‘China’s planned ADIZ over West Phl Sea to trigger tension’

“The world shares the same understanding that the regional tension should not be raised by Beijing’s unilateral course of action.” -- Itsunori Onodera

By Jaime Laude 

Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera and his Philippine counterpart, Secretary Voltaire Gazmin, meet at Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City yesterday. 

MANILA, Philippines -- Visiting Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said yesterday that China’s plan to establish an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the West Philippine Sea would further trigger tension as Beijing’s unilateral action would be opposed by other nations in Southeast Asia.
Emerging from a bilateral meeting with Department of National Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin at Camp Aguinaldo, Onodera pointed out that an ADIZ over the South China Sea would cause alarm not only to the Japanese government but to the international community as well.
“I think the world shares the same understanding that the regional tension should not be raised by Beijing’s unilateral course of action,” Onodera said.
Japan and China are locked in a territorial row over a chain of islands known as Senkakus in the East China Sea.
Tension has been mounting in the region following China’s establishment of ADIZ over the area, a moved defied by the Tokyo government and the US military.
Beijing recently announced it is also establishing an ADIZ over the South China Sea to further boost its maritime claim in the hotly-contested region against other claimant countries including Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines.
“The United States, South Korea, Taiwan and European Union and other countries are expressing strong concern over this. If the new ADIZ will be set in South China Sea or the West Philippine Sea, I think the government of Japan needs to express its concern similarly to what we have stand in East China Sea,” Onodera said.
Aside from several reefs that Beijing has converted into forward naval bases in the South China Sea, it has also established what it calls Sansha City on the Woody Island in the Paracels to manage its supposed territorial waters in the East and South China Seas.
Several Chinese warships have been conducting regular patrols over the two areas. 

As China’s naval operations are continuously being challenged by Japan in the East China Sea, they have remained largely uncontested in the South China Sea and West Philippine Sea.
China has been maintaining warships in Panganiban Reef and Subi Reef in Palawan. 

Only this year, China deployed two maritime surveillance vessels within the vicinity of Ayungin Shoal.

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China pulls out of UN process over territorial dispute with Philippines

“There is a price to be paid for branding yourself an international outlaw – a state that does not comply with the rules.” -- Paul Reichler
By Paul Lewis in Washington

Fallout over China’s territorial claims has become the dominant issue for Joe Biden. 

China is taking the highly unusual step of refusing to participate in a United Nations arbitration process over a territorial conflict with the Philippines, one of five countries challenging Beijing’s claims of ownership over the oil-rich South China Sea.
The legal dispute underscores the tough geopolitical approach China is adopting in the Pacific region. 

It has adopted an aggressive approach toward neighbours over a 2,000-mile stretch that also includes the East China Sea, over which it recently declared the air defence identification zone that has inflamed tensions with Japan and South Korea.
China sent its only aircraft carrier to the disputed waters off the coast of the Philippines for the first time last week, in a move Manila said raised tensions. 

China’s military said the carrier Liaoning will conduct drills in the area, accompanied by two destroyers and two frigates.
Dealing with the fallout over China’s territorial claims has become the dominant issue for the US vice-president, Joe Biden, who is currently touring the Asia Pacific region.
Biden arrived in South Korea on Thursday after high-level bilateral meetings in China and Japan that were dominated by the issue of the air defence zone.
The Philippines will submit its formal case to the UN arbitration tribunal of judges, which has agreed to hear the case at The Hague, in March. 

A preview of their arguments were outlined this week in Washington by Paul Reichler, an expert attorney at Foley Hoag LLP hired by Manila to handle the case.
He said China’s blank refusal to participate in the tribunal process, a move it revealed to the Philippines by way of diplomatic letter in February, marked the first time a state had ever refused to take part in an inter-state arbitration under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Under the convention, the panel of senior international judges is still required to issue a ruling in the case, despite China’s non-cooperation, although Reichler conceded there were no way of enforcing any ruling.
But he added: “There is a price to be paid for branding yourself an international outlaw – a state that does not comply with the rules.” 

China declined an opportunity to comment on the case.
The dispute concerns China’s declaration of the so-called nine-dash line, which claims jurisdiction over nearly all of the mineral-rich South China Sea, overlapping with large segments of territory claimed by the Philippines as well as of Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei.
In parts, China’s declared jurisdiction, which enables it to exploit lucrative fishing waters and potential oil and gas reserves, stretch more than 800 miles from its mainland coast. 

It also comes to within 30 miles of the coast of the Philippines.
Under the convention, states have a right to an exclusive economic zone and continental shelf within 200 miles of their coast. 

Disputes over the South China Sea are not unlike those over the Japanese Senkaku islands which are dominating Biden’s visits to Japan, China and South Korea this week.
Although the ad-hoc tribunal formed to deal with the case cannot rule on the sovereignty of the islands claimed by both China and the Philippines, it can provide rulings about the nature of rock formations, with implications for any territorial claims under the convention. 

Some of the disputed territories are barely visible at high tide, while others are fully submerged even at low tide.
In a bid to strengthen its claims, China has constructed concrete installations on some underwater formations, complete with basketballs and helipads. 

“A state cannot transform an underwater feature into an island by building on top of it,” Reichler said at a seminar organised by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
In simple terms, the judges will in part be asked to determine when a rock can be defined as an island. 

If a rock protruding from the sea cannot sustain human life or economic activity, for example, the associated rights in surrounding waters are, under the convention, dramatically reduced, regardless of which state claims ownership.
Reichler also showed one slideshow of an island that, at high-tide, consisted of rocks that only just protruded out of the water. 

“It is barely big enough to support the Filipino flag,” he said.

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Safeguarding the Seas

How to Defend Against China's New Air Defense Zone
By Michael J. Green

A helicopter of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force lifts off from the aircraft carrier USS George Washington during Annual Exercise 2013.

Much of the coverage of China’s November 23 announcement of a new Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over waters claimed by Japan and South Korea has focused on the reactive and blundering nature of Chinese diplomacy. 

China’s sudden insistence on its right to take defensive action against foreign aircraft in this zone, the argument goes, was either an attempt to play to domestic nationalism or else to respond to Japan’s own increasing assertiveness in the region. 

Either way, the coverage concludes, China underestimated how quickly and vigorously other countries in the region would respond, including with flights directly into that airspace.
The implication of this analysis, which may be tempting to the overstretched Obama administration, is that Beijing made a hasty move that the region will now correct with a little help from Washington. 

Unfortunately for the administration, however, this was not just an ill-conceived slap by Beijing against a testy Japan. 

The reality is that the new ADIZ is part of a longer-term attempt by Beijing to chip away at the regional status quo and assert greater control over the East and South China Seas.
To understand this reality, one must begin the story of the ADIZ before Japan’s nationalization of three of the eight disputed Senkaku Islands in 2012, which is where most assessments start. 

Over three decades ago, China and Japan agreed to set aside their disagreement over the islands and focus on a common problem: the Soviet Union. 

It was China that first nullified the understanding by staking claim to the islands in 1992. 

It was also China that, in 2008, began significantly expanding its maritime patrols in and around those waters. In recent years, the Chinese maritime services have conducted patrols at least once a day near the islands and have crossed Japan’s 12-nautical-mile border around the islands on hundreds of occasions. 

Meanwhile, Chinese navy units have circumnavigated Japan and conducted major military exercises on all sides of the Japanese archipelago. 

In other words, by the time Tokyo purchased some of the Senkaku Islands from private landowners in 2012, Chinese pressure had reached alarming levels for Tokyo.
Both Japanese and Chinese diplomacy on the issue have been inept at times, of course, but the difference is that Japan -- which has effective administrative control of the islands -- is trying to preserve the status quo, whereas China is bent on using coercive pressure to try to change it. 

And Japan is not China’s only target. 

Beijing has also been pressing Manila over the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. 

China has increased its maritime and air presence around the contested area and imposed export bans on key products from the Philippines. (This strategy smacks of the same mercantilism China showed when it halted rare earth exports to Japan because of those two countries’ island disputes.)
Unlike the ongoing dispute with Japan, the Scarborough Shoal confrontation going badly for Manila. 

In 2012, Chinese maritime patrol ships finally overwhelmed the tiny Philippine navy and took de facto control of the shoals. 

Filipinos whose families have fished those waters for a millennium are now barred from entering.
Japan’s air force and navy are too strong for China to attempt a similar grab of the Senkaku Islands anytime soon. 

But Hanoi, Manila, Taipei, and Tokyo all sense that, in the Scarborough Shoal, Beijing “killed the chicken to scare the monkey,” as officials from those governments say. 

Most observers would agree that China has every intention of following the same strategy against Japan, just in slow motion. 

Although the smaller powers have remained quiet about the announcement of a new Chinese defense zone, most are privately urging Japan not to back down.
Japan, South Korea, and the United States have stated that they will not let the Chinese ADIZ announcement change their military operations in the area. 

To prove the point, the Pentagon sent two B-52 bombers out of Guam to fly through the new defense zone. Japan and South Korea quickly followed suit with their own patrols. 

The administration’s opening move certainly demonstrated by word and deed that Beijing went too far. 

But if the Chinese announcement comes from a deeper strategy of coercing smaller states and establish greater control in the Western Pacific -- as many governments in the region rightly suspect -- then Washington had better be prepared for a longer-term test of wills with Beijing.
The administration needs to consider the larger context that the rest of the region sees. 

Some of the policies included in the so-called rebalance to Asia will help, including the announcement in October that Washington and Tokyo will revise their bilateral defense guidelines to deal with new contingencies, including from China. 

Other moves have been less helpful. 

It was not lost on China or Japan, for example, that U.S. service chiefs testified in front of Congress that planned defense budget cuts would leave the armed forces unable to fulfill their current missions or security commitments; that U.S. President Barack Obama threw the decision about honoring his redline in Syria to Congress; or that senior U.S. officers in the Pacific continue trying to calm the waters by speaking of a new strategic partnership with China and naming climate change as their greatest security concern in the region.
More immediately, the disconnect between Washington and Tokyo this week over whether commercial flights should recognize the ADIZ and file flight plans with Beijing (Tokyo says no and Washington says yes) was a poor case of alliance management and an embarrassment for Tokyo during a serious security problem. 

Whatever the merits of each side’s respective policies in terms of strategic signals and airline safety, the two will have to work as one in the future.
The Obama administration needs to stick to a disciplined message of resolve and reassurance. 

And that would mean accurately assessing Beijing’s strategic intent. 

Confrontation with China is far from inevitable, and the potential areas for productive U.S.-Chinese cooperation remain vast. 

Vice President Joe Biden will no doubt emphasize the positive in U.S.-Chinese relations when he travels to Beijing this week. And that makes sense. 

But he should also leave no doubt that the United States is prepared to work with regional allies and partners to ensure Beijing understands that its attempts at coercion will not work. 

Then, when he is in Tokyo and Seoul, he should take time to listen carefully to what those allies think is at stake in the troubled East and South China Seas. 

Their problem is our problem, not just because we are allies but also because this moment could determine how China uses its growing power.

