The gutsy, loud voices of government security officials rumbling here and internationally gain us the upper hand against China's bullying.

Surprising it may seem, but the government's dynamic tactic of documenting Chinese bullying in the West Philippine Sea or WPS, and subsequently exposing it domestically and internationally not only complicates China's strategic designs but also forces her to doubt if her "gray zone tactics" still work.

"What is different now — particularly when you're talking about the Philippines — is that the Philippines is releasing the photos and the videos of the incidents. I think that is actually quite an effective deterrent measure because part of China's model for gray zone activity is that it's just meant to be a message for the Philippine government, but now it's exposed to the world, and they have to recalculate its value," pointed out Raymond Powell in a recent interview with Radio Free Asia.

(Powell runs "Project Myoushu," part of Stanford University's Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation, which seeks to develop tools to counter China's "gray zone tactics" in the South China Sea.)

In fact, subsequent highly publicized disclosures of last Sunday's collisions between a Chinese Coast ship and Filipino vessels at Ayungin Shoal is an instance of this ingenious deterrent tactic.

Significant, too, is the fact that the deterrent tactic is now advanced after Filipino Coast Guard officials openly branded as fake news China's version that the Filipinos were at fault by showing China had deliberately spliced videos of the incident.

Alarming though the collisions were — it means China is upping the ante in its abusive gray-zone tactic of "dangerous maneuvers" — the consequent resolute reaction of Filipino defense officials vowing to continue the resupply missions to the marine outpost on the BRP Sierra Madre nettles China even more.

Before anything else, however, a word or two about China's "gray zone tactics." Having a clear idea about those tactics will make it clearer why China is increasingly on the losing end.

"Gray zone" tactics are simply coercive acts that arguably fall below the threshold of war to achieve geopolitical objectives.

In the case of the WPS incidents, this means extensive patrolling by the China Coast Guard and the Chinese paramilitary maritime militia.

Illegally patrolling the WPS is a "gray zone" tactic strategically meant to assert jurisdiction.

To justify these coercive patrols, China brazenly uses her self-proclaimed "nine-dash line" to falsely assert jurisdiction and sovereign rights over our country's exclusive economic zone in the WPS.

The UN arbitral ruling, of course, invalidated China's expansive "nine-dash line" claims.

At any rate, China's initial intention with the gray zone tactic is to privately message "the government of the country involved, and the message is: You don't want to escalate this. You want to have your relationship with China to be as uncomplicated as possible. So now that you know we're the jurisdiction here, keep this between us," says Powell.

Farsighted past and present Filipino officials obviously resisted such exploitative intent.

Geopolitical experts, however, now agree the Philippine government's decision not to keep quiet and to publicly illuminate China's "gray zone" tactics is admirably succeeding.

Publicly highlighting the incidents through videos and photos isn't as risky as keeping quiet, says Powell.

Should the government maintain silence on China's gray zone tactics, "the more you normalize the gray zone activity, the more they simply become expected, and eventually you will normalize yourself right out of all of your own legal and internationally lawful rights to your own exclusive economic zone," Powell says.

Consequently, we can never normalize China's "gray zone tactics." We have to push back. Otherwise, we'll end up helplessly accepting that we don't have control over our waters.

Pushing back, however, isn't just shoring up our military capabilities and defenses.

It also involves us employing "short-of-war" tactics like messaging China. She risks losing her carefully curated reputation when more and more countries condemn her abusive "gray zone tactics."

We aren't there yet with our tactics, but in the long term, we'll get a win.