Sneaky Hanoi

While the Philippines and China are engaged in an escalating territorial dispute, a third country is using this as an opportunity to expand its military outposts.

Regional research indicated that in 2021, Vietnam began expanding some of its small and medium-size outposts in the Spratly Islands through dredging and landfills.

The effort has resulted in the creation of over 2,200 acres of new land across 10 features, with eight new harbors and one new airstrip completed thus far in the contested regions.

The scale of Vietnam’s island-building is second only to China’s, which created 3,500 acres of land in the Spratlys from 2013 to 2017.

Since China completed the expansion of its own artificial island bases in 2017, it has used those ports to operate continuous coast guard patrols and flotillas of maritime militia across the Spratlys.

Vietnam’s new outposts will offer similar logistical advantages, allowing ships to deploy to the islands for longer, keeping better watch over far-flung outposts, and protecting against Chinese harassment of oil and gas activities at sea.

While Vietnam acquired the logistical capacity for longer deployments through the reclamation push, it still doesn’t have the number of ships needed to sustain operations anywhere near China’s.

Given this continued disparity, Hanoi may use its maritime militia to maintain its presence in the near term.

The expansion will also make the islets themselves more defensible. Many of the recently expanded outposts previously consisted only of isolated concrete structures with just enough space to house a dozen or so personnel.

These were transformed into full island bases that are armed with anti-ship artillery and rocket systems, coastal defense emplacements and additional radar and sensing capabilities.

Thus far, there has been little public response to Vietnam’s island-building, most surprisingly from China.

Beijing has said virtually nothing in public save for a tepid restatement of China’s claim over the area in February.

And China’s coast guard and militia, focused instead on harassing the Philippines, have made no effort to interfere with Hanoi’s efforts.

Beijing may have simply concluded that it won’t be able to stop Hanoi without incurring an unacceptably high risk of escalation.

Frustrated by the lack of progress on the Code of Conduct and facing increased harassment by China at sea, the Philippines filed and won an international arbitration case against China’s claims in 2016.

Why not use national ID?

Telecommunications companies are urging the government to allow centralized identity verification using the national ID system to address longstanding concerns over the SIM registration.

The law permits the use of any government-issued identification, but the lack of a unified system to verify those documents remains a significant challenge.

Telcos have always clamored for the government to devise a way to verify any government ID because that’s what the law provides.

Not all government-issued IDs have an accessible database, complicating the verification process.

However, a change in the Implementing Rules and Regulations might be needed to make the national ID the sole basis for SIM registration since it has a database.

A system linking telco registration platforms with the national ID database could allow identity verification “from the national level down to the barangay level.”

A full shift to face-to-face SIM registration would slow down the process and place an additional strain on telco resources.

The National Telecommunications Commission previously pushed to amend the SIM Registration Act to require in-person registration, citing the abuse of the current online system by scammers.