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China looks to redraw Asian airspace

      

By Demetri Sevastopulo in Hong Kong

When China created a controversial “air defence identification zone” last Saturday, it sparked alarm about the rising risk of Sino-Japanese conflict over the Senkaku Islands.
But while the focus has been on the Japanese chain, China also said in the same statement it “will establish other air defence identification zones at the right moment after necessary preparations are completed”, raising the spectre of tensions spreading across the region.

The Senkaku spat has attracted much attention over the past year because of the potential for war between Asia’s two biggest economies.
But China is engaged in a number of equally contentious territorial disputes with Southeast Asian nations – particularly the Philippines and Vietnam – over the resource-rich South China Sea.
Ian Storey, a security expert at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, said the most obvious candidates for any new Chinese air defence zones were the northern part of the South China Sea and the Yellow Sea.
Chinese maps often include a controversial “nine-dash line” that loops the South China Sea, running close to the coasts of Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia, and stretching south to Indonesia.
It first emerged in a 1947 Republic of China map that was later used by the Communist government of Mao Zedong when it came to power in 1949.
While some Chinese scholars say China does not claim the entire South China Sea, the use of the map has sparked concern among Southeast Asian nations.

China last year started issuing passports that included an image of the “nine-dash line”, provoking angry responses from Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Mr Storey said China would probably not create an ADIZ for the whole South China Sea, saying it would be “absolutely outrageous” if they included the whole area inside the “nine-dash line”.
Instead, he said China was more likely to establish a zone in the northern part of the sea, and particularly surrounding Hainan Island.
Hainan hosts the Chinese navy’s South Sea fleet – one of its three naval fleets – and also a new generation of nuclear submarines that are an increasingly important part of China’s naval capabilities in the South China Sea.
But Mr Storey added that creating an ADIZ over even some of the South China Sea would be “unnecessarily provocative” at a time when China is trying to reduce tensions with its Southeast Asian neighbours.

In October, Chinese President Xi Jinping took advantage of the absence of US President Barack Obama at the Apec summit in Indonesia to launch a charm offensive with Southeast Asian countries, including by floating the idea of creating an “Asian infrastructure bank” to promote development in the region.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang then embarked on a tour of Southeast Asia that was widely seen as an effort to repair relations.
The creation of an ADIZ over the South China Sea would be unlikely to generate the same kind of military response that occurred this week when the US flew B-52 bombers near the Senkaku without alerting China – mainly because, with the exception of Singapore, most Southeast Asian nations have limited air power.
But Gary Li, a senior analyst at IHS maritime, said a Chinese ADIZ in the northern South China Sea would be “very, very sensitive”.
He said it would almost certainly overlap with Vietnam’s ADIZ, which reaches north to about 100km from Hainan Island, and includes the disputed Paracel Islands.
Mr Li said the Yellow Sea was also a contender for a new Chinese ADIZ.
China has repeatedly criticised the US and South Korea for holding joint military exercises in the Yellow Sea, which lies between east China and the Korean peninsula, and particularly so when the US sails its aircraft carriers through the area.
Wu Shicun, president of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies in Hainan, a think-tank that advises the Chinese foreign ministry, said that while China had the right to create new zones, it would take its time.
“We cannot rule out the possibility of setting up new ADIZs, but not in the short term,” said Mr Wu.
“Given the strong reaction from the international community to the East China Sea ADIZ, China will further evaluate when and how to set up new ADIZs. But it will happen sooner or later, since it is related to its national security.”
Shi Yinhong, an international relations expert at Renmin University, agreed that China was unlikely to create a zone in the South China Sea anytime soon, mainly because Beijing does not see the same urgency, but he said that could change if “confrontations in the South China Sea escalate”.
China and Japan had for decades put the Senkaku dispute to the side.
But Beijing reacted angrily last year when Japan bought three of the islands from their private owner, in a move that sparked anti-Japan protests across China.
Mr Li said China probably decided to create an ADIZ – which other countries such as Japan and the US did long ago – because Tokyo has routinely pointed to the number of Chinese incursions into Japan’s zone as a way to rally public support.
“That caused the Chinese side to say we need to get one too. There is a huge PR war here,” said Mr Li.

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China's Latest Territorial Moves Renew Fears In Philippines

by FRANK LANGFITT

U.S. and Philippine navy personnel patrol the seas off a naval base west of Manila in June as part of joint exercises.

China is flexing its muscles these days. 

Over the weekend, it declared a sprawling air defense identification zone that covers disputed islands controlled by Japan. 

And it has sent its lone aircraft carrier for first-time trials in the South China Sea, where Beijing has territorial feuds with other neighbors, including Vietnam, Brunei and the Philippines.
None of this was making China any friends in Manila, where the Chinese government is particularly unpopular these days.
"It only tends to confirm and reinforce the fears and worries of many people in the region," says Jay Batongbacal, a University of the Philippines law professor, who has spent a decade and a half studying territorial disputes in the South China Sea. 

"Right now, I think they are seen more as a bully, because of the actions that they've taken."
Among those actions was last year's takeover of a disputed and potentially strategic shoal in the South China Sea that had been under Philippine control.
It started when Philippine authorities tried to arrest Chinese they accused of illegally fishing inside the shoal, which is really a shallow, triangle-shaped reef with a small opening at one end. 

China sent marine surveillance ships to block action by a Philippine navy frigate.
"One of the measures that they put in place was to string a line across the mouth of that entrance," says Batongbacal, "because if any vessel tries to cross that line, it will get entangled in the propellers."
The Chinese effectively sealed off the reef from Philippine fishermen and took control of Scarborough Shoal without firing a shot.
The shoal, rich in fish, is about 140 miles from the Philippine mainland and more than 500 miles from China. At high tide, only five rocks stick up out of the water, but Philippine officials worry China might one day declare them Chinese territory.
Batongbacal says in the worst-case scenario — from the Philippine perspective — China could turn the shoal into a safe harbor for Chinese government vessels and a way to extend its influence and power in the region.
"Right now, it's clear that their motivation is that they want to vindicate their claim to the entire South China Sea," Batongbacal says.
A huge amount of trade and oil passes through the South China Sea, which China has claimed since the 1940s. Back then, though, it was militarily too weak to do anything about it. 

Today, China is the world's No. 2 economy and a rapidly rising military power.
Dindo Manhit, president of Stratbase Research Institute, a strategic think tank in Manila, says China now wants to ensure it has a major say in what happens in the South China Sea. 

Like all economic powers, Manhit says, China wants to spread its influence.
"At the end of the day, any economic influence needs to be protected by either strong military or political influence," Manhit says. 

"I think that's where it's coming from."
Chito Santa Romana, who spent nearly four decades living in China where he served as the bureau chief for ABC News, thinks it also comes from a desire to restore China, which means "Middle Kingdom" in Mandarin, to what it sees as its rightful place as a respected global player.
"I would attribute it to what I call the resurgence of the 'Middle Kingdom Complex,' " says Santa Romana, who works in Manila with a think tank, trying to forge understanding on the South China Sea dispute between the two countries. 

"The 'China Dream' that the Chinese talk about, they want to recover the glory that was lost when they were a pre-eminent power."
The U.S. has dominated East Asia militarily for decades, ensuring the peace and security that allowed the region's economies to grow so rapidly. 

The Philippines hopes America will back it up if its dispute with China turns violent, but some worry Washington's deep and complex ties with Beijing will win out in the end.
"We just hope and expect that the U.S. remembers us really as the true ally here," says Manhit, "because some people are saying that in a conflict between China and the Philippines, the U.S. will choose China because of the economic relationship."
Jay Batongbacal, the University of the Philippines law professor, says turning its back on a longtime ally with whom it has a mutual defense treaty would have serious implications for America and its other diplomatic relationships. 

Most people in the Philippines are hoping it never comes to that.

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China may long regret miserly typhoon aid offer

If I were Aquino, I’d tell China to keep its money; maybe Xi could use it to hire a public-relations firm. 

By William Pesek

US soft power in action

As hundreds of thousands of Filipinos struggled to find food, water, shelter and the bodies of loved ones in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan, China quickly dipped into its world-leading $3.7 trillion of currency reserves and came up with … all of $100,000.
That was Beijing’s first miserly offer of aid to the storm-tossed Philippines. 

By Thursday, an international outcry over China’s stinginess shamed it into upping its pledge to a modest $1.6 million worth of relief materials such as tents and blankets. 

But the damage was already done.
“It’s very hard to call for de-Americanization and then leave your wallet at home when there’s a human disaster the scale of the typhoon in the Philippines,” says Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group in New York. 

“Yes, China is a poor country. Yes, they have troubled relations with the Philippines. But this sits badly with anyone thinking about China’s rise in the region.” 

If he were advising President Xi Jinping, Bremmer says, “I’d push for major humanitarian aid to the Philippines.”
Instead the bulk of that aid is coming from elsewhere: more than $28 million from Australia, $20 million from the United States, $17 million from the European Union, $16 million from the United Kingdom, $10 million from Japan, $5 million from South Korea, $4 million from the Vatican, $2 million from Indonesia, and huge amounts from official agencies — the United Nations alone started a $300 million aid appeal.
China was clearly stung by the critical news coverage. 

South Korean figure skater Kim Yu-na herself gave $100,000 — enough to buy nine bottles of a 2006 Romanee-Conti. 

Even the new Chinese offer is rather paltry. 

New Zealand’s $167 billion economy is a rounding error compared with China’s $8.4 trillion one. 

Yet officials in Wellington have coughed up $1.7 million, even more than the People’s Republic.
Why the insultingly small sum for a geopolitically vital nation of 106 million people that by many measures is much poorer than China? 

Manila’s close ties with Washington have always worried China. 

But this is personal. 

Philippine President Benigno Aquino refuses to bow to China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, and enraged Beijing by daring to challenge its maritime claims before a U.N.-endorsed tribunal. 

Aquino also demands that China treat the Philippines, one of Asia’s oldest democracies, as an equal, not a subordinate.
Nations hold grudges, of course. 

But China’s actions last week dramatically undercut what had been a very deliberate and strenuous — and supposedly successful — recent charm offensive. 

After U.S. President Barack Obama skipped out on a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders last month, Xi and Premier Li Keqiang gleefully toured Southeast Asian capitals, handing out investment deals to show how generous China could be with its neighbors, how eager it was for friendly relations.
The Philippines crisis offered an opportunity for China to show it had developed into a mature, cooperative nation and to win goodwill across the region. 

As a matter of fact, on Friday, Chinese and U.S. troops will even train together for the first time in Hawaii, as part of a drill in which the two nations cooperate in a humanitarian relief operation in a third country. 

Why not jump in and seek to cooperate in the enormous international rescue effort in the Philippines?
Instead, officials in Beijing find themselves evading awkward questions about their miserliness. 

Perhaps trying to save a smidgen of face, Beijing first upped its offering to $200,000 through the Red Cross. That was still less than half of the $450,000 the Philippines gave China after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. 

Even now, China’s total offer is far less than the $4.88 million donated to Pakistan after an earthquake there two months ago.
China’s normally quiescent state-run media worried about the fallout. 

“China’s international image is of vital importance to its interests,” the usually gung-ho Global Times said in an editorial Tuesday. 

“If it snubs Manila this time, China will suffer great losses.”
One reason China’s efforts to develop its soft power have failed is the utilitarian way Beijing approaches the rest of the world. 

