China provokes the Philippines: war can break out at any time

Something is brewing in the South China Sea. China provokes the Philippines, claims islands and sends warships. Manila defends itself. The USA and Taiwan are alarmed.

A few days ago, the Chinese government published an official “standard sea map” in which it quickly claimed the entire South China Sea as its own. The result was a wave of indignation from all neighboring states. Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and the Philippines have addressed diplomatic protests in rare unity.

But now Beijing’s territorial claims are being followed by a direct confrontation. Chinese warships have set up a blockade to prevent Filipino forces from accessing mapped islands and bays. Manila is now sending the military, and hostilities are intensifying. Aggressive tones of mutual accusations are coming from Beijing and Manila.

Chinese warships have even installed floating barriers to prevent Filipino fishing boats from accessing the so-called Scarborough Reef. The Philippine Coast Guard is now working to remove the barriers. A military poker of pinpricks has begun.

The largely submerged atoll is just 19 km wide and 13 km long, located 250 kilometers west of the Philippine coast and 800 kilometers southeast of the Chinese island of Hainan. A large number of ships have already sunk here, including the British cargo and passenger ship “Scarborough” in 1748 , which gave the reef its western name.

After China occupied the reef (the Chinese call it Huangyan Dao) in 2012, the Philippine government sued the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which in 2016 declared Chinese claims to the atoll unlawful. However, China does not accept the international law ruling and – like Russia in the Ukraine war – invokes supposed historical rights. At the start of the week, Beijing officially announced that the islands were legally part of China’s territory.

A rusty barge marks the territory

Already in August, Chinese warships had used water cannons to repel Filipino boats onto a group of islands further south near the Second Thomas Shoal and prevented them from passing through the maritime region. 24 years ago, Manila deliberately grounded the tank landing ship “BRP Sierra Madre”, which dates back to the Second World War, and occupied the outpost with soldiers in order to underline its own claims to the region. The soldiers have to be cared for on the rusty warship, but the Chinese are determined to prevent that.

The Philippines suspects that China now wants to turn Scarborough Reef into an island and expand it into a military base. Beijing has already done this over the past decade with several atolls in the Spratly archipelago further south. The People’s Liberation Army also maintains bases further west in the Paracels Group, which in turn is claimed by Vietnam.

The Spratlys, the Paracels and Scarborough together form a strategic triangle. With bases at the three corners, China could militarily control the South China Sea and prepare to invade Taiwan. In any case, China is systematically driving forward the militarization of the region. Acts of violence and harassment against Filipino fishermen and sailors are part of this. Beijing also uses Chinese fishing boat crews who operate like militias in conjunction with the coast guard in Philippine waters.

China may be daring to attack the Scarborough Reef now because there is still a young, inexperienced president in office in the Philippines. Ferdinand (called “Bongbong”) Marcos Jr. won the Philippines’ presidential election a year and a half ago with a landslide victory. The son of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who was overthrown in 1986, has since then struggled to maintain a friendly, liberal profile – but above all to regain rapprochement with the USA.

Marcos studied in Oxford (Great Britain) and at the Wharton School (Pennsylvania, USA) and – unlike his predecessor Duterte – wants to orient himself towards the West. At the beginning of 2023, the USA and the Philippines held a demonstratively large joint military exercise called “Balikatan”.

China says the US is to blame
During Marcos’ visit to Washington, US President Joe Biden described the US’s relationship with the Philippines as “ironclad”, especially when it comes to the conflicts in the South China Sea. For Washington, the Philippine islands are seen as a staging area for the Chinese for the feared conquest of Taiwan. Biden therefore emphasized at the meeting with Marcos that “an armed attack on the Philippine armed forces, ships or aircraft in the Pacific cannot be tolerated.”

Security experts in Washington are warning that war could break out at any time along one of the world’s busiest sea routes. The geostrategic conflict with the USA is already being openly invoked in Beijing. China’s propaganda sees the United States as the main cause of the Philippines conflict.

State broadcaster CCTV described the recent incidents at sea as a “pretext to normalize” the US military presence in the region. The China Daily published a cartoon in which Washington reduced the Philippines to an “executioner” and used the country to attack China from afar. Another comment warned the leadership in Manila that Washington, Tokyo and Canberra “did not simply support the Philippines” but wanted to use it as “cannon fodder” as part of the larger plan to contain China.