Arise! China: China's diplomatic faux pas pushes Manila back into U.S. arms

Beijing has only itself to blame if it loses out to Washington strategically

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. delivers a speech at the 126th founding anniversary of the Philippine Army at Fort Bonifacio in Taguig, Philippines on March 22. © AP

TORU TAKAHASHI, Nikkei senior staff writerMarch 26, 2023 09:09 JST

TOKYO -- Ferdinand Marcos Jr. made his first visit to Japan as the Philippines' president in early February, accompanied by around 240 businesspeople. During his five-day stay through Feb. 12 -- unusually long for a national leader -- he managed to secure $13 billion in commitments for investment and financial assistance from the Japanese public and private sectors.

At a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, the two leaders agreed to simplify procedures to send the Japan Self-Defense Force (SDF) to the Philippines, as needed, for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

In January, Marcos visited China and sealed investment deals with President Xi Jinping worth $22.8 billion. He also agreed with the Chinese leader to set up a hotline to "peacefully" settle territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

Given the timing of Marcos' visits, and the content of the economic and security agreements, China, at first glance, seems to have achieved more than Japan vis-a-vis ties with the Philippines. But the Inquirer, a Philippine English-language daily, disagrees.

"Japan is a country that puts its money where its mouth is ... unlike other countries who promised billions of dollars in investments, but only realized two- to four-lane bridges spanning the narrow Pasig River, and, worse, used military-grade lasers that caused our Coast Guard personnel temporary blindness in waters internationally acknowledged to be within our exclusive economic zone," the paper said in a Feb. 15 editorial titled, "A Windfall from Japan."

"Other countries" is, of course, a snide reference to China. The laser incident mentioned in the op-ed occurred on Feb. 6 near Ayungin Shoal in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. The shoal is under the effective control of the Philippines.

On that day, a China Coast Guard ship pointed a green "military-grade" laser at a Philippine vessel carrying food and supplies to troops stationed on the shoal, temporarily blinding the crew. The Philippines uses an old warship, intentionally grounded on the shore, as a naval outpost for the small contingent.

As Marcos was scheduled to visit Japan from Feb. 8, the laser incident was widely seen as a warning from Beijing not to deepen ties with Japan and the U.S. In fact, four days before the incident, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Manila and agreed on a deal to expand the U.S. military presence in the Philippines by increasing its access to nine bases from the current five.

A joint statement issued when Marcos visited China in January mentioned an agreement to "appropriately manage differences through peaceful means." Following the laser incident, the Philippine Foreign Affairs Department criticized Beijing, calling the incident an "act of aggression," and "disturbing and disappointing," as it happened soon after Marcos' visit to China.

Manila made the incident public on Feb. 13, a week after it occurred. Eager to avoid friction with Beijing, the Philippine government may have waited for Marcos to return from Japan before breaking the news. Yet, while taking pains not to provoke Beijing needlessly, Marcos has pursued diplomatic initiatives that are at odds with the pro-China image he cultivated before becoming president last June.

In his campaign for the presidency, Marcos teamed up with Sara Duterte, a daughter of his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, pledging to continue his policies.

Despite the long-standing alliance between the U.S. and the Philippines, Duterte soured on Washington after the U.S. criticized his war on drugs as a violation of human rights. Duterte turned to Beijing for economic support.

In a case brought by a previous Philippine government, an international tribunal in The Hague ruled in 2016 that China's claim to sovereignty over the South China Sea had no legal basis. But despite Manila's sweeping victory, Duterte dismissed the ruling as "a piece of paper" and stopped aggressively pursuing the country's territorial claims against China.

Marcos had praised Duterte's foreign policy, calling engagement with China "our only option." Soon after filing his candidacy for president in 2021, he visited the Chinese Embassy in Manila to meet the ambassador. After the election, however, he changed his tune, saying he would not "allow a single inch of our maritime coastal rights to be trampled upon."

There are two reasons for Marcos's about-face.

First, the Philippines has gained little from Duterte's pro-China policy. Speaking at Nikkei's "Future of Asia" conference in 2019, Duterte questioned China's policy in the South China Sea, asking whether it was "right for a country to claim the whole ocean." But he also made clear his desire to get along with his giant neighbor. "I love China," said Duterte. "We are friends ... and I cannot afford a war with anybody."

Duterte apparently calculated that strong economic ties would ease military and diplomatic tensions with Beijing. But despite his frequent visits to China and Beijing's pledge to invest tens of billions of dollars in the Philippines, less than half of the promises have been fulfilled, according to a person familiar with the matter. Meanwhile, China's provocations in the South China Sea have continued, including turning artificial islands into military bases and creating administrative districts on disputed islands.

"Duterte's experience showed that China is proving to be an unreliable partner," said Makoi Popioco, Pacific engagement manager at Australian National University.

The second factor in Marcos' shift in stance was a push by the Philippines's foreign policy and defense establishments to keep the country's traditional alliance with the U.S. alive.

In September 2020, for example, the Foreign Affairs Department succeeded in inserting language into a Duterte speech at the United Nations calling for the South China Sea dispute to be settled based on the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea and the ruling by the tribunal in The Hague.

When the U.S. declined to issue a visa to a former Philippine National Police chief and a close aide to Duterte, the president threatened in February 2020 to scrap the bilateral Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), which allows U.S. military vessels to visit ports in the Philippines and the two countries to hold joint military exercises.

"The six years of the Duterte administration were kind of a stress test on the country's conventional diplomatic and security policy," said Yusuke Takagi, an associate professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. "The country has somehow managed to pass the test."

When Marcos visited Beijing in January, Xi called the friendship between the two countries "irreplaceable," noting that the nations established diplomatic relations in 1975, when Marcos's father was president. But Marcos seems keenly aware that his dictator father was toppled in the 1986 "People Power" revolution because he lost the support of the armed forces. Given the military's close ties with the U.S., Marcos Jr. has little choice but to reverse much of Duterte's pro-China policy.

However, he may not just be reverting to the Philippines' traditional foreign policy. Victor Manhit, president of the Philippine think tank Stratbase, sees it as a step going beyond where the country used to be, saying, "We accepted that we have to go and look at friends and allies beyond the United States."

Behind the agreement to simplify procedures for dispatching the SDF to the Philippines is the possibility of concluding a VFA with Japan, which would allow the two countries to carry out extensive joint military exercises. Following Marcos' return from Japan, Manila invited Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles for a meeting on Feb. 22 and agreed to hold regular defense ministerial talks. The Philippines already has a VFA with Australia. If Japan joins them, the U.S. and its three allies could conduct joint drills and patrols in the South China Sea, greatly enhancing deterrence against China.

China, for its part, continues to make blunders. February's laser incident was not the first between China and the Philippines. In April 2020, a similar incident took place when a Chinese ship directed a laser at a Philippine naval vessel. At that time, Manila had already informed Washington of its intention to annul the VFA, and the accord would have expired in August that year. If that had happened, the U.S. would no longer have been able to conduct military exercises and training in the Philippines, which had been held 300 times or more a year.

But Beijing blew a golden opportunity to expand its influence in the region. After the laser incident, Duterte reversed course and kept the agreement intact, yielding to pressure from the Defense Department and the armed forces.

The conventional security framework in Asia is a "hub-and-spoke" model, with five countries in the region -- Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines and Thailand -- each forming separate bilateral alliances with the U.S. With the Philippines reaching out to other spokes, such as Japan and Australia, the security structure in Asia could change radically.

What is ironic is that it was China that pushed Manila back into the arms of Washington, thanks to its empty promises and strong-arm tactics. China has only itself to blame for having the noose tightened around its neck.

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