President Joe
Biden will warn China about its increasingly aggressive activity in the South
China Sea this week during summits with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida
and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
Two senior US officials said Biden would express serious concern about the situation around the Second Thomas Shoal, a submerged reef in the Spratly Islands where the Chinese coastguard has used water cannons to prevent the Philippines from resupplying marines on the Sierra Madre, a rusting ship that has been lodged on the reef for 25 years.
Biden will
stress that the US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty applies to the Sierra
Madre, said the officials, adding that he expressed “deep concern” when he
spoke to President Xi Jinping on Monday.
“China is
underestimating the potential for escalation. We’ve tried to make that clear in
a series of conversations . . . that our mutual defence treaty covers
Philippine sailors and ships and by extension . . . the Sierra Madre,” one
official told the Financial Times.
“China needs to
examine its tactics or risk some serious blowback.”
Admiral John
Aquilino, head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, recently issued a similar
warning to a delegation of retired Chinese military officers and Cui Tiankai,
China’s former ambassador to the US, according to people familiar with the
situation. Indopacom did not comment. The Biden administration has also
enlisted other retired US officials to deliver similar private messages to
Beijing.
The officials
said the US was wary of establishing a “red line” with Beijing. “If you give
the Chinese a red line, they will go just short of that and do everything but,”
said one official.
The second
official said China may think its actions fall below the threshold of the US
commitments under the mutual defence treaty.
“The reality of
their rules of engagement and the way that responsibility evolves may mean that
ultimately they don’t have perfect control over that fact,” the official said.
“We would not want to create an artificially clean distinction when they themselves
are not fully able to control their own actions.”
Bonnie Glaser, a
China expert at the German Marshall Fund, said the “greatest risk of a direct
US-China military confrontation today is at Second Thomas Shoal”.
“If Beijing
directly attacks Philippine ships or armed forces, Washington would be
compelled to respond,” she said. “A major political crisis between the US and
China would ensue, and, at worst, a wider military conflict.”
Jose Manuel
Romualdez, Philippine ambassador to the US, said the two allies hoped that the
treaty would never have to be invoked, but warned, “we will not hesitate to do
so” if warranted.
The Second
Thomas Shoal is one of many contested features in the Spratly Islands in the
South China Sea. The Philippines grounded the Sierra Madre on the reef in 1999
as part of its effort to reinforce its claims to the feature. The Philippine
military has stationed marines on the ship who need to be periodically
resupplied.
China says
Manila is bringing construction materials to the shoal to reinforce the rusty
second world war-era ship, which is at risk of disintegrating. It also accuses
Manila of reneging on a promise years ago to remove the ship — a claim the
Philippines has rejected.
Dennis Wilder, a
former top CIA China analyst, said Beijing was trying to test what the US
response would be if China attempted to remove the Philippine marines from the
Sierra Madre and destroy the vessel. He said it probably wanted to build a
military outpost on the reef as it has done elsewhere in the South China Sea.
“A base closer to the Philippines would both
secure China’s claim in the area and provide a forward operating location for
combat operations against US forces operating from Philippine territory in a
Taiwan Strait conflict,” said Wilder.
Jeff Smith, an
Asia expert at the Heritage Foundation, said the US should adopt a tougher
stance. “The US should participate in joint resupply missions with Filipino
forces and explore options to replace the deteriorating Filipino ship,” he
said.
“The US cannot
repeat the same mistakes it made in 2012, when China set a terrible precedent
by using military coercion to seize control of Scarborough Shoal from the
Philippines.”
Underscoring the
rising concern about the Second Thomas Shoal, the US, Japan, Philippines and
Australia announced that they would hold their first-ever joint military
exercises in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.
In a joint
statement, the defence ministers from the four countries made clear they
supported the result of a 2016 arbitration case at The Hague which rejected
Chinese claims of historic rights to most of the South China Sea within a
demarcation called the “nine-dash line”.
The Chinese embassy
in Washington said Xi stressed in his call with Biden that Beijing had
sovereignty over the Spratlys, including Second Thomas Shoal. It said the “root
cause” of the dispute was that Manila had “repeatedly gone back on its words
and tried to build permanent outposts on the uninhabited reef”.
“The US is not a party to the South China Sea issue, yet it keeps meddling in the issue, sowing discord concerning maritime issues between China and the Philippines and falsely accusing China, causing instability in the region,” said Liu Pengyu, spokesperson of the Chinese embassy in the US.
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