China is ramping up its aggressive effort to subjugate an American treaty defense ally and plunder the ally’s resources.
Geography is key here.
The Scarborough Shoal is 142 miles west of the mainland of the Philippines, well within its exclusive economic zone, and 534 miles southeast of China’s Hainan Island. Nevertheless, the Chinese Communist Party claims the shoal and the near entirety of the rest of the South China Sea as its sovereign territory. International arbitrators and the vast majority of the international community recognize these claims as utterly devoid of legal standing. The three maps below tell the tale. The first map shows the distance between the Philippines and Scarborough Shoal. The second shows the distance between China and Scarborough Shoal. The third shows China’s vast “nine/ten dash line” claims over the East and South China Seas.
Those maps show how Chinese leader Xi Jinping claims the exclusive economic zones not just of the Philippines, but also of Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei. And, of course, Xi claims Taiwan in its entirety.
These claims are not new. What is new is the increasing teeth with which Xi is asserting them. Today, China is infuriated that Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos is defending his national interests. Beijing greatly laments the absence of Marcos’s predecessor Rodrigo Duterte, who acted as its supplicant footstool. And in an effort to scare Marcos into submission, the Chinese coast guard and maritime militia have escalated their harassment of Philippine vessels. This harassment has entailed the use of water cannons, ramming maneuvers, and sonic and laser devices.
Chinese militia vessels again fired water cannons at a Philippine Coast Guard vessel on Tuesday. The incident occurred at Scarborough Shoal. Fortunately, the Philippines recorded the incident and published a video of it. That’s a problem for Xi.
After all, Xi’s aggression makes it hard for China to earn trust around the world. More importantly, it complicates the ability of otherwise deeply pro-China leaders, such as Germany’s Olaf Scholz, to pursue relations with China through a solely trade-focused prism. In the same way, Xi’s blatant aggression encourages other leaders, such as France’s Emmanuel Macron and Australia’s Anthony Albanese, to rebalance their own China-security-versus-China-trade equations in favor of the security consideration.
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Macron, who rightly identifies France as a Pacific power, best underlines this concern. Last week, France deployed its Pacific-based FS Vendemiaire warship alongside U.S. and Philippine warships in the South China Sea. Next week, however, Macron will host Xi on a much-feted state visit to France. Macron sees China as a key ingredient in his plan to bolster the French economy. At times, Macron has openly undermined U.S. security interests in pursuit of that agenda. At other times, as with the Vendemiaire’s deployment and comments last August by Macron’s national security adviser on Taiwan, the French president has bolstered stability in the Pacific. But with Xi so blatantly shredding that same stability, China’s water cannon antics pose a problem that Macron and other Western leaders cannot easily ignore.
Beijing disagrees, of course. It thinks this is a purely local matter and that its actions are wholly righteous. A Chinese coast guard spokesman asserted that the “water cannon warnings” were “professional, standardized, legal and legal.” A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman similarly declared that this was “seriously infringed on China’s sovereignty. … China urges the Philippines to stop making infringements and provocations at once.”
It’s unclear what will come of Xi’s state visit next week. But what Macron should say is that if China keeps this up, he might find that the next French navy deployment in the South China Sea may involve more capable warships from the U.S., Britain, France, Australia, the Philippines, and Japan and that France will support the U.S. in helping the Philippines replace the BRP Sierra Madre.
You can be sure such words would earn Xi’s concerned attention.