Instead of using culture, adept diplomacy and trashy movies to seduce other countries, China hands out cold, hard cash. 

All the investment poured into railways in Indonesia, tunnels in Brazil, power grids in Cambodia, hydroelectric projects in Laos, bridges in Vietnam, roads in Zambia, factories in Malaysia, airports in Myanmar, and mining rigs in Uzbekistan comes with a high cost. 

In return, China demands complete docility. 

That’s the message being sent to the Philippines now.
Arvind Subramanian, author of the 2011 book “Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China’s Economic Dominance,” says China is going to be a “peculiar kind of superpower,” one whose attraction is more materialistic than heartfelt.

“It won’t have the soft power the U.S. has — people wanting to come, people wanting to live, people wanting to emulate it,” he told me in Hong Kong last week. 

“That soft power is lacking, but it will not impede China.”
I’m not so sure. 

If I were Aquino, I’d tell China to keep its money; maybe Xi could use it to hire a public-relations firm. 

As badly as the Philippines needs the help, so does China’s image.

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The Pivot Starts Now

In the wake of Typhoon Haiyan, the United States has gained some ground at China's expense.
BY PATRICK M. CRONIN

Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines on Nov. 8, killing thousands, affecting millions, and leaving hundreds of thousands of Filipinos desperate for help. 

A natural disaster of that magnitude requires a massive relief effort, and the United States took the lead: dispatching the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, distributing food and water, and maneuvering rescuers and supplies to remote areas. 

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) pledged more than $22 million in assistance.
U.S. allies soon followed. 

Japan offered $30 million in emergency relief, along with roughly 1,000 soldiers to help deliver the aid, on top of ongoing assistance programs, such as $20 million through the Asian Development Bank. 

Australia pledged $10 million, South Korea $5 million, and when Britain's carrier the HMS Illustrious arrives on Nov. 24, it will begin delivering some $30 million in relief supplies. 

But China, the region's rising power, is noteworthy for its stinginess. 

Beijing originally pledged $100,000, increasing that to a still-paltry $1.6 million on Nov. 14.
Since former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the rebalance to Asia in late 2011, many in the region have doubted America's ability to sustain the level of its operations in the Pacific. 

In October, for example, President Barack Obama's absence from two prominent Asian meetings due to the crisis in Washington over the government shutdown allowed Beijing to steal the spotlight. 

But when it comes to global crises, including natural disasters, it is still the United States -- even war wary, reputationally challenged, fiscally indebted, and politically gridlocked -- that takes the leading role. 

The response to Haiyan could be a turning point for the United States in Asia: an opportunity to re-up the pivot, and to pour cold water on the narrative of a dominant China.
That's not to say China isn't trying to play a more assertive role in the region. 

Since taking office in November 2012, Chinese President Xi Jinping has focused on maintaining order and economic growth at home while reducing external conflicts that could impede China's rise. 

Xi and his colleagues envision their country eventually supplanting the United States as the world's largest economy and sharing -- at a minimum -- responsibility for the Asia-Pacific region. 

China is emphasizing its periphery, particularly mainland Southeast Asia; in October, Xi announced plans to create and fund an "Asian infrastructure bank."
But China still fails at building soft power in the region. 

In early November, Chinese scholars and even officials emphasized to my colleagues the tiered levels of Chinese friends and partners. 

Countries that support China diplomatically or bring wealth to China, they said, are given preferential treatment -- almost like international relations as one big fundraising tribute. 

Because tensions are high with Japan over disputed islands in the East China Sea, and with the Philippines over disputed territory in the South China Sea, Beijing withholds cooperation and support from those two nations, instead doling out rewards to those countries most willing to work closely with China. 

Although this approach sometimes mutes regional criticism, it tends to fail at persuading neighbors that a more potent China will look after their interests.
And this is where the U.S. rebalancing, or "pivot" to Asia comes in. 

The region has generally viewed the pivot in military terms, as a reassurance of U.S. presence in Asia, and as a counterweight to Chinese pressure and coercion. 

But as the distribution of world power continues to shift from West to East, the United States can also use the pivot to help build an inclusive, rules-based order in Asia. 

An open trading regime must be part of that. 

But to foster China's potential as a force for good, the United States and its allies need to integrate China into this order.
Instituting a common response to humanitarian disasters is a good place for China and the United States to start. 

Holding back assistance to neighbors because they defend their core national interests against a more powerful neighbor who occupies a disputed area -- as China does with the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea -- goes against international norms. 

If the United States can protect universal rights such as freedom of the seas and promote more effective regional security cooperation, it will continue to be a great power that is welcome throughout the region.
China appears eager to cooperate with the United States on disaster relief. 

The two sides have shared detailed lessons learned in responding to domestic disasters, including Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the 2008 Sichuan earthquake that killed roughly 87,000 people. 

In June, the two countries cooperated with an Asian-wide humanitarian assistance and military medicine exercise, allowing China to showcase its photogenic military hospital ship, dubbed the "The Peace Ark." 

Unfortunately, that ship remains docked in a Chinese port. 

Adding to the irony, on Nov. 12, Chinese and U.S. troops participated in a joint humanitarian aid and disaster relief exercise in Hawaii, the exact time the Philippines needed urgent support.

China under Xi wants a "new type of great power relationship" with the United States -- an invitation to further push China to cooperate on disaster relief.
This pays dividends for the United States domestically, as well. 

U.S. leadership in helping those in desperate need around the world is a forceful riposte to declinists, who ignore America's enduring and exceptional global role. 

Bipartisan support for U.S. humanitarian efforts is a hopeful instance of policymakers pulling together to achieve greatness.
Obama is seeking more than $4.1 billion for the fiscal year 2014 for humanitarian assistance. 

Humanitarian aid should not be used as a political tool, but that doesn't deny the reputational advantages of doing good and the hits from sitting idle during a crisis. 

It's a lesson China is learning right now.

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Asia Rivalries Play Role in Aid to the Philippines

   

By ANDREW JACOBS

CEBU, the Philippines — The American aircraft carrier George Washington has arrived, its 5,000 sailors and 80 aircraft already busy ferrying relief supplies to storm-battered survivors, and the United States has committed an initial $20 million in humanitarian assistance.
Japan is dispatching a naval force of 1,000 troops, in what officials say is that country’s largest ever disaster-relief deployment.
Also on the way: the Illustrious, a British aircraft carrier stocked with transport planes, medical experts and $32 million worth of aid.
The outpouring of foreign assistance for the hundreds of thousands left homeless and hungry by Typhoon Haiyan is shaping up to be a monumental show of international largess — and a dose of one-upmanship directed at the region’s fastest-rising power, China.
China, which has its own newly commissioned aircraft carrier and ambitions of displacing the United States, the dominant naval power in the Pacific, has been notably penurious.

A shipment of food unloaded from an American military helicopter in Guiuan, Philippines, on Thursday.
Beijing increased its total contribution to the relief effort to $1.6 million on Thursday after its initial pledge of $100,000 was dismissed as stingy, even by some state-backed news media in the country.
The typhoon, described as the most devastating natural calamity to hit the Philippines in recent history, is emerging as a showcase for the soft-power contest in Asia.
The geopolitical tensions have been stoked by China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, and heightened by American efforts to reassert its influence in the region.
China has showered aid on countries it considers close friends, becoming the largest lender in Africa, rushing to help Pakistan after an earthquake in September and showing a more humanitarian side to its neighbors in Asia.
But the typhoon struck hardest at the country China considers its biggest nemesis in the legal, diplomatic and sometimes military standoff over control of tiny but strategic islands in the South China Sea.
Over the past year, Chinese and Philippine vessels have faced off over a reef called Scarborough Shoal, and the Philippines has angered China by taking the dispute to an international arbitration tribunal.
It did not help that the Philippines earlier this year said it would accept a gift of 10 coast guard vessels from Japan and voiced support for Tokyo’s plans to strengthen its military ties in the region, or that it is in discussions with the United States about hosting more American troops there.
The challenge for China comes shortly after the United States appeared to suffer a setback of its own in the contest for Pacific influence.
President Obama had to cancel a high-profile visit to the region this fall to grapple with the fiscal shutdown in the United States, an event that seemed to many in Asia to showcase American dysfunction.
So when the typhoon struck an old ally, the Pentagon did not waste much time offering a robust show of assistance.
“There is no other military in the world, there is no other navy in the world, that can do what we can do,” one American official said.
Michael Kulma, an expert on East Asia at the Asia Society in New York, said the Chinese reluctance to give more aid could hurt its chances to make a favorable impression in the country.
“There was an opportunity, right up front, for China to make a commitment,” he said.
“At the end of the day it could be that the Chinese end up giving more. But on the front end of it, they didn’t stand out.”
At the same time, the relief efforts by the United States could give a lift to its already strong influence in the Philippines.
Despite its longtime alliance with the United States, the Philippines has been tentative over what Washington sees as the country’s role in its so-called Asian pivot, which includes efforts to increase the presence of American troops on Philippine soil.
But the American relief effort — which is receiving a lot of news media attention in the country — might wear away at some of that reluctance, a legacy of the years when the Philippines was an American colony.
Already, some in Tacloban said they would not mind American boots on the ground there temporarily, if it would help.
“If the United States will come in, if it will be allowed to come, or if the United Nations can come in, it will really help us secure the city,” said Jerry Yaokasin, a senior municipal official.
China’s rise has been shifting geopolitics in the region for years.
With China’s investments in Southeast Asia mounting, even some countries worried about being overwhelmed by their imposing regional neighbor have found it hard to resist the pull of its economy — a dynamic that is very likely to continue.
But China’s increasing power has also in some cases worked against it, including in the Philippines, where the battle over maritime territory, including the Scarborough Shoal, has softened the wariness of Japan and the bitter memories of World War II, when Japan invaded.
In announcing their assistance on Thursday, Japanese officials spoke of it mostly as an effort to provide humanitarian assistance, though there was also an acknowledgment of growing security ties.
“The Philippines is geographically close to Japan and an important strategic partner,” said Japan’s defense minister, Itsunori Onodera.
The donated coast guard vessels are meant to help the Philippines better patrol its waters, including those contested with China.
On Thursday, officials said Japan’s military would send C-130 transport aircraft and helicopters to ferry supplies to areas that have been cut off by the disaster.
Japan will also send three navy ships, led by the Ise, Japan’s largest warship.
Tokyo also offered $10 million in emergency aid.
As more countries came forward with impressive aid packages — and after days of ignoring criticism that it was offering too little aid — China on Thursday said it would increase its assistance.
The Foreign Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, said that China had never intended the amount of assistance to remain fixed, and insisted that it had adjusted its contribution according to growing needs.
“An overwhelming majority of Chinese people are sympathetic with the people of the Philippines,” he said.
Analysts, however, said one factor in determining the initial size of the assistance was the hostility among Chinese Internet commentators toward foreign aid, and to help for the Philippines in particular because of territorial disputes.
“There must have been a debate” inside the government about how much aid to give and how to supply it, said Qin Yaqing, professor of international studies at the Foreign Affairs University in Beijing.
He continued, “Chinese culture takes an incremental way of doing things so as not to cause more trouble with the domestic” audience.
In an unusual turn, Global Times, a newspaper that often projects a nationalist editorial line, criticized the initial offer of aid as too small.
In an editorial on Tuesday, it noted that the Philippines was a two-hour flight from China’s southern coast, but that countries much farther away responded quickly.
“A twisted relationship between the two countries caused by maritime disputes is not the reason to block joint efforts to combat natural disaster,” the editorial said.

