Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

The past week has seen both the Philippines and the United States seeking to reduce tensions with China over the disputed waters of the South China Sea, but in both cases there was a parallel hint of strong resolve and a glimpse at how far the dispute could escalate.

Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, was in China for a four-day visit from 9 July.  Chen talked about “the rejuvenation of bilateral military relations”, and a reciprocal visit to the US by Chen was agreed for the third quarter, along with a number of small-scale joint military/humanitarian drills.  Hospital ships from the two navies are to carry out joint medical and rescue exercises, there will be a joint humanitarian rescue and disaster-relief exercise in the third quarter of 2012, and the two navies will carry out joint anti-piracy drills in the Gulf of Aden in the fourth quarter of this year.

But there was steel in Mullen’s message as well.  His arrival in China coincided with a joint US-Japanese-Australian naval exercise in the South China Sea.  The US Navy sought to play down the exercise as a “low-level” affair on the sidelines of an international defence exhibition in Brunei.  But there were three points about the exercise that were certainly intended to convey a message to Beijing.

The first was the timing.  The second was the message that the US does not accept Beijing’s assertion that it has no role to play in the South China Sea dispute.  On 11 July, Chen deemed the joint exercise “inappropriate” and said: “For disputes over the islands and their adjacent waters of the South China Sea, we can address them through dialogue and diplomatic gestures.”  Chen also said that there was no threat to freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and therefore the US had no need to concern itself with the dispute.  However, on 8 July, Japan’s Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto had specifically said that the South China Sea “plays a big role in linking the world’s economies” and that the international community is “interested in ensuring maritime safety and freedom of navigation”.

The third point that will have worried Beijing about these exercises will have been the extension of trilateral cooperation between the US, Australia, and Japan.   This was the first time that Japan has participated in such exercises in the South China Sea as opposed to in waters close to Japan, and it would appear to be exactly the type of development China was warning about when the foreign ministry issued a statement on 23 June saying: “The Japan-US alliance is a bilateral arrangement created under special historical conditions and should not go beyond its bilateral scope.”

For the Philippines, Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert Rosario visited China for three days from 7-9 July during which both sides pledged to “make joint efforts to safeguard peace and stability in the region of the South China Sea” in accordance with the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) signed by China and Asean.  A Philippines spokeswoman said: “This is a good development and it is our position that despite the misunderstandings of issues on the Kalayyan Group of Islands, all claimants are committed to have a peaceful solution and to work it out diplomatically.”

But as with the US, so with the Philippines there was a hint of determination behind the message, with a potentially provocative statement on Taiwan.  A study group of the Philippines House of Representatives and the Department of Foreign Affairs has been conducting a review of the Philippines ‘One China policy’, and although the report was finished on 15 June, its contents were released only on 6 July, the eve of Rosario’s departure for Beijing.

The study concluded that the Philippines should continue with its one-China policy, but there was also a recommendation for strengthening economic and cultural ties with Taiwan and that the government should continue to monitor and review the policy.  There was little doubt in the Philippines that the three-week delay in publishing the report was intentional and linked to Rosario’s visit to Beijing.