China’s recent diplomatic maneuvers and gray zone tactics in the West Philippine Sea (WPS) means its political and strategic use of coercive measures are escalating.
While Filipino foreign affairs and security officials held their nerve in quickly responding to and denouncing last week’s latest coercions, most observers basically agree China is upping her bullying tactics and is significantly dialing up WPS tensions.
Topping the latest coercion episodes were the barring of Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro and his family from entering China as well as the discovery of a suspicious floating platform in the Bajo de Masinloc.
In the case of the unusual personalized sanction on Teodoro, analysts say it’s all about China’s attempt to raise the diplomatic cost for Filipino officials advocating for a harder line against Chinese bullying in the WPS.
A news outfit proverbially described the tactic as “killing the chicken to warn the monkeys,” or punishing a high-profile critic to deter others from doing the same.
Undoubtedly, Teodoro is a strong vocal critic of China. He once used strong language to counter China’s claim over the WPS, calling it “a fiction and a lie.”
Last year, Teodoro described Chinese President Xi Jinping as running a “small dictatorship and autocracy” and that his “clique” in the Chinese Communist Party was to blame for China’s aggressive and illegal policies.
By last week’s end, however, an unperturbed Teodoro was strongly supported by Filipino security officials and lawmakers, including the foreign affairs department which categorically described China’s sanction as an “unfriendly act.”
By acting unbothered, the defiant Teodoro and the other officials showed that they were not only ready to meet China’s sanctions head-on but they also knew about China’s coercive diplomacy or “non-militarized coercion” tactics.
Since 2018, China has been escalating its version of coercive diplomacy, using travel and business bans on foreign officials criticizing its policies and its interests. Teodoro is the latest high-profile target of China’s coercive diplomacy.
Besides China’s coercive diplomacy, however, other developing episodes are also escalating tensions between the Philippines and China.
One thing that is riling China no end is the planned talks between the Philippines and Japan on establishing clear maritime borders.
Nothing yet is clear on what the talks will strategically result in, but China’s seems clearly troubled by the fact that should the Philippines and Japan establish their maritime borders it would impede China’s ambitions in the wider Pacific Ocean.
Meanwhile, in far the more contested and tension-filled WPS, the recent discovery of a small Chinese floating structure, a supposed research facility, in the lagoon of Bajo de Masinloc has fueled intense scrutiny and bristling accusations.
Filipino security officials, led by Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela, say the structure is there for other reasons and pointedly accuse China of militarizing the Bajo de Masinloc. China insists the floating platform is doing oceanographic research.
Worried critics of China’s WPS gray zone tactics, however, say their urgent concern is not what the structure is today, but what it could become over time.
Filipino security officials and other independent observers of the South China Sea disputes argue that the structure inside Bajo de Masinloc’s lagoon is the opening gambit of China’s often derided “salami slicing” gray zone strategy.
Observers noted that deploying the floating platform follows the 1990s Mischief Reef template almost exactly, where fishermen’s huts on stilts soon became a 2,600-meter airstrip and a formidable military base.
If China isn’t stopped and turns the Bajo de Masinloc into a reclaimed military base, it becomes a pointed dagger aimed directly at Luzon, security officials warn.