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China's aid to Philippines dwarfed by Ikea

• More than 2,300 people were killed by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines
• China offered $100,000 then boosted its aid package to $1.6 million
• Ikea is sending $2.7 million

By Oren Dorell

China is the world's second largest economy and closer to the Philippines than other major donors of assistance to the typhoon-ravaged archipelago.
Yet the paltry $1.6 million in aid it pledged to its neighbor was less than the check written by Swedish furniture store Ikea.
"China's action illustrates the blundering nature of its foreign policy," said Phillip Swagel, a former assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department and co-author of Awkward Embrace: The United States and China in the 21st Century. 

"This is an unforced error for them, revealing to other countries the limits of Chinese friendship."
Typhoon Haiyan raked the island nation Nov. 7, causing at least 3,621 fatalities, destroying 236,000 homes and wreaking devastation so widespread that bodies have been piled on sides of roads for days and survivors have been desperate for food and shelter.
China's pledge, which it boosted after getting flack for its original offer of $100,000, is a fraction of the amounts pledged by other countries in the region and much farther away, including the USA, which pledged $20 million. 

Australia promised $30 million. 

The United Kingdom offered $16 million. 

Japan and United Arab Emirates each pledged $10 million. 

Ikea is sending $2.7 million, according to UNICEF.
An editorial in the Southern Daily, the Communist Party newspaper in Guangdong, accused Filipinos upset with the first offer of being unappreciative malcontents, according to the International Business Times, a U.K. publication.

A screen in Beijing shows U.S. aircraft carrier USS George Washington deploying to typhoon-hit Philippines on Nov. 14.

"The Philippines is obviously not content or even appreciating of China's 'love', only expecting 'more love' from China," the editorial said.
China and the Philippines have tangled in recent years over territory in the South China Sea, which China says belongs to it alone, even waters near the Philippines that are hundreds of miles from China's mainland.
Bonnie Glaser, an East Asia adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the real reason China offers so little is that China is always tight when it comes to disaster aid.
The rising economic power still sees itself as a developing nation, Glaser said.
"There's not a lot of support domestically in China for foreign assistance," Glaser said. 

"The leadership worries that they would be criticized if they were found to be giving too much money away and not helping the poor at home."
China's power projection capabilities are still limited, she said. 

It has only one hospital ship, the Arc Peace, and one aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, which its sailors and aviators are still learning how to use. 

But that has not stopped China from sending numerous military and commercial vessels to the Philippines in the past to stake claims against fishing grounds off its shores.
China does provide foreign assistance, but more in the way of business ventures that are seen as wise investments for the Chinese people. 

China has funded massive mining and drilling operations in Africa, which has created jobs for thousands of Chinese nationals who China insists be hired for the construction of such projects. 

And the projects usually involve direct trade with China.
President Xi Jinping announced in October the creation of an Asian infrastructure investment bank to promote regional economic integration. 

And 123 countries count China as their largest trading partner.
"They do give assistance, but in the disaster relief area they generally don't give very much compared to other countries," Glaser said.
The People's Liberation Army provides the largest contingent for United Nations peace keeping operations out of all permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, Glaser said. 

However, China is not the largest donor to of funds to those operations.
The United States pays the most, covering close to one third of the expense. 

China kicks in 6.6% of the funding, below Japan, Britain, Germany and France, but its forces take more out of it than those nations.

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Danger of China conflict grows

Beijing's inconsistent adherence to internationally accepted norms of air and maritime operations may contribute to operational miscalculations in the East and South China seas

By Bill Gertz

China is reportedly testing a precision guided maneuvering torpedo. A report concludes that "China's growing diplomatic, economic, and military clout is changing the regional security architecture."

As China steps up sovereignty claims over disputed waters in Asia, U.S. military forces face the growing risk of conflict with the Chinese military, according to a draft congressional report.
"Through its diplomatic actions and the rebalance to Asia, the United States has signaled its intent to strengthen its relationship with partners and allies in East Asia," the forthcoming report of the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission states.
"However, China's military modernization, coupled with the potential decline in U.S. power caused by sequestration, is altering the balance of power in the region and reducing the deterrent effect of the rebalance policy. The risk is therefore increasing that China's coercive approach to its sovereignty claims will lead to greater conflict in the region."
China is using its military forces to coerce Japan into giving up claims to the Senkaku Islands, and is also pressuring the Philippines to renounce its claims to the Spratlys in the South China Sea. 

Both regions are believed to harbor valuable undersea oil and gas reserves.
The report said the sovereignty disputes in the East and South China seas are not new. 

But it warned that "China's growing diplomatic, economic, and military clout is changing the regional security architecture."
"It is increasingly clear that China does not intend to resolve those disputes through multilateral negotiations or the application of international laws and adjudicative processes, but [it] will use its growing power in support of coercive tactics that pressure its neighbors to concede China's claims," said the report's chapter on Asian maritime disputes.
The late draft is dated Oct. 21 and the final report is set for release Nov. 20. 

A copy of the draft was obtained by Inside the Ring. 

A commission spokesman said the final report could change slightly from the draft.
"The commissioners are very concerned about the way that the [Defense Department] budget and force structure is shaping up," said a source close to the commission.
"We were pretty strong on the need to maintain a credible naval and air presence in the Asia-Pacific and to live up to the Pentagon's shift to a 60 percent force concentration in Asia. Obviously 60 percent of 200 ships is less than 60 percent of 300, and it looks like the [People's Liberation Army] is moving toward a 300-ship navy."
The report said China is fueling maritime disputes domestically through "ardent popular nationalism" and by asserting its claims are "central" to national security.
Key triggers to a future conflict are the Chinese system's weak crisis-management structure and apparent divisions between the powerful Communist Party-controlled People's Liberation Army and government Foreign Ministry.
In January, the Chinese navy came close to triggering a naval shootout after a Chinese frigate locked its weapons radar on a Japanese ship. 

U.S. officials said it was the closest to a shooting incident since China began aggressive maritime actions several years ago.
The report concludes that "Beijing's tendency to demonstrate resolve in its maritime disputes; its large and complicated political, foreign affairs, and military bureaucracy; and its inconsistent adherence to internationally accepted norms of air and maritime operations may contribute to operational miscalculations in the East and South China seas.
"Unyielding positions on sovereignty and nationalist sentiment surrounding these maritime disputes increase the risk of escalation from a miscalculation at sea to a political crisis," it said.
To reduce the war risk, the commission will recommend that the U.S. Navy increase its presence in Asia to 60 ships by 2020 and rebalance regional home ports in Asia to 60 percent by the same year.
The commission also wants the Pentagon to affirm treaty commitments and strengthen ties with partners and allies in Asia and to bolster air and naval forces, specifically by improving intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance over the East and South China seas.
It also calls for a greater naval buildup.
"Congress [should] resource the U.S. Navy shipbuilding program so that the United States will have the capacity to maintain readiness and presence in the Western Pacific, offset China's growing military capabilities and surge naval assets in the event of a contingency," the report said.

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China’s paltry response to Typhoon Haiyan illustrates the limits of its soft power

By Heather Timmons

The giant head of Xi Jinping looms over protestors in Geneva.

The world’s rich and poor nations alike have pledged millions of dollars in aid to the storm ravaged Philippines—but China so far has offered a paltry $100,000.
The amount would be low even if China were a much smaller or poorer nation: Malaysia, population 29 million, has pledged $1 million in cash, as well as food aid; New Zealand, population 4.4 million, has pledged another $1 million. 

But when the $100,000 is coming from the second-largest, fastest-growing economy in the world, it’s so jarring that even a Chinese state-owned newspaper editorial made the case this week for “humanitarian aid”:
"China, as a responsible power, should participate in relief operations to assist a disaster-stricken neighboring country, no matter whether it’s friendly or not. China’s international image is of vital importance to its interests. If it snubs Manila this time, China will suffer great losses."
China’s Communist Party has often pledged to grow the country’s “soft power,” the ability to sway other nations based on an appealing image rather than economics or force.
It’s a push that spawned President Xi Jinping’s recent “mild posture and language” tour of Southeast Asia and premier Li Keqiang’s light banter with the prime minister of Thailand. 

China’s state-run media are now running English-language Twitter accounts (never mind that Twitter is blocked in China) and have loosened up their programming to include Western foreigner-bait like interviews with The Killers. 

This summer, China introduced the mother of all panda-cam aggregation sites and a new panda cub photo-op record with 14 cubs.
But the tight-fisted gift to the Philippines, as islands lie in ruin and bodies rot on the streets, is a reminder of China’s less-than-gracious treatment of its neighbors: China issues passports with maps that assert its claims to the Spratly islands in the South China Sea, forcing other Southeast Asian countries to tacitly acknowledge the claim when they allow Chinese citizens to visit. 

In August, China rejected any multilateral approach to resolving territorial claims like the islands.
Harvard professor Joseph Nye, the man who coined the phrase “soft power” 30 years ago, wrote last year that Bejing’s soft power push was failing. 

Despite an Olympics that broadcast China’s talented population, fast-growing economy and mind-boggling infrastructure and organization, the country’s brutal treatment of human-rights activists and dissidents had spoiled the picture, he said.
Since then, China has embarked on a crackdown on internet communication, threatening to jail or fine anyone who spread untrue information on the internet. 

In one instance, a teenage boy was detained after asking a question about a police investigation. 

The country has detained dozens of activists, critics, and social media voices in “a repressive drive” that “attacks the very freedoms that Human Rights Council members are supposed to protect,” Human Rights Watch said in August.
According to a Pew survey released in July, the majority of respondents in 26 out of 38 countries polled said they believed China acts unilaterally in global affairs and either considers others interests marginally or not at all. 

China’s paltry aid to the Philippines is likely to reinforce that image.

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China’s Revealing Typhoon Haiyan Response

By Daniel Baltrusaitis

In response to the tragedy that has unfolded over the past days in the Philippines, a number of countries have rushed to contribute to the recovery efforts. 

Altruism is its own reward, of course, but the aid ultimately gives these countries influence with the Philippine people and government. 

The recovery efforts have been rapid, albeit not rapid enough for those devastated by the disaster. 

One nation, however, has been notably absent: China.
China's foreign ministry announced that the country would provide $100,000 in cash and “humanitarian emergency relief assistance” to the Philippines, an absurdly paltry amount in comparison to the aid provided by other nations. 

For instance, the United Arab Emirates, home to approximately 700,000 Philippine nationals, has pledged $10 million, while regional powers Australia and the Republic of Korea have pledged $10 million and $5 million respectively. 

The United States has deployed a team of about 90 Marines and sailors as part of the first wave of promised U.S. military assistance amounting to $20 million.
As well as meeting the human needs of this tragedy, this disaster relief assistance is a remarkably effective — and inexpensive — investment in the future. 

