-nautical-mile jurisdiction. Manila kept its response to these actions limited to diplomatic protests—more than 130 after Marcos took office.

Marcos now says such responses have proven ineffective and it is time for countries that feel they have an involvement in the situation to come up with a paradigm shift. “We have to do something that we have not done before…come up with a new concept, a new principle, a new idea so that we move the needle the other way,” he said during the Japan-ASEAN summit.

For Beijing, it was a call to all nations with a claim on any feature in the South China Sea to team up against China. 

Obviously, this year could well be a defining period. The issue is how Beijing can be brought to honor the UN covenant it signed. Can the UN do anything to stop a member from flouting a covenant it has signed? Can any sanction be imposed on the recalcitrant member?

The UN is toothless, says Richard Gordon, a seasoned Filipino politician who was a Cabinet member with the Gloria Arroyo administration and senator from 2004 to 2010 and again from 2016 to 2022. The Philippines, he says, must develop the wherewithal to protect itself—both purchase and manufacture weapons—and “be prepared to shed blood to defend our country.”

Marcos’s agenda appears not far from it. Last year he increased the provision for defense modernization by some US$109 million to well over US$814 million. This year, almost five percent of the national budget, or some US$5.11 billion, goes to defense. At the 125th anniversary of the naval force last May, Marcos spoke of acquiring submarines and several countries offering to build them for the Philippines. Japan has promised a $525 million loan to add five multi-role response vessels to the Philippine Coast Guard between 2027 and 2028, besides earlier funding to build two patrol boats. Japan will also provide a coastal radar surveillance system. A defense pact that will allow deploying troops on each other’s territory is also under consideration.

Marcos seems to be aiming for a wider support base backed by other democracies in the region—Japan, Australia, South Korea, possibly India, and even Taiwan—to create a new balance of power in the region that can checkmate Xi’s expansionist adventures.

Maybe driven by these factors, Wang Yi’s talks with Enrique Manalo carried a touch of conciliatory tone. Being neighbors separated by a strip of water, China and the Philippines, he said, should settle disputes through consultation, for bilateral relations to improve. It goes well with the stand Marcos announced in his first address to the nation in July 2022: “If we agree, we will cooperate, and we will work together; if we differ, let us talk some more until we agree.”

Many are, however, skeptical if China can be trusted. Beijing’s track record is not trust-inducive. During the standoff over Scarborough Shoal, the US brokered a truce by which both parties were to vacate the area. The Philippines complied, but China reneged and occupied the Shoal.

Will Marcos, searching for a paradigm shift, move to fortify the Ayungin outpost and take control of Scarborough? Likewise, will Xi, facing challenges within the party, dare go to war ignoring UNCLOS and risk his future?

Viswa Nathan is Asia Sentinel’s Philippines correspondent