Two Japanese destroyers and one of the Philippines’ newest warships yesterday began historic naval exercises in the flashpoint South China Sea, showcasing a deepening alliance aimed at countering a rising China.
The day-long war games, the first bilateral naval exercises between the former World War II enemies, took place less than 300km from a Philippine-claimed shoal now under Chinese control.
Philippine authorities insisted the exercises were merely focused on building military capabilities, but security analysts said they were clearly a signal to China over bitter maritime territorial disputes.
“First they demonstrate that China’s Pacific neighbors are beginning to balance against China,” said Michael Tkacik, a professor and foreign policy expert at the Texas-based Stephen F. Austin State University.
“Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam and assorted other states are threatened by China’s behavior, even as far away as India. Thus, the Philippines and Japan are jointly making an important statement about how seriously they view China’s actions,” he added.
China has caused deep concern regionally in recent years as it has become more aggressive in staking its claims to the South China Sea and Japanese-claimed islands in the East China Sea.
China insists it has sovereign rights to nearly all of the South China Sea.
However, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei have competing claims to parts of the sea, which is vital to the global shipping industry and is believed to contain huge deposits of fossil fuels.
In 2012, China took control of Scarborough Shoal, Huangyan Island (黃岩島) a rich fishing ground within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone and more than 650km from the nearest major Chinese landmass.
Chinese coastguard vessels have since guarded the shoal and denied Filipino fishermen access, triggering a series of protests from the Philippines that have been brushed aside in Beijing.
Although the Philippine navy declined to say exactly where yesterday’s exercises would take place, it said the vessels would sail into the South China Sea from the former US naval base in Subic Bay.
That base is about 270km southeast of Scarborough Shoal.
A Philippine navy spokesman said the exercises were the first bilateral war games between the two nations. He said that one of the main drills would see an AW109 helicopter from the BRP Ramon Alcaraz, a frigate acquired from the US in 2012, flying to one of the Japanese destroyers when the three vessels meet at sea.
“It would be naive for anyone to think this is just an ordinary joint exercise in the light of some assertive actions by China in the South China Sea,” said Wilfrido Villacorta, an international relations lecturer at the Manila-based De la Salle University.
He described the event as a “natural reaction” by the Philippines after recent “provocations.”
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