Joseph Nye, Harvard Professor and former Assistant Secretary of Defense, coined the term “soft power” to describe this investment.

According to Nye, soft power is the process of attraction, which allows a state to attain its desired outcomes by co-opting people rather than coercing them through “hard power” actions such as military action or economic sanctions. 

Soft power events such as disaster relief are an important component of foreign policy because of the lasting goodwill that results from the support. 

The massive U.S. relief effort in response to the 2004 earthquake and tsunami built American goodwill in Indonesia and long-term ally Thailand. 

According to Jonah Blank, a senior political scientist at the non-profit, non-partisan RAND Corporation and a former policy director for South and Southeast Asia on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the tsunami relief effort may rank as one of the most concrete reasons Southeast Asian nations trust rather than fear the U.S. refocus on the Pacific Rim in its strategy of "Asian rebalancing."
China has recognized the effect of soft power in influencing other nations. 

In 2007, Hu Jintao, then General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, enjoined the Party leadership to increase its soft power. 

Since 2004 the Communist government has embarked on an aggressive campaign to champion Chinese language and culture by establishing a series of non-profit government funded Confucius Institutes. 

According to Nye, a rising power like China should use soft power to made its growing economic and military might appear less frightening to its neighbors. 

A smart strategy employing soft power should lesson the concerns of Chinese expansion and make balancing coalitions less effective.
Luckily the Chinese government has missed two important lessons regarding soft power. 

The first is that soft power is more effectively developed through civil society. Everything from universities and foundations to pop culture provide a strong attractive force for other societies and cultures. The least effective instrument of soft power is the government. Government attempts at building soft power are rarely credible. 

The second lesson is that disaster relief is probably the most effective method to give a “soft edge” to military force. China has repeatedly demonstrated its commitment to contesting territorial claims on the Scarborough Shoal by deploying naval, coast guard, and China marine surveillance vessels to the area. The lack of disaster assistance is telling of Chinese long-term intentions.

The current snub is a reflection of China’s dissatisfaction with a recent appeal by the Philippine government to a United Nations Arbitral Tribunal to resolve the dispute over the Scarborough Shoal. 

It is the first time that Beijing has been taken to a U.N. tribunal and China is fuming because a loss in arbitration could seriously affect its ambitions in the South China Sea, encouraging other countries to counter Chinese territorial claims through U.N. action. 

China insists that territorial disputes over islands in the South China Sea should be settled through bilateral negotiation, mainly because of its unmatched hard power in the region.
Typhoon Haiyan has given Beijing an opportunity to show that it can be a responsible regional leader, showing a softer side to its ambitions in Southeast Asia.

Unfortunately it is failing miserably. 

The Chinese state-run Global Times newspaper said in an editorial on Tuesday, “China’s international image is of vital importance to its interests. If it snubs Manila this time, China will suffer great losses.” 

The editorial is prescient in its prediction. 

Haiyan has shown that China’s ambitions are hard power related. 

Southeast Asia and the U.S. have a right to be concerned.

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Chinese pettiness: Here, Have a Measly $100,000 in Aid

The world's second largest economy off-loads insultingly small change on a storm-battered Philippines
By Hannah Beech

Residents wait in line to receive relief goods in an area devastated by Typhoon Haiyan in Leyte, Philippines, on Nov. 12, 2013

The U.S. has promised $20 million in aid for victims of Supertyphoon Haiyan in the Philippines and has mobilized an aircraft carrier for the relief effort.

Britain is also sending a warship and has pledged $16 million. 

The Vatican is dispatching $4 million, Japan $10 million and New Zealand $1.7 million. 

And China, the world’s most populous nation and second largest economy?
It’s handing over $100,000.
China’s relations with the Philippines have frayed over the past year, as tensions rise over bits of rocks in the South China Sea that both nations have declared their own. 

While disputes in the resource-rich waterway have simmered for decades and involve other regional neighbors, China has, in recent months, more assertively staked its maritime claims and last year blocked Filipino fishermen from contested waters.
The fracas has led Manila to deepen security relations with both Japan and the U.S., nations that once colonized or occupied the Philippines. 

Earlier this year, Tokyo committed 10 cutters to upgrade the Philippine coast guard. 

Although American bases in the Philippines were closed in the early 1990s because of local opposition, talks are under way to renew an American military presence there.
A much weaker Haiyan affected southern China as well, causing much damage and killing eight people. 

But many users of the Chinese social-media service Weibo were neither moved by the current death toll in the Philippines (it stands at more than 1,800, and officials fear it may eclipse 10,000) nor the complete devastation visited upon many communities. 

“Our country is also suffering from the same natural disaster, but we still offered help to you [in the Philippines],” wrote one user. 

“If you do not appreciate our help, give back our money.” 

Another opined, “Since the Philippine government has the budget to purchase American weapons, they should not want for money.”
Beijing isn’t always so parsimonious with disaster assistance. 

Two months ago, when an earthquake rocked Pakistan, China promised $4.88 million in relief supplies. Many Chinese feel that more should be done to help the Philippines. 

The Chinese Red Cross has committed $100,000 of its own in disaster relief for Haiyan, and a Nov. 12 editorial in the Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party–linked daily, said “as a responsible power” China should “participate in relief operations to assist a disaster-stricken neighboring country, no matter whether it’s friendly or not.”
But even if it now rushes aid and supplies to the Philippines’ storm-battered provinces, the Chinese government has been made to look mean-spirited in front of the world community. 

Beijing isn’t the only one that has tangled with the Philippines over maritime claims. 

In May, a Taiwanese fisherman was killed by the Philippine Coast Guard in the South China Sea. Yet Taiwan, which China considers a breakaway province, pledged $200,000 in Haiyan aid.
That’s double the amount the Chinese government is sending.

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Philippines Eyes Swift Conclusion of S. China Sea Arbitration

by Simone Orendain
Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert Del Rosario at the Department of Foreign Affairs headquarters in Manila, Sept. 4, 2013.

The Philippines is pressing forward with its legal challenge to China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. 

Philippine officials this week said they were hopeful the U.N. arbitration body could issue a ruling sooner than initially expected.
A top diplomat says the country is hopeful that the panel of the United Nations International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea will have a ruling before President Benigno Aquino’s term ends in 2016. 

Philippine officials had previously said the case would take three to four years to complete.
​​This week Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario told an audience in Manila that pursuing arbitration was the only viable option after Manila had “exhausted all diplomatic avenues” to try to settle its dispute with Beijing over contested rocks and outcroppings in the South China Sea.
“China’s continuous overwhelming naval and maritime presence in the area is also contributing to the raising of regional tensions,” he said.
The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei have partial or total claims to the resource-rich and highly traversed sea. 

China maintains it has indisputable sovereignty over nearly the entire sea.
The Philippines filed its case in January under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which states that coastal nations are entitled to maritime territory that extends some 22 kilometers offshore. 

It also provides for a 370 kilometer economic exclusion zone for fishing and mining natural resources. 

While China has signed the convention, it has rejected the Philippine case. 

Beijing has not responded to any of the subsequent proceedings, effectively making the Philippines the only active party.
Last week Paul Reichler, the Philippines’ lead counsel, told the Wall Street Journal that if China continues “to hold to its position” he expects an award to come down by mid-to-late 2014.
Carl Thayer, a researcher on South China Sea disputes at the Australia Defense Force Academy, says international adjudicators, who are not connected to the case, have mixed views on the outcome.
He says there are two hurdles the Philippines must overcome before the tribunal can even hear its case.
“That the arbitral tribunal has jurisdiction, in other words it does not touch on matters that China has exempted itself from and that the Philippines’ claim is well-founded in law. And I think the latter is very strong,” he said.

China's position
Thayer explains that before Beijing signed the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, it chose to opt out of international jurisdiction over some territorial issues, effectively forbidding outside scrutiny of some issues. The Philippines is trying to convince the U.N. tribunal to reaffirm its own territorial claim based on international law.
During a regular news briefing in Beijing Friday, VOA asked Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying if China plans to participate in the U.N. tribunal when the Philippines submits evidence for its claims in March.
She said China does not accept the arbitration request submitted by the Philippines side. 

She also urged the Philippines to resolve the dispute through bilateral negotiation.
Last month, China hosted a meeting with the 10-member Association of Southeast Nations to discuss how they would implement the conditions of an 11-year old non-binding pledge to peacefully manage the disputes in the South China Sea. 

The Philippines has been pushing for negotiations on a legally binding code and is trying to drum up international support for it.

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A Game of Shark and Minnow

By JEFF HIMMELMAN

In a remote corner of the South China Sea, 105 nautical miles from the Philippines, lies a submerged reef the Filipinos call Ayungin.

In most ways it resembles the hundreds of other reefs, islands, rock clusters and cays that collectively are called the Spratly Islands. But Ayungin is different. In the reef’s shallows there sits a forsaken ship, manned by eight Filipino troops whose job is to keep China in check.

Ayungin Shoal lies 105 nautical miles from the Philippines. 

There’s little to commend the spot, apart from its plentiful fish and safe harbor — except that Ayungin sits at the southwestern edge of an area called Reed Bank, which is rumored to contain vast reserves of oil and natural gas. 

And also that it is home to a World War II-era ship called the Sierra Madre, which the Philippine government ran aground on the reef in 1999 and has since maintained as a kind of post-apocalyptic military garrison, the small detachment of Filipino troops stationed there struggling to survive extreme mental and physical desolation. 

Of all places, the scorched shell of the Sierra Madre has become an unlikely battleground in a geopolitical struggle that will shape the future of the South China Sea and, to some extent, the rest of the world.
In early August, after an overnight journey in a fishing boat that had seen better days, we approached Ayungin from the south and came upon two Chinese Coast Guard cutters stationed at either side of the reef. We were a small group: two Westerners and a few Filipinos, led by Mayor Eugenio Bito-onon Jr., whose territory includes most of the Philippine land claims in the South China Sea. 

The Chinese presence at Ayungin had spooked the Philippine Navy out of undertaking its regular run to resupply the troops there, but the Chinese were still letting some fishing boats through. 

We were to behave as any regular fishing vessel with engine trouble or a need for shelter in the shoal would, which meant no radio contact. 

As we throttled down a few miles out and waited to see what the Chinese Coast Guard might do, there was only an eerie quiet.
Bito-onon stood at the prow, nervously eyeing the cutters. 

Visits to his constituents on the island of Pag-asa, farther northwest, take him past Ayungin fairly frequently, and the mayor has had his share of run-ins. 

Last October, he said, a Chinese warship crossed through his convoy twice, at very high speed, nearly severing a towline connecting two boats. 

This past May, as the mayor’s boat neared Ayungin in the middle of the night, a Chinese patrol trained its spotlight on the boat and tailed it for an hour, until it became clear that it wasn’t headed to Ayungin. 

“They are becoming more aggressive,” the mayor said. “We didn’t know if they would ram us.”

We didn’t know if they would ram us, either. 

As we approached, we watched through binoculars and a camera viewfinder to see if the Chinese boats would try to head us off. 

After a few tense moments, it became clear that they were going to stay put and let us pass. 

Soon we were inside the reef, the Sierra Madre directly in front of us. 

As we chugged around to the starboard side, two marines peered down uncertainly from the top of the long boarding ladder. 

