South China Sea: could Philippines and Vietnam bond over assertive Beijing?

A silver lining could yet emerge for Philippines-Vietnam ties from an increased regional focus on outwardly aggressive Chinese activities in the South China Sea, analysts say, as the common threat both countries face brings them closer together.

But before any enhancements to maritime security cooperation between the two Southeast Asian nations can occur, they urgently need to find common ground on handling their overlapping claims in the resource-rich waterway, experts say.

Tensions flared this month when Chinese coastguard ships blocked and fired a water cannon at Philippine vessels on a resupply mission to troops deployed on the BRP Sierra Madre vessel in the disputed Spratly Islands.

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Manila ran the World War II-era ship aground there in the late 1990s, to help assert Philippine sovereignty.

Following the recent water-cannon incident, President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr spoke of the importance of the Philippines' growing ties with Vietnam, saying that maritime cooperation would be a "very big step" for the two countries' ties.

"Now that we are going to start discussions on the agreement that we have between the Philippines and Vietnam, I think it is a very important part of our relationship, and it will bring an element of stability to the problems we are now seeing in the South China Sea," said Marcos, according to a statement by his Presidential Communications Office.

As the two countries seek to strengthen ties amid China's growing assertiveness, they must tackle strategic challenges that have historically impeded their relationship, particularly after the appointment of former president Rodrigo Duterte, who advocated for Manila to form closer ties with Beijing during his 2016-2022 term, moving away from Washington.

A violent clash between Vietnamese fishermen and the Philippine navy in 2017 did not help relations, and the progress made in previous talks appeared to falter amid the Philippines' radical change in foreign policy under Duterte.

Vietnam and the Philippines are among several Southeast Asian nations directly involved in the South China Sea dispute that reject Beijing's "nine-dash line" claim to around 90 per cent of the waterway.

The line - literally made up of nine long dashes - first appeared on Chinese maps in 1953, based on a map with an 11-dash line issued by the Nationalists in 1947.

China has long asserted that its territorial claims over disputed shoals and other features in the sea - based on so-called historic rights - allow it to draw straight baselines to create a vast coastal jurisdiction.

The Southeast Asian claimants, despite their internal differences, hold a common position that maritime claims must be based on the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos), which was signed by over 150 nations. The claims made by China - itself a signatory - do not adhere to the convention.

Since entering office, Marcos has taken a stronger stance on Beijing, and rekindling ties with Vietnam appears to be part of a larger strategy of not solely relying on the West to deal with China, but working alongside neighbouring states as well.

After a number of meetings between Marcos and Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, the two nations held the 10th meeting of their high-level Joint Permanent Working Group on Maritime and Ocean Concerns in Vietnam in May, to deepen bilateral cooperation.

"[Marcos'] government policy towards the South China Sea is no longer about how China will react to things that the Philippines will be doing," said Aries Arugay, a visiting fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.

"Under the past administration, it appeared as if the Philippines was walking on eggshells, not doing anything that would somehow cause irritation on the part of China," he said. "But we can see that ship has already sailed under this new administration."

Although Vietnam sees the current Manila administration as more trustworthy than Duterte's, strategically it is likely to remain a lot more cautious and subdued in its approach to China, according to Huynh Tam Sang, a lecturer at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities.

"Despite the Philippines and Vietnam's strengthened ties to jointly weather maritime issues in the South China Sea, Vietnam has tight ideological connections with China and the two neighbours are entrenched in a comprehensive strategic partnership.

"A 'balanced' stance when it comes to great-power politics may stymie Vietnam's concrete efforts to effectively engage with the Philippines," added Huynh, noting that Vietnam may be more inclined to work with Manila if activities and policies were not directly targeted towards China.

On the Philippine side of the equation, some legislators may argue that Vietnam is untrustworthy because it is under communist rule like China, but they are in the minority, according to Collin Koh, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore.

"Generally, the conduct of interstate relations within Asean itself has very much been predicated on pragmatism more than anything else," he added.

Arugay said that while similar goals in the South China Sea were likely to trump ideological differences, the bigger issue lay in whether the Philippines and Vietnam could come to terms with their own respective claims.

In May, Vietnam criticised a Chinese research ship, as well as a coastguard vessel from the Philippines, for separate actions that Hanoi said violated the country's sovereign rights.

"The fact of the matter is that some of their claims are still overlapping," Arugay said. "This further cooperation can actually thaw some of the issues between the two that may have prevented them from deeper cooperation in the past."

Huynh concurred, saying that narrowing the scope of differences between the two countries was critical if they were of a mind to collaborate.

"Cooperation in fields ranging from joint patrols to military industry partnerships to coastguard coordination might benefit both sides," he said.

A de facto alliance between Vietnam and the Philippines might also go a long way in challenging Beijing's growing footprint in the South China Sea.

"Asean needs to have better unity when it comes to negotiating with China on conduct, and for that what needs to be done is to resolve intra-Asean disputes within the South China Sea first," RSIS' Koh said.

"A divided Asean is always a good thing for China, as it makes it difficult for the member states to coalesce against Beijing on these issues."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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