The United States and Japan strengthen deployment in the South China Sea

Senior U.S. official,The security of the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea is closely related.

As China's ambitions in the South China Sea continue to grow, how the United States and its regional allies should jointly maintain peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region has become a hot topic of concern to the outside world. In this regard, senior officials of the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. congressmen shared their policy views on the South China Sea issue at a think tank seminar on Thursday.

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On July 12, the eighth anniversary of the International Court of Justice's determination that China's nine-dash line in the South China Sea had no legal basis, US Secretary of State Blinken issued a public statement on the 11th, severely criticizing Beijing's dangerous practices in the South China Sea over the past year. "The actions of the People's Republic of China clearly disregard international law and the safety and lives of the Filipino people... We once again call on Beijing to abide by the 2016 arbitration results and stop its dangerous and destabilizing regional behavior."

As China and the Philippines frequently have frictions in the South China Sea, the US-led alliance is actively assisting the Philippines in various ways. On July 10, the Philippines was invited to send four FA-50 fighter jets and about 162 personnel to northern Australia to participate in the "Pitch Black" 20-nation joint military exercise.

On Monday, Japan and the Philippines jointly signed a key and groundbreaking "Reciprocal Access Agreement" to maintain peace and stability in the disputed waters. The agreement will allow the two countries' militaries to deploy in each other's territory and conduct joint military exercises. Senior Japanese and Philippine officials also reiterated that the two countries are seriously concerned about the dangerous actions of the Chinese Coast Guard and Maritime Militia in the South China Sea, especially China's escalation around the Second Thomas Shoal (China calls it Ren'ai Reef and the Philippines calls it Ayunjin Reef).

In response to the escalating situation in the South China Sea, the Washington think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) held a seminar on Thursday. Ely Ratner, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, Republican Congressman Darrell Issa, and several scholars studying Indo-Pacific issues participated in the meeting.

At the meeting, Issa, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, said that the signing of the Reciprocal Access Agreement between Japan and the Philippines highlights that the U.S. efforts to build alliances in the Indo-Pacific region have paid off: "Japan agreed to deploy troops to the Philippines in a cooperative context, which shows that the Biden administration has successfully established a new alliance to deal with a common threat from each other - China. In fact, the United States has entered a new Cold War."

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Issa stressed that the purpose of the United States increasing its military deployment around the Philippines is to strengthen the security of the Philippines and neighboring countries, rather than to intentionally expand the United States' control over the Indo-Pacific region. At the same time, the United States will also increase economic interactions with regional partners, thereby reducing trade with China.

Issa said: "(When the United States strengthened its economic and trade cooperation with China,) China once promised to peacefully take over Hong Kong from British rule and maintain "one country, two systems". This promise has been broken by China. Therefore, if Taiwan is taken over as part of China one day, the relevant promise will be broken again. Because China broke its promise to Hong Kong, the United States needs to suspend deepening relations with China and stop transferring power to China."

In April this year, the US Congress passed a bill on military aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. At that time, under the promotion of Issa, the US Congress also encouraged the State Department to allocate a symbolic US$500 million in foreign military financing to the Philippines. In this regard, Issa also explained the important signal conveyed by the financing at the meeting.

Issa said: "(The United States increased its aid to the Philippines) because Taiwan is a key issue for the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, but Taiwan is not the only region that needs to deal with China's coercion. Another aspect is that China has increased its oil reserves by 4,800 barrels in the past 14 or 15 months. During the economic recession, China is still buying a lot of oil from Iran and Russia. Such a move is very dangerous because it will make China's actions more daring. ... The United States hopes to work with the Philippines to jointly crack down on these black ships that transport oil."

Senior U.S. official: China's dangerous and aggressive operations in the South China Sea are in stark contrast to the Philippines

At the seminar, Ratner, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, pointed out that in 2016, the Arbitration Court in The Hague, the Netherlands, had ruled that the Second Thomas Shoal belonged to the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines, but China continued to engage in destabilizing behavior in the region.

“China’s claims to the Second Thomas Shoal are no longer valid following the Hague Arbitration Court’s ruling on its ownership of the shoal,” Ratner said. “China’s revisionist behavior and coercion in the area are both destabilizing and dangerous for the region. China’s aggressive behavior stands in stark contrast to the admirable actions of the Philippine government, led by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., to protect the sailors aboard the Sierra Madre and to uphold Philippine rights in accordance with international law.”

Ratner reiterated at the meeting that the United States' security commitment to the Philippines is "ironclad," and the United States has also agreed with the Philippines to increase the rotation of U.S. troops in the Philippines in 2023. Ratner said that from the perspective of economic and trade exchanges and strategic locations, the security and stability of the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea are closely linked. Therefore, maintaining peace, stability and the status quo in the two seas and resolving disputes through peaceful and non-coercive means are the consensus and common goals of countries in the Indo-Pacific region.