The ship’s ancient communications and radar equipment loomed above them, looking as if it could topple over at any time. 

After a series of rapid exchanges with the mayor, the marines motioned for us to throw up our boat’s ropes. Within a minute or two the fishing boat was moored and we were handing up our bags, along with cases of Coca-Cola and Dunkin’ Donuts that naval command had sent along as pasalubong, gifts for the hungry men on board.
From afar, the boat hadn’t looked much different from the Chinese boats that surrounded it. 

But at close range, water flowed freely through holes in the hull.
With the tropical sun blasting down on it, the ship was ravaged by rust. 

Whole sections of the deck were riddled with holes.
Old doors and metal sheets dotted paths where the men walked, to prevent them from plunging into the cavernous tank space below.
It was hard to imagine how such a forsaken place could become a flash point in a geopolitical power struggle.
But before we had much time to think about that, someone pointed out that the Chinese boats had started to move. 

They left their positions to the east and west of the reef and began to converge just off the starboard side, where the reef came closest to the ship.

Chinese Coast Guard cutters patrol within sight of the Sierra Madre.

The mayor and several others stood quietly on deck, watching them as they came. 

The message from the Chinese was unmistakable: We see you, we’ve got our eye on you, we are here.
As the Chinese boats made their half-circle in front of the Sierra Madre, the mayor mimed the act of them filming us. 

“Wave,” he said. “We’re going to be big on YouTube.”

Dangerous Ground
To understand how Ayungin (known to the Western world as Second Thomas Shoal) could become contested ground is to confront, in miniature, both the rise of China and the potential future of U.S. foreign policy. 

It is also to enter into a morass of competing historical, territorial and even moral claims in an area where defining what is true or fair may be no easier than it has proved to be in the Middle East.
The Spratly Islands sprawl over roughly 160,000 square miles in the waters of the coasts of the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and China — all of whom claim part of the islands.
Since the 18th century, navigators have referred to the Spratlys as “Dangerous Ground” — a term that captures not only the treacherous nature of the area but also the mess that is the current political situation in the South China Sea.
In addition to the Philippines, the governments of China and Vietnam also claim the Spratlys for themselves, and have occupied some of them as a way to stake that claim. 

Malaysia and Brunei make more modest partial claims.
The Chinese base their claims on Xia and Han dynasty records and a 1947 map made by the Kuomintang. The nine-dash line derived from that map pushes up against the coastlines of all the other countries in the area.
The current Philippine claim is based mostly on the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea from 1982, which established an Exclusive Economic Zone of 200 nautical miles off the shore of sovereign states.
Why the fuss over “Dangerous Ground”? 

Natural resources are a big piece of it. 

According to current U.S. estimates, the seabed beneath the Spratlys may hold up to 5.4 billion barrels of oil and 55.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. 

On top of which, about half of the world’s merchant fleet tonnage and nearly one third of its crude oil pass through these waters each year. 

They also contain some of the richest fisheries in the world.
In 2012, China and the Philippines engaged in a standoff at Scarborough Shoal, after a Philippine warship attempted to expel Chinese fishing boats from the area, which they claimed had been harvesting endangered species within the Philippine EEZ. 

Although the shoal lies well to the north of the Spratlys, it is in many ways Ayungin’s direct precedent.

The Cabbage Strategy
China is currently in disputes with several of its neighbors, and the Chinese have become decidedly more willing to wield a heavy stick. 

There is a growing sense that they have been waiting a long time to flex their muscles and that that time has finally arrived. 

“Nothing in China happens overnight,” Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, the director of Asia-Pacific programs at the United States Institute of Peace, said.

“Any move you see was planned and prepared for years, if not more. So obviously this maritime issue is very important to China.”
It is also very important to the United States, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made clear at a gathering of the Association of Southeast Nations (Asean) in Hanoi in July 2010. 

Clinton declared that freedom of navigation in the South China Sea was a “national interest” of the United States, and that “legitimate claims to maritime space in the South China Sea should be derived solely from legitimate claims to land features,” which could be taken to mean that China’s nine-dash line was illegitimate. The Chinese foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, chafed visibly, left the meeting for an hour and returned only to launch into a long, vituperative speech about the danger of cooperation with outside powers.
President Obama and his representatives have reiterated America’s interest in the region ever since. 

The Americans pointedly refuse to take sides in the sovereignty disputes. 

But China’s behavior as it becomes more powerful, along with freedom of navigation and control over South China Sea shipping lanes, will be among the major global political issues of the 21st century. 

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, of the $5.3 trillion in global trade that transits the South China Sea each year, $1.2 trillion of it touches U.S. ports — and so American foreign policy has begun to shift accordingly.
In a major speech in Singapore last year, Leon Panetta, then the secretary of defense, described the coming pivot in U.S. strategy in precise terms: “While the U.S. will remain a global force for security and stability, we will of necessity rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region.” 

He referred to the United States as a “Pacific nation,” with a capital “P” and no irony, and then announced a series of changes — most notably that the roughly 50-50 balance of U.S. naval forces between the Pacific and the Atlantic would become 60-40 Pacific by 2020. 

Given the size of the U.S. Navy, this is enormously significant.
In June, the United States helped broker an agreement for both China’s and the Philippines’s ships to leave Scarborough Shoal peacefully, but China never left. 

They eventually blocked access to the shoal and filled in a nest of boats around it to ward off foreign fishermen.
“Since [the standoff], we have begun to take measures to seal and control the areas around the Huangyan Island,” Maj. Gen. Zhang Zhaozhong, of China’s People’s Liberation Army, said in a television interview in May, using the Chinese term for Scarborough. (That there are three different names for the same set of uninhabitable rocks tells you much of what you need to know about the region.)
He described a “cabbage strategy,” which entails surrounding a contested area with so many boats — fishermen, fishing administration ships, marine surveillance ships, navy warships — that “the island is thus wrapped layer by layer like a cabbage.”

There can be no question that the cabbage strategy is in effect now at Ayungin and has been at least since May. 

General Zhang, in his interview several months ago, listed Ayungin in the P.L.A.’s “series of achievements” in the South China Sea. 

He had already put it in the win column, even though eight Filipino marines still live there. 

He also seemed to take some pleasure in the strategy. 

Of taking territory from the Philippines, he said: “We should do more such things in the future. For those small islands, only a few troopers are able to station on each of them, but there is no food or even drinking water there. If we carry out the cabbage strategy, you will not be able to send food and drinking water onto the islands. Without the supply for one or two weeks, the troopers stationed there will leave the islands on their own. Once they have left, they will never be able to come back.”

‘If You Want to Live, Eat’
On the deck of the Sierra Madre, with morning sun slanting off the bright blue water and the crowing of a rooster for a soundtrack, Staff Sgt. Joey Loresto and Sgt. Roy Yanto were improvising. 

Yanto, a soft-spoken 31-year-old, had lost an arrow spearfishing on the shoal the day before. 

Now he had pulled the handle off an old bucket and was banging it straight with a rusty mallet in an attempt to make it into a spear. 

Everything on the Sierra Madre was this way — improvised, repurposed. 

“Others came prepared,” Loresto said of previous detachments that had been briefed about life on the boat before they arrived and knew they would need to fish to supplement their diet. 

“But we were not prepared.”
For the final touches to the arrowhead, Yanto used a hammer and a rusted, machete-like blade.
They made spearfishing guns from a piece of wood, a bolt repurposed as a trigger and two pieces of rubber for propulsion.
In the afternoons, if the weather was good and the tide was low, they would don snorkels and old goggles and swim around the boat.
A successful spearfishing session meant avoiding barracudas and sharks and gathering a basket full of Philippine grouper known as lapu-lapu.
Yanto lived alone at the stern of the boat, in a room with a bed, a mosquito net, an M-16 propped against the wall and nothing but a tarp wrapped around a steel bar to separate him from the sea. 

He also took care of the three fighting cocks on the boat.

They were lashed to various perches at the stern and took great pleasure in crowing at anybody who tried to use the “toilet,” a seatless ceramic bowl suspended over the water by iron pipes and plywood.
Yanto has a wife and a 6-year-old son back in Zamboanga City. 

Like the others, he is able to talk to his family once a week or so, when they call in to one of the two satellite phones that the men take care to keep dry and charged. 

“It’s enough for me,” he said, of the 5 or 10 minutes he gets on the phone with his family. 

“What’s important is that I heard their voice.”
Like Yanto, Loresto was wearing a sleeveless jersey with “MARINES” printed across the front and a section of mesh between the chest and waistline, uniforms for the world’s most exotic basketball team. 

“It’s a lonely place,” Loresto said.

“But we make ourselves busy, always busy.”
When his arrow was complete, Yanto turned to two tubs covered in plastic, which were filled with fish that he had picked off his line the previous night. 

Fishing lines descended at regular intervals from the port side of the boat, with each soldier responsible for his own; they spend hours tending to them. 

Yanto split the fish open, covered them with salt, then laid them out to dry on a plank hanging above the deck. 

“Good for breakfast,” he said, gesturing to the fish he was putting up.

The men depend on fish as their main means of physical survival.

The men depend on fish — fresh, fried, dried — as their main means of physical survival. 

They were all undernourished and losing weight, even though eating and meal prep were the main activities on board, after fishing. 

Asked what meal he missed most from the mainland, Yanto said, “Vegetables,” without hesitation. 

“That’s more important than meat or any other kind of dish.” 

The motto of the boat, spray-painted on the wall near the kitchen, was “Kumain ang gustong mabuhay” — basically: “If you want to live, eat.”
In the long hours between lunch and dinner, most of the men would disappear into their quarters to pass the time. 

Aside from Yanto and the one Navy seaman on board, who occupied an aerie above everybody else, the marines lived in the old officer’s quarters and on the boat’s bridge. 

When the Sierra Madre was first driven up on the shoal in 1999, it was apparently a desired posting: there was less rust, you could sleep wherever you wanted and people played basketball in the vast tank space below deck. (Now that space was filled with standing water and whatever trash the men threw into it.) 

Aside from the quarters, which were themselves full of leaks and rust, there was hardly any place inside the boat to congregate that wasn’t either a health hazard, full of water or open to the elements. 

In bad weather, they gathered in the communications room on the second floor, where Loresto’s DVD player and computer were kept, to watch movies or sing karaoke. (They were all pretty good, but Yanto stood out. He nailed George Michael’s “Careless Whisper,” down to the vividly emotional hand gestures.) 

If they weren’t at the computer, they were just off to the side, in a small, dark workout area that held an exercise bike (extra resistance supplied by pulling a strap with your hands), an ancient bench press and a bunch of Vietnam-era American communications equipment.

Servicemen Roel Sarucam, Joey Loresto, Charlie Claro, Lionel Pepito, Israel Briguera and Antonio Olayra on the deck of the Sierra Madre.

The Sierra Madre at one time was the U.S.S. Harnett County, built as a tank-landing ship for World War II and then repurposed as a floating helicopter and speedboat hub in the rivers of Vietnam. 

In 1970 the U.S. gave the ship to the South Vietnamese, and in 1976 it was passed on to the Philippines. But nobody had ever taken the time to strip all of the communications gear or even old U.S. logbooks and a fleet guide from 1970.
In good weather, the men socialized outside, under the corrugated-tin roof that sheltered the boat’s small kitchen and living area. 

