Commentary: South China Sea tensions more likely to go up than down

CNA01-03

SINGAPORE: In the new year, the Trump administration’s policies towards China and the wider Indo-Pacific region will have a significant impact on the South China Sea dispute. If 2024 was anything to ...

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overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nCommentary: South China Sea tensions more likely to go up than down\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2025-01-03 06:00 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/south-china-sea-philippines-us-second-thomas-shoal-tension-asean-4834916><strong>CNA</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>SINGAPORE: In the new year, the Trump administration’s policies towards China and the wider Indo-Pacific region will have a significant impact on the South China Sea dispute.\nIf 2024 was anything to ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/south-china-sea-philippines-us-second-thomas-shoal-tension-asean-4834916\">Source Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","isBrief":false,"type":0,"news_type":1,"symbol":"BK4585","symbol_name":"ETF&股票定投概念","start_time":0,"source_url":"https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/south-china-sea-philippines-us-second-thomas-shoal-tension-asean-4834916","article_id":"2500185531","we_media_id":null,"thumbnails":["https://dam.mediacorp.sg/image/upload/s--xRkWIu2x--/c_fill,g_auto,h_468,w_830/fl_relative,g_south_east,l_mediacorp:cna:watermark:2024-04:reuters_1,w_0.1/f_auto,q_auto/v1/one-cms/core/2024-12-14t152602z_2_lynxmpekbc02v_rtroptp_3_china-philippines-southchinasea.jpg?itok=6kUIogFU"],"rights":null,"url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=2500185531","pubTimestamp":1735855200,"columns":[],"sourceInfo":{"source_id":"can_highlight","name":"CNA"},"weMediaInfo":null,"summary":"China will want to test the Trump administration’s commitment to the US-Philippines alliance, says an ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute academic.","collect":0,"end_time":0,"defaultTopTitle":"channelnewsasia.com","property":[],"viewcount":null,"language":"en","relate_stocks":{"BK4585":"ETF&股票定投概念","PCG":"太平洋煤气电力","DOC":"Healthpeak Properties, Inc","BK4081":"电力公用事业","BK4203":"医疗保健房地产投资信托","BK4173":"保险经纪商","BK4588":"碎股","IE00BD4GTV84.USD":"LEGG MASON CLEARBRIDGEINFRASTRUCTURE VALUE \"A\" (USDHDG) ACC","BK4225":"医疗保健房地产信托","IE00BD4GTT62.SGD":"Legg Mason ClearBridge Infrastructure Value A SGD-H (mdis) plus","CCG":"车车科技","LU2346227817.USD":"BGF SUSTAINABLE GLOBAL INFRASTRUCTURE \"A2\" (USD) ACC","IE00BD4GTW91.USD":"LEGG MASON CLEARBRIDGEINFRASTRUCTURE VALUE \"A\" (USDHDG) INC"},"translate_title":"评论：南海紧张局势上升的可能性大于下降的可能性","themeId":null,"isJumpTheme":false,"ttsUrl":null,"symbols_score_info":{"CCG":1,"DOC":1,"PCG":1},"content_text":"SINGAPORE: In the new year, the Trump administration’s policies towards China and the wider Indo-Pacific region will have a significant impact on the South China Sea dispute.\nIf 2024 was anything to go by, tensions are more likely to go up than down.\nIn 2024, the rancour between the Philippines and China surged to dangerous new levels. The Marcos administration continued to push back against China’s encroachments in its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), reinforcing the Sierra Madre, a dilapidated warship grounded on Second Thomas Shoal.\nIt publicised the China Coast Guard’s (CCG) aggressive actions against the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) and strengthened its alliance with the United States.\nChina responded by trying to blockade Second Thomas Shoal, resulting in a series of tense incidents in which the CCG rammed and fired water cannons at PCG vessels, injuring several Filipino coastguard personnel.\nSome observers feared that the South China Sea had become more dangerous than the Taiwan Strait, and that if the situation worsened the US might be forced to intervene in support of its ally, triggering a major crisis in US-China relations.\nFortunately, it did not come to that thanks to an agreement between the Philippines and China to dial down the tensions at Second Thomas Shoal.\nBut there is no telling if that agreement will hold in the new year, especially if, as seems certain, China will want to test the Trump administration’s commitment to the US-Philippines alliance.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nUS A STAUNCH SUPPORTER OF THE PHILIPPINES\nThe good news for the Philippines is that the US will pass that test. Although Trump has a transactional approach to alliances, he understands the important role the Philippines plays in America’s defence policy due to its strategic location fronting the South China Sea and next door to Taiwan.\nA former property developer himself, during a visit to Manila in 2017, Trump called the Philippines “the most important prime piece of real estate from a military point of view”. In 2019, his administration was the first to explicitly state that the 1951 Mutual Defence Treaty between the two countries covered contingencies in the South China Sea.