South China Sea: Beijing, Asean claimant states risk pushing beyond 'grey zone between peace and war' in 2024

The South China Sea has long been one of the most disputed stretches of water on the planet with territorial tensions festering for many years and 2023 is no different - with one exception: the number of incidents among claimant nations and exchanges of belligerent rhetoric have escalated.

Analysts say that the Philippines' increasingly confrontational stance against China's "grey-zone" tactics - particularly over flashpoints in waters around the Second Thomas Shoal and the Scarborough Shoal - and its further alignment with the US could keep tensions simmering or even risk an outbreak of serious conflict.

Earlier this month, the Philippines accused Chinese vessels of firing water cannons and ramming into its ships while China said it was engaged in legitimate "control measures" during the incident.

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The decades-long conflict involving multiple claimant nations - China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia - has long simmered in an area that foreign policy and military analysts describe as the "grey zone between peace and war".

On Monday, Communist Party mouthpiece People's Daily said that the Philippines was continually provoking China with "extremely dangerous" behaviour that threatened regional stability.

Philippine military spokesman Medel Aguilar shot back the next day, accusing China of performing dangerous manoeuvres. "They are the ones committing all the violations," Aguilar said on state-run broadcaster PTV.

The exchange was indicative of the hardened stances both countries have taken over the disputed waters, with neither side showing signs of backing down. But while China has long held onto its uncompromising position, the Philippines' increasingly aggressive resistance reflects a shift in policy over the dispute after Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr took office last year.

In mid-December, Marcos Jnr posted a statement on social media condemning "the aggression and provocations perpetrated by the China Coast Guard and their Chinese Maritime Militia against our vessels and personnel", saying it "further steeled our determination to defend and protect our nation's sovereignty, sovereign rights, and jurisdiction in the West Philippine Sea".

In addition to this month's incidents, earlier this year the Philippines accused China of firing a laser at its vessels, swarming more than 100 ships around contested reefs, and building artificial islands within waters that it considered to be its territory under international law.

While these clashes have received the most attention, Vietnam was reportedly involved in a separate incident against China in the waters. In May, there were reports of a stand-off between Chinese and Vietnamese naval forces after Hanoi attempted to expand its oil drilling operations in the area.

The incident was highlighted extensively on social media in both countries. Neither Hanoi nor Beijing, however, confirmed what happened - the official reticence reflecting both sides' desire to avoid further escalation, according to analysts.

Vietnam has also been ramping up its dredging and landfill work in the Spratly Islands, a disputed archipelago in the South China Sea where China has been busy building artificial islands, according to a report by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

Malaysia also entered the fray after its energy projects in the South China Sea prompted Beijing to express its concerns. Although Malaysia was committed to protecting its territorial rights in the South China Sea, it is open to negotiations with China, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said.

None of these grey-zone tactics constitute an act of war, but analysts said they are part of China's carefully calculated strategy to strengthen its territorial claims over the waters without escalating the conflict.

While Beijing has been undertaking similar actions in the South China Sea for years, observers have noted a significant increase in the frequency and intensity of grey-zone activities in 2023. Marcos Jnr's increasingly confrontational posture and heightened nationalist sentiment in China mean neither side is likely to back down and escalation may be inevitable, according to analysts.

China claims more than 80 per cent of the South China Sea as its territory - demarcated on its maps as a nine-dash line, or, more recently, as a 10-dash line - based on what it has long maintained as its "historical rights". Beyond the contested versions of history, China has strong reasons for wanting to control the waters, which contain some of the world's most valuable shipping lanes, oil and gas reserves, and a significant percentage of the planet's commercial fishing operations.

In 2016, the Philippines challenged China's claims at The Hague's Permanent Court of Arbitration, which ruled that Beijing's history-based territorial claims lacked a legal basis and were contrary to international maritime law. China refused to accept the ruling, calling it a "political farce", but said it would work towards a peaceful resolution.

Although Chinese officials say negotiations are the most feasible way to deal with the South China Sea issue, Beijing has continued to engage in frequent grey-zone provocations as a means of strengthening its position.

"The grey zone approach has delivered gains for China, advancing its position in the disputed sea without triggering conflict thus far. It allowed Beijing to undermine the position of other disputants in contested spaces while maintaining deniability," Lucio Blanco Pitlo III, a research fellow at the Asia-Pacific Pathways to Progress Foundation, told This Week in Asia.

Collin Koh, a senior fellow specialising in defence and strategic studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said this year's incidents concerning the waters were China's way of embarking on "horizontal escalation", which has happened more regularly and with greater intensity.

"It's so far avoided vertical escalation, which would entail actions that it has hitherto avoided such as boarding and inspection of foreign vessels, as well as the use of kinetic force," Koh said.