The “walls” were tarps, repurposed doors, old metal sheets and the backs of storage lockers. 

The “floor” consisted of two large canted metal plates that met in the middle of the boat, suspended above a large void in the deck. 

The plates popped and echoed with deep thuds whenever anybody walked over them. 

Everything was on an incline, so the legs of the peeling-leather couches and tables were sawed to various lengths to square their surfaces. 

A locker at the center, the driest spot on deck, held mostly inoperable electronic equipment and a small television that had a satellite connection but stayed on for only five minutes at a time. 

The men got together in the evenings to watch the Philippine squad make a surprising run in the FIBA Asia basketball tournament, only to be interrupted as the television repeatedly went dark. 

To fix it they had to insert a thin metal wire into a hole in the set and then power the machine off and back on again. 

“Defective,” one of marines said, by way of explanation. 

Loresto smiled and shook his head. “Overuse,” he said.

Loresto was the life of the boat. 

When the men played pusoy dos, a variation of poker, he displayed an impressive and sustained level of exuberance, often plastering the winning card to his forehead, face out, and shouting with laughter. 

He comes from Ipilan, on the island of Palawan. 

He’s 35, with a wife and three children, ages 2, 10 and 12. 

Before this posting, he spent 10 years fighting Islamic extremists in Mindanao, the southernmost island group in the Philippine archipelago. 

Asked whether he preferred combat or the Sierra Madre, Loresto thought for a second and then said, “Combat.”
He also had one of the only real military jobs on the boat, manning the radio and reporting the number and behavior of the boats outside the shoal. 

He was also the one to note and record that a U.S. intelligence plane, a P-3C Orion, tended to fly over the shoal whenever the Chinese made a significant tactical shift.
Loresto regularly updated his “sightings” — a Hainanese fishing vessel there, a Vietnamese one here.
When the Chinese swapped their maritime surveillance boats out for Coast Guard cutters, Loresto took note.
Every four hours, he radioed his reports. 

He didn’t love being there, but he knew why it was necessary. 

“It’s our job to defend our sovereignty,” he said.
One morning, as a Chinese boat circled slowly off the Sierra Madre’s starboard side, Mayor Bito-onon pulled out his computer to deliver a PowerPoint presentation about the various Philippine-held islands in the Spratlys. 

Most of the men had never seen anything like it before, and they gathered eagerly behind the mayor as he sat on a bench and walked them through it. 

Bito-onon was surprised at how little they knew about the struggle that was playing out around them. 

“They are blank, blank,” he told me after the presentation. 

“They don’t even know what’s on the nightly news.”
Other than a couple of jokes about “visiting China without a passport” (i.e., being captured), life at the tip of the gun didn’t feel much like life at the tip of a gun. 

It felt more like the world’s most surreal fishing camp. 

The Chinese boats were always there, but they were a source more of mystery than fear. 

“We don’t know why they’re out there,” Yanto said at one point. 

“Are they looking for us? What is their intention?”
To Bito-onon, the Chinese intentions were clear. 

At breakfast he had said, “They could come take this at any time, and everybody knows it.” 

What would these guys do if that happened? 

He raised both hands, smiled and said, “Surrender.”

Mayor Eugenio Bito-onon Jr. has 288 voting constituents across a domain called the Kalayaan Island Group.

Later, as he sat on the bamboo bench that was his workplace, television-viewing station and bed for five days and nights on the deck of the Sierra Madre, he talked about Ayungin as the staging ground for China’s domination of the Pacific. 

“The Chinese want both the fisheries and the gas. They’re using their fisheries to dominate the area, but the oil is the target.” 

Almost as if on cue, one of the Chinese Coast Guard cutters chased off a fishing boat north of the shoal. 

As the mayor watched, he said that he hoped they wouldn’t do the same to our boat when we tried to leave. “What does that mean for me if they do?” he asked. 

“I can’t even come here or to Pag-asa?” 

Earlier he joked about the headline if the Chinese stopped him: “A Mayor Was Caught in His Own Territory!”

Threadbare Settlements
The official name of the mayor’s domain is the Kalayaan Island Group, which technically encompasses most of the Spratlys but in reality amounts to five islands, two sandbars and two reefs that the Philippines currently controls. 

He has 288 voting constituents, of which about 120 live at any one time on Pag-asa, the only island with a civilian population.

About 120 people live at any one time on Pag-asa, including civilians.

He is a slender, spry man of 57, with a quirky sense of humor that enables him to leaven his criticisms of graft and corruption at the higher levels of the Philippine government with friendly jokes and oblique asides. 

But his frustration with the lack of resources and the lack of political will is obvious. 

The Philippines, he says, has done very little to develop the islands they hold, while Vietnam and Malaysia have turned some of the reefs and islands they occupy into resorts that the Chinese would find much more difficult to justify taking as their own. 

Except for Pag-asa, the Philippines has mustered only the most threadbare of settlements, some even more desolate than Ayungin.
Three days later, we would ride in a small dinghy over the break and up onto the sloped beach of Lawak, 60 nautical miles to the north of the Sierra Madre. 

Like Ayungin, Lawak serves as a strategic gateway to the rich oil and gas reserves of the Reed Bank. 

Unlike Ayungin, Lawak also happens to look like a postcard picture of a deserted-island paradise — a circle of crushed-coral beach enclosing nearly 20 acres of scrub grass, palm trees, a bird sanctuary and a sea-turtle nesting ground.
Second Lt. Robinson Retoriano runs the detachment of 11 worn Filipino troops there. 

Most of the men under his command wear shorts, flip-flops and tank tops, but he led us on a tour of the island in full camouflage, pointing out with pride their recently constructed barracks and a basketball court with a spectator swing made of “drifted things.”

Lawak is a circle of crushed-coral beach enclosing scrub grass, palm trees, 11 worn Filipino troops and one basketball court.

As we sat down in the courtyard, Pfc. Juan Colot, an M-16 slung low off his bony shoulders, whistled to the camp’s domesticated gull, which flew directly into his hands and chirped complacently. 

Retoriano is from Manila, and when we asked what a city boy like him was doing on an island in the middle of the South China Sea, he said, “I’m still wondering myself.”
In some ways, the guys on Lawak were even more isolated than Loresto and Yanto and the others on Ayungin. 

They were not allowed any use of the satellite phones whatsoever, not even for calls from loved ones. 

“It doubles the distance,” Retoriano said. 

To combat the loneliness, Retoriano sometimes gave the marines jobs to do, just to keep them busy. 

In the mornings they got up at 6 to sweep the camp. 

In the afternoons they fixed their hammocks outside, to sleep in the fresh air.
Over the course of a few hours, Retoriano referred to the island as “paradise” several times — which it was, if you focused on its physical beauty and didn’t think of how hard it would be to actually live there. 

And in truth these guys had it better than some of the other detachments — Kota, Parola, Likas, Rizal Reef, Patag — because at least they had ground to live and sleep on.

The settlements on Rizal Reef, Patag and Panata are mostly crude stilted structures over shallow water or small sandbars, with very little room to maneuver and fishing as the sole activity and consolation. 

According to Bito-onon, the troops on Rizal Reef used to tie themselves to empty oil drums when there was particularly bad weather at night, so that if a high sea or an errant piece of ocean debris wiped out the stilts, they’d at least be able to float.
“A lot of Filipino people might not know why we’re fighting for these islands,” Retoriano said as we prepared to leave Lawak. 

“But once you see it, and you’ve stepped on it, you understand. It’s ours.” 

He accompanied us into the water and out to our launch boat, still in full fatigues and big black combat boots, getting drenched up to his chest. 

As he helped me swing up and over the lip of our boat, he said, “I’m glad we didn’t talk much about the sensitive political situation. But if you ask me, I think China is just a big bully.”

‘I’ve Never Seen More White Knuckles’
The Philippines’ best hope for resisting China currently resides inside a set of glassy offices in the heart of the K Street power corridor in Washington. 

There, Paul Reichler, a lawyer at Foley Hoag who specializes in international territorial disputes, serves as the lead attorney for the Philippines in its arbitration case over their claims in the South China Sea. 

Initiated in January, the case seeks to invalidate China’s nine-dash line and establish that the territorial rights be governed by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which both China and the Philippines have signed and ratified. 

The subtleties of the case revolve around E.E.Z.’s and continental shelves, without expressly resolving sovereignty issues. 

China has refused to participate, but the Philippines has proceeded anyway.
The key element, as far as the Sierra Madre is concerned, is that the case is growing to reflect the new reality on the water. 

“Ayungin will be part of the case now, now that the Chinese have virtually occupied it,” Reichler told me. 

He was hoping that the tribunal would define Ayungin as a “submerged feature.” 

A submerged feature, he explained, is considered part of the seabed and belongs to whoever owns the continental shelf underneath it, not to whoever happens to be occupying it. 

“The fact that somebody physically occupies it doesn’t give them any rights,” he said.
This took a second to sink in. 

Historically, the physical presence of troops on the Sierra Madre had been a vital part of the Filipino strategy; currently their presence was the only thing stopping a complete Chinese takeover there. 

Wasn’t that against the Philippines’ own interests? 

“No,” Reichler said. 

“Not if we’re not occupying it.” 

What he meant was that the Philippines wants to nullify any claim to a submerged feature based on who has control above the water — which applies beyond Ayungin to Mischief Reef and others, which the Chinese currently occupy. 

Surely this is a strong legal strategy, calibrated for an international tribunal. 

But if this is the strategy, you couldn’t help wondering what those guys were still doing out there, getting choked off a little bit more each day, while the legal process sought to make them irrelevant.
Mischief, a submerged reef similar to Ayungin and roughly 20 miles to its west, makes for an instructive example. 

It used to belong to the Philippines, but in 1994 the Chinese took advantage of a lull in Filipino maritime patrols caused by a passing typhoon and rapidly erected a stilted structure that they then made clear they were not going to leave. 

Slowly they turned it into a military outpost, over the repeated protests of the Filipinos, and now it serves as a safe harbor for the Chinese ships that patrol Ayungin and other areas.
What China has done with Mischief, Scarborough and now with Ayungin is what the journalist Robert Haddick described, writing in Foreign Policy, as “salami slicing” or “the slow accumulation of actions, none of which is a casus belli, but which add up over time to a major strategic change.” 

Huang Jing, the director of the Center on Asia and Globalization at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, noted that in all of these conflicts — Scarborough, Ayungin — China insists on sending its civilian maritime force, which is theoretically unarmed. 

This has a powerful double significance: first, that the Chinese don’t want to start a war, even though in many ways they are playing the aggressor; and second, that they view any matter in the South China Sea as an internal affair. 

As Huang put it: “What China is doing is putting both hands behind its back and using its big belly to push you out, to dare you to hit first. And this has been quite effective.”

In bringing their complaints to arbitration, the Philippines has used the only real lever it has: to try to occupy the moral high ground and focus international attention on the issue. 

