 "Philippines, Vietnam historic joint drills and South China Sea conundrum")
China has historically considered itself a ‘middle kingdom’, showcasing its self-perceived image of a centre shining over the surrounding area. This perception, added to Xi Jinping’s ‘Chinese dream’ giving a call for China’s rising international influence, has fuelled expansionist designs of Beijing.
Looking at the ‘incorporation’ of Xinjiang in 1949–50 and the annexation of Tibet in 1950–51, or the Chinese assertiveness over the resulting neighbouring states like India and Bhutan, or the wishful nine-dash line in the South China Sea, the Chinese expansionism becomes a fact.
The economic, political, and military might is used to muzzle other states into submission while using the classic ‘salami slicing technique’ for occupying their territories.
As China’s prominence rises in the world order, this assertiveness increases, which invites reactionary steps from its neighbours, growing tensions on the frontiers — whether on land or at sea.
On Monday, a Vietnamese vessel sailed to Manila, Philippines, for ‘a four-day goodwill visit’. Vietnam’s coast guard ship is in the Philippines for the first ever joint coast guard exercises in Manila Bay. This is a significant boost to the maritime cooperation between the two Southeast Asian nations.
The August 9 drill is the first of its kind between these two nations, which are apparently most vocal against the growing Chinese dominance in the South China Sea, where Beijing’s territorial claims and denial of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) have affected Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei, while Taiwan is altogether a different issue.
The coast guard forces of Vietnam and the Philippines hold joint search and rescue drills along with fire and explosion contingency drills in Manila Bay, facing the South China Sea on the western coast of the northern Philippines.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsReports say Vietnamese and Philippine naval forces played volleyball, football, and ‘tug-of-war games’ in Southwest Cay, a Vietnamese-occupied island in the Spratly archipelago of the South China Sea.
Apparently, the Chinese assertion has nudged these two countries to put aside their competing claims over parts of the SCS.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, in his state visit to Hanoi, Vietnam, in January this year, signed two agreements to boost coast guard cooperation and avoid ‘untoward incidents’ in the South China Sea.
Also in June, Hanoi expressed its willingness to engage with Manila to settle overlapping claims to the undersea continental shelf. Though both countries have raised the matter diplomatically with the United States, both are apparently willing to talk.
Also, the June 17 violent confrontation where the Chinese coast guard scuffled with Filipino sailors transporting daily supplies to the Philippine military in the Philippine-controlled waters of Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea must not have been forgotten—after all, the Philippines itself considers it as the ‘most aggressive’ recent Chinese actions in the SCS.
Though China and the Philippines reached a temporary agreement last month to prevent such incidents, a track record of Chinese tactics clearly establishes the vulnerability to such happenings.
Among all this, mention of ‘Squad’—a new grouping in the Indo-Pacific—deserves mention. In May, US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin met his Australian, Filipino, and Japanese counterparts to institutionalise Squad as a new four-way security arrangement. Of course, Vietnam was not added to it, for the obvious reason owing to the unitary single party communist government there and the history of US and Vietnam relations. But the centrality of the South China Sea in the discourse of the Indo-Pacific was underlined once again, with potential conflict between an incumbent and aspirational superpower quite probable.
Already, the US’ growing closeness towards Taiwan and its advocacy of the Tibetan struggle have irked China, and now the growing convergence in the South China Sea — among the two aforesaid ASEAN nations — and the indulgence of Washington through Squad will certainly demand the urgent attention of Beijing. Xi Jinping’s next move is awaited.
The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
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