For years, the US and its allies have struggled to contain China’s ambitions in the South China Sea, even as Beijing steadily seeded the waters with artificial islands and military installations.
Now, by cutting its own deal with China, the Philippines has suddenly changed the calculus, persuading the Chinese to let its fishermen operate around a disputed shoal, but setting a worrying precedent for the US and its hopes of using regional alliances to preserve its place as the dominant power in the Pacific.
What had been a fairly united front against China’s expanding maritime claims, stretching from Japan to Malaysia, now has a gap in the southeast corner where the Philippines lies, and it could soon have another at the southwestern end, where Malaysia is making noises about shifting its alliances.
In both cases, resentment over what is seen as US interference in unrelated problems — a wave of extrajudicial killings in the Philippines and a huge financial scandal in Malaysia — might have contributed to the shift.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is angry with the US over its criticism of his lethal anti-drug program, in which 2,000 people have been killed, mostly by the police.
In Washington, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Benjamin Cardin, has vowed to block any sale of assault rifles to the Philippine police, Senate aides confirmed on Tuesday last week.
While US President Barack Obama has criticized the extrajudicial killings in the Philippines, blocking weapons sales would be the first concrete US sanction and it would probably drive the Philippines further from the US.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak is angry over a money-laundering investigation into what the US Department of Justice says is more than US$1 billion looted from a Malaysian government fund by Najib’s relatives, friends and associates.
Najib was in Beijing last week shopping for military hardware.
“Nobody wants the US to leave the region to China, but China is using its economic leverage, its geographic position and its lack of interest in human rights to try and change the balance of influence in a region where the vagaries of American politics are now on stark display,” Singaporean Ambassador-at-Large Bilahari Kausikan said.
The deal between China and the Philippines became apparent over the past week, with reports that China had begun to allow Philippine fishermen to operate in contested waters in the South China Sea for the first time in four years, rewarding Duterte for his friendship with Beijing and his coolness toward Washington.
The deal is an informal one and, so far, has not been committed to writing, but it seems to give both parties what they want, while sidestepping the more contentious issue of sovereignty over the Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島), contested fishing grounds claimed by Taiwan, China and the Philippines.
China has not renounced its claim over the shoal, nor has the Philippines conceded China’s claim. However, the Philippines’ main interest in the territory is fish and it appears to have gotten that, a victory for Duterte and his popular defense of his nation’s important fishing industry.
For China, the concession not only shifts an important US ally into its good graces, but also brings it at least partly into compliance with a ruling by a tribunal in The Hague on the dispute.
The July ruling, which China rejects, denied Beijing’s claim over most of the South China Sea.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday last week said that it remained opposed to the ruling and that the loosening of its four-year blockade of the shoal was a special “arrangement” for Duterte and “has nothing to do with the so-called award.”
Nonetheless, in allowing Philippine fishermen back into the waters around the shoal, China, whether it admits as much or not, was complying with the part of the ruling that dealt with the blockade, said Paul Reichler, Manila’s chief counsel in the case.
“China has suddenly decided to act in a manner that, in fact, complies with one aspect of the award,” Reichler said. “It is a welcome step in the right direction.”
Because the tribunal did not consider the question of sovereign rights, China is not out of bounds in continuing to claim sovereignty over the shoal, nor would the Philippines be if it did the same, he said.
“Beijing has played a clever diplomatic hand,” University of Sydney US Studies Center research fellow Ashley Townshend said. “It’s secured a public relations win by lifting the blockade, without forgoing its sovereignty claims over the shoal or even removing its coast guard vessels.”
For Duterte, who has vowed to scale back relations with the US, including possibly denying US forces access to five military bases in the Philippines, the Scarborough Shoal deal came at little cost.
Philippine Representative Harry Roque, who accompanied Duterte on his trip to Beijing last month, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that the Chinese had wanted a written document that said the fishermen would be “allowed” or “permitted” to return to Scarborough Shoal, wording that would imply China’s control of the area.
Such wording was “unacceptable,” Roque said, and so the deal was not put in writing or formally announced.
For China there was also little cost. The Chinese still control the area around Scarborough Shoal and it would be tough for the Philippine government to negotiate a full Chinese withdrawal from the shoal, an area Beijing has considered turning into an artificial island to create a military base.
Still, China has lost a point of leverage, Townshend said.
“Having now lifted the blockade and drawn global attention to the issue, it will be very difficult for Beijing to reinstate the blockade without incurring serious reputational damage and undermining its political rapprochement with Manila,” he said.
The US, a bystander to the deal, gave it a kind of provisional approval.
Saying that he had only read reports, US Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken said it would be a “positive development” because it showed that China “is acting consistently with the arbitration ruling.”
Even if it portends a potential strategic loss, the agreement also helped reach a goal that the US has long sought — lowering tensions in an important area of the South China Sea.
For Duterte, the deal caps a two-week period in which he has shown himself to be a “shrewd political animal,” as Kausikan put it.
In Beijing, Duterte signed US$24 billion in infrastructure projects and loans. He left Tokyo last week with the promise of two new vessels for the poorly equipped Philippine coast guard and, according to Philippine media reports, US$19 billion in investment and loan pledges.
Duterte has also won tacit support in both capitals for his campaign against drugs.
Like the Chinese leadership, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did not raise the issue of extrajudicial killings and human rights violations.
How long Duterte can ride out his good relations with China and keep up his threats against the US is an open question.
This week, Duterte is to hear a report from the Philippine Department of Defense on whether to continue to allow the US access to the military bases, including one at Palawan, close to the Scarborough Shoal.
Duterte has threatened to cancel the 2014 accord that gives the US access to the bases, a decision that Beijing would welcome. Termination of the agreement requires a one-year notice period by the Philippine government to the US.
However, the Philippine public remains pro-US and skeptical of China, opinion polls showed.
“I think Filipinos are happy to see the fishermen back in their fishing grounds, but I doubt if this meant that there is a significant increase in the 33 percent of Filipinos favorable to China,” University of Hawaii professor of Asian studies Patricio Abinales said.
Additional reporting by Eric Schmitt and Huang Yufan
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