Sat, Oct 25, 2025 page3

• Taipei, Manila must join forces: experts

  FIGHTING BACK: A transparency initiative to expose Chinese misdeeds through factual disclosures has raised national awareness of China as a threat, a Philippine official said

  • By Fang Wei-li and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer
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  Taiwan and the Philippines should join forces to counter China’s “gray zone” provocations in the region by naming and shaming the latter’s breaches of international norms, an international panel of experts said on Thursday.

  The Philippines has turned public opinion against Beijing since the launch last year of its “transparency initiative” to expose Chinese misdeeds, Philippine Coast Guard spokesperson Commodore Jay Tarriela told a teleconference held by the Atlantic Council on addressing China’s aggressive and provocative actions in the Indo-Pacific region.

  By disclosing factually correct information, Manila facilitated the rise of a national consensus that regards China as a threat to national security, and public support for the transparency initiative stands at 94 percent among Filipinos, he said.

  

  Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Indo-Pacific Initiative director Markus Garlauskas, upper left, Philippine Coast Guard spokesperson Commodore Jay Tarriela, upper right, National Defense College of the Philippines researcher Arielle Lopez, lower right, and Research Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology researcher Chen Ta-chen are pictured in a screenshot of the Atlantic Council’s teleconference entitled “Countering the PRC’s Gray-Zone Strategies” on Thursday.

  Photo courtesy of the Atlantic Council

  Like the Philippines, Taiwan is being continuously targeted by China with gray zone activities intended to exhaust the defenders and provoke them into an overreaction that Beijing can later exploit, he said.

  The Taiwanese military should consider alternatives to reacting to every provocation with fighter jet interceptions, as the approach would trap its forces in an attritional spiral as China intended, Tarriela said.

  Taiwan should instead focus on discerning the pattern of Chinese activities, as a well-timed and appropriate action is effective in seizing the initiative than making the first move, he said.

  National Defense College of the Philippines researcher Arielle Lopez told the conference that Manila is transforming the Philippine national security strategy from maintaining internal security to dealing with threats from external sources.

  The Philippine government’s comprehensive archipelagic defense concept emphasizes integrating air, sea, land, informational and cyber forces to counter illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive operations China conducts in foreign territories, she said.

  The Philippines has much to offer to Taiwan in crafting a multidomain strategy to combat Chinese gray zone warfare, which is conducted across the political, economic, informational and military spectrum, she said.

  Society and government must be coordinated on the strategic level to achieve integrated defense, Lopez said.

  Taiwan-based Research Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology researcher Chen Ta-chen (陳大楨) said that the nation’s best approach might well be removing the legal ambiguity that has served as Beijing’s maneuver room.

  Taiwan can group China’s gray zone operations into clearly unlawful actions, actions that are damaging to national interests, and actions that are lawful, but awful, each calling for a distinct military, informational and legal response, he said.

  Establishing clear categories to govern the level of response would empower the government to avoid being forced into concessions or manipulation by Chinese legal warfare strategy, he said.

  Combining legal warfare and disclosure of information would weaken China’s control over the narrative, Chen said, adding that this approach calls for cooperation across ministries and real-time information sharing.

  Concerted diplomacy and transparency would then neutralize the maneuver space on which Beijing-directed gray zone campaign depends, he said.

  Beijing’s overall strategy in the South China Sea is consistently guided by the same principle of utilizing prolonged, low-intensity and multidomain actions to weaken its opponents, said Markus Garlauskas, director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Indo-Pacific Initiative.

  Exposure, coordination and solidarity are the only effective means to counter China’s influence, he said, adding that transparency is both a diplomatic and tactical measure for nation states to defend their security.
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