Nonetheless, analysts said while China's actions were carefully calibrated to be as disruptive as possible and stopped short of acts of war, avoiding conflict might not be China's ultimate goal.

Koh said it is plausible that China's grey zone tactics "are designed to bait the other party into escalation, which would thus free Chinese forces to respond in kind - and the use of force would then be legitimised as a form of self-defence or response in kind to what the other party does".

It is difficult to know if the frequency of grey zone actions has increased in the past year as several incidents involving South China Sea claimants have been unpublicised, analysts said. Most of the recent reported incidents were based on information released by the Philippine government and military.

This was because Marcos Jnr is taking a very different tack than his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, when it comes to their country's relations with China, particularly over the South China Sea. Duterte was known for his China-friendly stance, which led him to look the other way when it came to the Chinese coastguard's hostile activities in the South China Sea while Marcos Jnr is more forceful in defending Manila's territorial claims, according to analysts.

"When Duterte was president, his tendency to keep incidents in the South China Sea under wraps quickly facilitated China's grey zone actions with minimal consequences," Koh said.

Other Asean countries with interest in the disputed waters, such as Indonesia and Malaysia, have preferred to keep the issue "low profile" due to their significant trade with China.

Analysts said one of the main reasons why Chinese grey-zone actions have appeared more frequent this year is because the Marcos Jnr administration has been eager to name and shame Beijing each time they happened.

It is part of Manila's policy that Koh has dubbed "assertive transparency", which seeks to counter China's tactics by making it incur reputational damage for its provocations while winning international support.

John Bradford, executive director of the Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies, argued the dent in China's image has been significant. "By blatantly disregarding international law and showing its readiness to push around its neighbours, China has shown itself as untrustworthy and has undermined its opportunities to resolve issues without force."

While assertive transparency may be an effective counterstrategy, some analysts are wary that it could still lead to escalation rather than deterrence.

Pitlo said China is "upping the pressure" against the Philippines, possibly to induce its neighbour to refrain from publicising and "internationalising" the bilateral dispute and instead return to dialogues, such as through the Philippines-China Bilateral Consultative Mechanism, and regional frameworks like the proposed Asean-China Code of Conduct (COC).

Asean and China have been working on finalising a COC for over 20 years. However, there has been very little progress so far between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and China on establishing such a mechanism.

China has shown a greater willingness to come to the table to negotiate this year. However, a recent announcement by the Philippines that it had approached Vietnam, Malaysia, and other neighbouring countries to negotiate "a mini COC" could enrage China and torpedo its separate COC discussions with Asean.

Marcos Jnr said that traditional diplomatic efforts have yielded "very little progress" and called for a "paradigm shift", with measures including forging more military pacts between the Philippines and other nations.

China's leaders are unlikely to back down on their South China Sea claims, particularly as the dispute provides a useful diversion amid the hard questions they are facing about the country's current economic slump, Koh said.

"When the Communist Party of China's domestic political legitimacy is at stake, given the [potential] breakdown of the social compact that's based on the party and state delivering economic prosperity, it becomes imperative to assert its role as guardian of maritime sovereignty and rights against external foes - primarily the US and "vassals" such as the Philippines," Koh said.

To underscore this stance, President Xi Jinping recently visited the Chinese coastguard command HQ to urge its personnel to assert China's maritime rights, he added.

As such, the South China Sea dispute could intensify to alarming levels next year, according to analysts.

"It is dangerously likely that one of the grey-zone skirmishes could result in a collision or deaths. Given the attention focused on these issues it may be difficult to de-escalate from such a crisis," Bradford said.

Pitlo agreed, saying that "the risk of accidents is high, especially in the absence of functional bilateral crisis management tools". He predicted that the Second Thomas Shoal and the Scarborough Shoal would remain key flashpoints over the next year.

Tensions have also been exacerbated by the increasing US presence in the South China Sea, Koh said.

"The recent operations of [the US warship] Gabrielle Giffords off the Second Thomas Shoal signals that the Americans are willing to play a more active role in supporting the Filipinos in asserting their sovereign rights," he said. The warship conducted operations alongside the Philippine Navy in the South China Sea a few days before it sailed near the reef on December 4, drawing a strong reaction from Beijing.

The American actions may be perceived by Beijing as a sign that Washington intends to play a more active role in the waters including taking part in joint escorts with the Philippines for missions to the Second Thomas Shoal or at least positioning US military assets to provide cover to the Philippine convoy, Koh said.

"We see the South China Sea scenarios for next year are fraught with numerous sources of uncertainty and even if the risk of a premeditated clash is low, we can't discount the potential of inadvertent armed confrontation."

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

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