\nTrump’s picks for his second administration are also staunch supporters of the US-Philippines alliance, including Marco Rubio, his nominee for Secretary of State, and Mike Waltz his National Security Advisor designate.\nThe Marcos administration’s hawkish stance on China will go down well with the incoming Trump administration, as will its commitment to raise defence spending and buy US missiles. Trump may even be willing to overlook the Philippines’ US$10 billion trade deficit with America. Philippine Defence Secretary Gilbert Teodoro is convinced the Trump administration will not adopt a transactional approach to the alliance.\nAs such, Manila will not only be able to preserve the defence gains it made under Biden, but Trump could well bolster security ties with the Philippines, including bigger exercises, more US-led naval patrols and increasing the frequency of Freedom of Navigation Operations in the South China Sea which have fallen under Biden.\nAll of this suggests that tensions between China – which accuses Manila of being a proxy of the US – will remain elevated in 2025 and could rise higher, especially if the Marcos administration accepts an offer by the US to provide naval escorts for resupply missions to Second Thomas Shoal.\nOther possible points of increased contention between the Philippines and China include Sabina Shoal, which the PCG uses as a staging point for its resupply missions, and Scarborough Shoal, which the CCG no longer allows Filipino fishermen to enter.\nIf the Philippines follows through on its threat to launch legal action against China for causing environmental damage in its EEZ, Beijing will be apoplectic.\n\n\n\n\nOTHER ISSUES TO WATCH IN 2025\nHow about elsewhere in the South China Sea?\nThe CCG will keep on harassing fishing boats, survey ships and drilling platforms in the EEZs of the other claimant states. But they will not give in to Chinese pressure to recognise its nine-dash line claims.\nNor will they engage in serious discussions with China over joint development of resources, even though Malaysia, Brunei, and in 2024 for the first time, Vietnam and Indonesia, have all strung China along by intimating they might. After all, there is little reason for them to share what legally belongs to them with China, whose nine-dash line a United Nations-backed legal tribunal ruled in 2016 was unlawful.\nOne issue that bears watching in 2025 is whether China will push back against Vietnam’s extensive land reclamations in the Spratlys, now totalling nearly half the area China itself reclaimed to build its seven artificial islands in 2013 to 2016. If Vietnam builds landing strips on those features, it will be able to project air power much further into the South China Sea.\nSo far, China has remained silent, at least publicly. That may be because it does not want to disrupt political ties with Vietnam which have been developing quite amicably. Or it may be that it does not want to pick a fight with Vietnam at a time when it has its hands full with the Philippines. Or it could be that Vietnam has been spared China’s wrath because it is not a US ally. Time will tell whether Beijing’s forbearance with Hanoi will last.\nPerhaps the least consequential issue to watch in the South China Sea this year will be the negotiations between ASEAN and China for a Code of Conduct.\nTalks have been dragging on since 2014. Although the two sides have gone through three readings of the draft code – each reading representing a full review of the text from start to finish – they have failed to make headway on the most difficult issues: Its geographical scope, whether it should be legally binding, and the relationship between the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) and the future COC.\nAs such, ASEAN Secretary-General Kao Kim Hourn’s prediction that the code will be finalised in 2025 is utterly unrealistic.\nAbsent any kind of credible conflict management mechanisms, what we can expect to see this year in the South China Sea is more ramming, water cannoning, harassment, military posturing, arms buying and terraforming.\nIn other words, business as usual.\nIan Storey is Senior Fellow at ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute. This commentary first appeared on ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute’s blog, Fulcrum.","kind":"highlight","is_publish_news":true,"is_publish_highlight":false,"is_publish_live":false,"is_publish_wemedia":null,"editions":null,"column":"","sentiment":"0","news_tag":"","news_rank":0,"symbols":[],"gpt_button":1},"commentList":[],"isCommentEnd":true,"newsSizeData":{"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"favoriteSize":0,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false},"APP":{"userAgent":"Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)","isDev":false,"isTTM":true,"deviceId":"web-server-community-laohu8-v3","version":"4.30.0","shortVersion":"4.30.0","platform":"web","vendor":"web","appName":"ttm","isIOS":false,"isAndroid":false,"isTiger":false,"isTHS":false,"isWeiXin":false,"isWeiXinMini":false,"isWeiBo":false,"isQQ":false,"isBaiduSwan":false,"isBaiduBox":false,"isDingTalk":false,"isToutiao":false,"isOnePlus":false,"isHuaWei":false,"isXiaomi":false,"isXiaomiWebView":false,"isOppo":false,"isVivo":false,"isSamsung":false,"isMobile":false},"href":"/m/news/2500185531"}