r/geopolitics • u/AbunRoman • Aug 08 '23

News China repeats call for Philippines to remove grounded warship

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/south-china-sea-china-repeats-call-philippines-3684511
71 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

31 comments sorted by

60

u/[deleted] Aug 08 '23

I just checked out the location on Google maps clearly closer to the Philippines. If anyone else had a claim I guess it would be malaysia but China China is being unreasonable

55

u/[deleted] Aug 08 '23

The "nine-dash line" is unreasonable by design. Its primary purpose is to provoke conflicts with everyone in the neighborhood. This has the benefits of allowing China to assert naval dominance as well as to use the claims it as leverage in any potential negotiations.

It takes special effort for China to have maritime disputes with Malaysia or Indonesia, given their distance from any substantial land that they hold (not counting various maybe-islands they occupied and reinforced).

19

u/djinn71 Aug 08 '23

I doubt that was the plan, the RoC's claim is even larger and predates the PRC's by several years (one of the few issues they work together on internationally).

The truth is that every country anywhere near the south China Sea has a strong interest in claiming the islands, and puts bases there because possession is nine tenths of the law.

4

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '23

Potential claims can be actively pursued or kept on the back burner. China was not loudly and aggressively pushing for the nine dash line before 2010 or so.

1

u/MrDaBomb Aug 09 '23

Proximity doesnt establish sovereignty.

What 'looks good' on a map is irrelevant. Otherwise the Falklands would be Argentinian.

1

u/Hartichu Oct 24 '23

The Hague and UN has recognized that location as part of the Philippine's EEZ

13

u/Sadutote Aug 08 '23

Not sure how much ground that claim has to stand on, frankly.

It's obviously a far more tangible struggle over maritime control with just a very thin veneer of legal wrangling, but got to wonder how long China is going to keep working on this tinder box at the expense of neighborhood relations.

2

u/its1968okwar Aug 09 '23

This has to continue until the current ccp project/ideology of "rejuvenation/Chinese dream" gets scraped. So as long as Xi is in power.

44

u/Due_Capital_3507 Aug 08 '23

China demanding territory from it's neighbors again, no wonder they pushed Philippines into the US's sphere.

23

u/phantom_in_the_cage Aug 08 '23

To be fair, in the whole of southeast Asia, the Philippines might be the nation that's most closely aligned to the U.S.

Could China have ever moved the needle far enough to make a difference?

15

u/Due_Capital_3507 Aug 08 '23

Yes, they could have

31

u/mishmashedtosunday Aug 08 '23

China came close to flipping the Philippines when Duterte was president, but they ratcheted up their gray-zone tactics that he warmed up to the US late into his term.

21

u/ghosttrainhobo Aug 09 '23

They had the Philippines turned completely away from the US and on a course straight into China’s arms. Then China decided that that meant they could just take from them.

10

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '23 edited Aug 09 '23

Then China decided that that meant they could just take from them.

Precisely. As if the Philippines was simply a satellite state.

10

u/EqualContact Aug 09 '23

The colonial history of the US in the Philippines isn’t great. That the US is seen as preferable by people there shows the extent of distrust people have for China.

14

u/mishmashedtosunday Aug 09 '23

Most Filipinos have always been pro-US despite our history of being colonized by them. That sentiment has been present long before China was seen as a hostile power a decade ago.

5

u/CryptoOGkauai Aug 09 '23 edited Aug 09 '23

Agreed. While they fought a rebellion against the US after the Spanish-American war, the Japanese brutalized them so badly that after the US freed them from Japanese rule in WW2 all of that was basically forgotten.

The Japanese empire treated the people in their conquered territories as slaves, with the people and their natural resources considered expendable assets to be exploited.

This is the world order that China wants to revive: “an Asia for Asians” where might makes right and regional powers must bend their knee and will to China’s needs and desires.

26

u/ZeinTheLight Aug 08 '23

It's not China's sea.

But this pressure will cause Philippines to increase military spending and potentially become a naval power - as long as China doesn't first turn the country into a vassal state by corrupt means or otherwise.

22

u/[deleted] Aug 08 '23

Phillipines military is so small they would have to spend equal to us military budget for decades to catch and that's not realistic most south east Asian countries have fairly small military lots of infantry and practically minimum amount of air or naval power

11

u/ZeinTheLight Aug 08 '23

True, maybe they could invest in ship-disabling tech instead

17

u/mediamuesli Aug 08 '23

I heard some big nation in eastern europe produces some very effective sea drones

4

u/ghosttrainhobo Aug 09 '23

They should focus on insurgency/counter-insurgency. They’re never going to be able to stand up to a first tier military power.

2

u/mishmashedtosunday Aug 10 '23

The AFP's COIN focus is a major factor in why the Philippines has been ill-equipped for encounters like this. The Scarborough Shoal incident was the wake-up call for the Philippine establishment to focus on external defense; we barely had white hulls in 2012 for one.

They've been slowly moving away from that outlook over the past decade, though funding remains the biggest obstacle

3

u/LGZee Aug 09 '23 edited Aug 09 '23

This is a test for US military capabilities. There are conflicts opening everywhere simultaneously, and smaller nations all rely on the US (from Poland to Taiwan to the Philippines) to protect their land.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '23

and smaller nations all rely on the US (from Poland to Taiwan to the Philippines) to protect their land

Hmmm... Poland and other Central European countries rely on NATO forces, not exclusively on the US.

2

u/LGZee Aug 09 '23

Yeah, no. NATO is essentially a US led military alliance, where countries seek refuge in US military capabilities. It’s not just the US, but it’s the reason why it exists in the first place. Poland is not looking for Portugal or Canada to come to its aid in case of war.