In response, China has tried to isolate the Philippines — discouraging President Benigno S. Aquino III from attending the China-Asean Expo in Nanning last month and continuing to steer the Asean agenda away from a final agreement on a legally binding code of conduct in the South China Sea. (One former U.S. official told me, “So far, China has been able to split Asean the way you would split a cord of wood.”) 

China has stated that they view the overlapping claims as bilateral issues, to be negotiated between China and each individual claimant one at a time, a strategy that maximizes what China can extract from each party.
While an arbitration outcome unfavorable to the Chinese — which could be decided as early as March 2015 — would create some public-perception problems for them, China is unlikely to be deterred, in part because there is no enforcement mechanism.

“Let’s be honest,” Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt says, “China has essentially studied how the U.S. has conducted its hegemony, and they’re saying, ‘We have to respect some court case?’ They say that the United States blatantly violates international law when it’s in its interest. China sees this as what first-class powers do.” (Multiple requests for comment from the Chinese government went unanswered.)
The official U.S. position, articulated by Secretaries Clinton and Kerry, has been that the U.S. will not take sides in disputes over sovereignty. 

As the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Daniel R. Russel, told me, “Our primary interest is in maintaining peace, security and stability that allows for economic growth and avoids tension or conflict.” 

Basically, we’re staying out of it. 

But the U.S. has stepped up its joint operations with the Philippines, including a recent mock amphibious landing not far from Scarborough Shoal. 

There has also been talk of increasing U.S. troop rotations into some of its former bases.
“I think we want to find a way to restrain China and reassure the Philippines without getting ourselves into a shooting war,” James Steinberg, the former deputy secretary of state under Hillary Clinton, told me. 

“We have a broad interest in China behaving responsibly. But sovereignty over the Spratly Islands is not our dispute. We need to find a way to be engaged without being in the middle.” 

Kurt Campbell, a former assistant secretary of state with the Obama administration, put it more bluntly: “Maritime territorial disputes are the hardest problem, bar none, that diplomats are currently facing in Asia. On all of these issues, no country has any flexibility. I’ve never seen more white knuckles.”
According to Huang Jing: “Everyone in this region is playing a double game. Ten years ago, the United States was absolutely dominant in the region — economically, politically, militarily. People only had one yardstick to measure their national interest and their foreign policy, and the name of that yardstick was U.S.A. Now there are two yardsticks. On the political one, it’s still the U.S., but on the economic one, it is China.”

The United States does not have the unlimited leverage that it once did, and so for the time being it is allowing the Chinese to slice their salami all the way up onto the shallows of Ayungin.

Beneath a Ceiling of Clouds
The first rains of the typhoon came after dark, howling sideways across the deck of the Sierra Madre. 

We’d been hearing about the storm for a couple of days over the radio, tracking its course as it made landfall on Luzon and then turned west toward the South China Sea.
Under the supervision of Second Lt. Charlie Claro, the 29-year-old commander of the outpost, the men drilled holes in the boards with hand-cranks and pulled old, bent, rusted nails out of stray pieces of wood, hammered them straight, then reused them.
A couple of wooden doors were added to the walls of the living area, and additional tarps went into place.
A ceiling of clouds had lowered and blackened, and the wind began battering parts of the ship’s deck.
Rain poured into the laundry room through the ceiling, drenching everything. 

A rooster took shelter in a dry corner.
By nightfall, the wind had intensified into a gale. 

We gathered in the living area to listen to it, more awed than scared. 

Lieutenant Claro surfaced every so often to make sure that his improvements were holding. 

The rest of the marines stayed inside, singing karaoke. 

Later, they watched the FIBA Asia finals, the Philippines vs. Iran. 

Miraculously, the satellite held for most of the game. 

It felt as if the wind might rip the roof off from above our heads, but the marines were in good cheer. 

A victory for the underdog Philippine squad would have made for a nice David and Goliath moment in a David and Goliath kind of story, but the Iranians appeared to be about nine inches taller at every position and were just too much for the Filipinos. 

At halftime the marines went out to check on whether their fishing lines were surviving the storm, then straggled off to bed.
The next two days passed with wind and rain and long hours with nothing to do. 

Yanto and Loresto led a tour of the cavernous, foul tank space below decks, where old fluorescent light bays hung overhead on dangerously rusted cables.
We started to be able to identify individual marines by their footfalls. 

Jokes that weren’t funny doubled us over. 

At one point, Pfc. Michael Navata walked in from checking his fishing line and said: “Cards. To pass the time.” 

We played hours of pusoy dos, making fun of one another, volume levels rising every time Loresto stuck the two of diamonds on his forehead. 

The slow, steady backbeat of bad weather and desolation fell away for a while, and it felt as if we could have been in Loresto’s living room in Ipilan. 

Yanto sat to my left, coaching me out of charity, his nonverbal instruction registering levels of depth and intelligence that language hadn’t made available to us. 

For a moment we could see them as they really were, these marines: men who were serving their country in an extreme and unrelenting and even somewhat humiliating situation and trying bravely to make the best of it.
On the afternoon of the second bad day, the sun came out. 

Yanto promptly went spearfishing. 

One by one, the other marines stripped down and jumped in. 

This turned into most of us taking turns leaping off the high starboard side of the Sierra Madre, about halfway up the deck, down into the light blue water below. 

You had to pick your way barefoot up to the rusted lip and then, with everybody watching, try to forget that you were on a devastated ancient boat run aground on a reef in the shark-infested South China Sea and just jump. 

It was maybe a 30-foot drop, which took a half-second longer than you expected it to, but the water was warm and clear. 

We splashed around on our backs like otters. 

The storm had passed, and we were safe. 

Lieutenant Claro led a small group in a swim around our fishing boat, which he pronounced seaworthy, but then proceeded to chuckle about for several minutes. 

It was so woeful looking. 

After five days on the Sierra Madre, it was also a reminder of the real world, of how we had gotten there, and of the fact that we’d be leaving soon while these guys had to stay behind and eat to live.

Flying Past the Death Star
A month or so later, I spoke with a U.S. pilot with extensive combat experience and knowledge of Special Forces operations. 

I wanted to know what the American foreign-policy pivot looked like from the inside, and he was willing to tell me only if I didn’t name him. 

“The Chinese are more aggressive because we’re not around,” he said. 

His most recent training would seem to reflect the American rebalancing to the Pacific theater: more counter-Chinese-technology operations, more engagement over water, island-hopping campaigns. 

He said that the joint operations with the Philippines were “a show of presence: Hey, we’re [expletive] sailing through the South China Sea, look at us. And you can’t do a thing about it.” 

But then he paused. “It’s funny, because China’s not that far from doing that off the California coast.”
Whatever America’s pivot might be, there’s no denying that Southeast Asia, and the South Pacific, is historically where United States foreign policy — and too many young men sent out to enforce it — has gone to die. 

For now, the course is a diplomatic one: the Philippines pursues its arbitration, the Asean states apply pressure for a binding code of conduct in the South China Sea, and the United States counsels patience (within reason) and the peaceful resolution of disputes. 

As it turns out, this somewhat scattershot approach may actually be starting to work. 

The Chinese leadership has undertaken a new charm offensive of late, visiting the capitals of some Asean countries (notably not the Philippines) and signaling that it might be willing to soften its positions on adopting a code of conduct and multilateral negotiations.
At the East Asia Summit meetings in Brunei two weeks ago (which John Kerry attended in place of President Obama because of the government shutdown), Kerry pushed for a quick implementation of a binding code of conduct. 

“That’s sort of a new thing,” Ricky Carandang, the secretary of communications for the Philippines, told me when we spoke after the meetings. 

“He said, ‘We welcome a code of conduct, we welcome legal processes and we think these things should happen faster.’ That’s different from saying, ‘Hey, let’s do what we can to avoid tension, and we’re not picking sides here.’ ” 

But Carandang also noted that Obama’s absence in Brunei had allowed the Chinese to loom larger. 

If he fails to show up to the next meeting, or the administration fails to follow up on some of its promises, the Southeast Asian nations will have cause to wonder about our resolve. (Obama is said to be mulling a trip to Asia in the spring.)
Nobody is questioning China’s resolve. 

The day after we left Ayungin, we arrived at the island of Pag-asa, the mayor’s home base and the place for which he has the grandest plans — a resort, a commercial fishery, a sheltered port. 

As we pulled in, we saw several large Chinese fishing boats a couple of miles off the island. 

Aerial photos would later confirm that they were cutting coral from the reef, which is often done to harvest giant clams and other rare species. 

Nobody on Pag-asa, with its broken boats, low-slung civilian buildings and quiet Air Force base, could do anything about it. 

There was recently a food shortage because the last two Filipino naval resupply vessels haven’t been able to make the trip because of inclement weather. 

After a night there, rather than getting back on our fishing boat for a 30-hour journey, we were happy to board a Philippine naval plane and begin the trip home.
We sped down the bumpy, grass-covered runway and lifted off, looking down on the ragtag island.
Just 12 nautical miles from Pag-asa and its airstrip lies Subi Reef, one of the more developed Chinese settlements in the South China Sea.
Anchored just outside the reef were about 20 enormous Chinese fishing boats, along with 50 or so smaller sampans busily working.
At the southwest corner sat a complex of concrete multistory structures, including a large-domed radar station, a helipad and a dormitory.
It’s easy to make China out as the villain in all of this. 

Most Western narratives do, even though several U.S. government officials assured me that there weren’t truly any “good guys” in these territorial disputes. 

One benefit of China’s political system, whatever its problems, is its farsightedness, its ability to stomach intense upheaval in the present in order to achieve a long-term goal.
Subi was a result of this commitment. 

After spending a few days on Pag-asa, where everything is free but nothing works quite like it’s supposed to, it was hard not to see Subi reef as the Death Star.
An hour later, we flew over Lawak, where we’d met Lieutenant Retoriano. 

Soon after, the pilot asked Ashley Gilbertson, the photographer on our trip, to put his headset on. 

We were due north of Ayungin, and our pilot had radioed the guys on the Sierra Madre to see how they were doing. 

Loresto answered the call, and when he heard that we were on the plane, he asked to speak with us. Gilbertson put on the headset and smiled as broadly as he’d smiled since the night Loresto fleeced us at pusoy dos during the typhoon. 

The weather was good, Loresto said; they were going spearfishing that afternoon. Didn’t we want to come down and join them? 

There was animated talk about karaoke, and then Loresto signed off. 

It was obviously the last time that we would ever talk to him, or maybe that any Filipino would ever be at that radio post to talk to anybody like us.
The entire world has an interest in the South China Sea, but China has nearly 1.4 billion mouths and a growing appetite for nationalism to feed, which is a kind of pressure that no other country can understand. What will happen will happen, whatever the letter of the Asean code of conduct or however the arbitration turns out. 

Loresto and Yanto, meanwhile, still abide on the Sierra Madre, fishing for their subsistence and watching the surf to see what wave the Chinese will choose to ride in on.
“You’ve got the wrong science-fiction movie,” one former highly placed U.S. official later told me, when I described what we saw at Subi, and what it might mean for the guys on Ayungin. 

“It’s not the Death Star. It’s actually the Borg from ‘Star Trek’: ‘You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.’ ” 

The scholar Huang Jing put it another, more organic way. “The Chinese expand like a forest, very slowly,” he said. 

“But once they get there, they never leave.”

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