There were many notable moments at the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual regional defense summit hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore in early June.
These included aggressive rhetoric against Taiwan by China’s new Defense Minister, Admiral Tung Jun; explicit protests by Indonesia’s President-elect Prabowo Subianto and Malaysia’s Defense Minister over civilian deaths in Gaza; and a surprise appearance by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to rally support from Southeast Asian and other middle-income countries ahead of the June 15-16 peace summit in Switzerland.
But arguably the highest prize will be Philippine President Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos, who said that if Philippine soldiers were killed by Chinese water cannons during a clash in the South China Sea, it would almost certainly be considered an act of war.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was rather cautious on the issue, since an “act of war” would trigger the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty between the US and the Philippines, a provision he himself reaffirmed when he signed new bilateral defense guidelines in May 2023. But the message was still loud and clear.
President Marcos’s remarks, in response to a question from a Financial Times journalist, sent both excitement and chills through the room. For many, it was thrilling to hear a Southeast Asian leader hit back so forcefully against Chinese intimidation.
But there was also a chilling feeling in the air: a war between the world’s two most powerful militaries could break out not just over Taiwan, a conflict that could hopefully be avoided through preparation and negotiation, but over the many disputed reefs and submerged shoals of the South China Sea, where the potential for miscalculation and accident at sea is plentiful.
Then, on June 15, a new Chinese law went into effect allowing the China Coast Guard to detain foreigners who ignore China’s unilaterally established maritime boundaries in the South China Sea. This law led to a collision between a Chinese vessel and a Philippine ship on June 17, leaving a Filipino sailor seriously injured.
While this offers hope that no Philippine soldiers will be killed as a result of Chinese pressure on missions, it also raises the possibility that China could use the new law to capture fishermen, coast guard personnel and others, effectively holding them hostage and forcing hostile countries to take counter-action or even negotiate.
It’s a worrying prospect, but one that will likely lead to ugly clashes at sea and bitter arguments between the governments involved for decades to come.
China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have been discussing the need for a “code of conduct” for maritime activities in the South China Sea since the mid-1990s, but nothing has progressed beyond talk of the need for negotiations. This reflects two fundamental realities.
First, China sees the entire South China Sea, and possibly the East China Sea as well, as a key strategic space that it wants to control.
In modern times, this aspiration was first expressed in 1947 by then Chinese leader General Chiang Kai-shek, who produced a map showing the “eleven-dash line” curling through the South China Sea like a giant tongue to show the areas China claimed control over. The map was later adopted and refined by the Chinese Communist Party, which overthrew Chiang Kai-shek in 1949.
The number of dashed lines on the maps has changed slightly over the years – China’s official 2023 map has 10, up from nine in the past 70 years – but the claim remains valid.
This is despite the Philippines taking the matter to the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague in 2016, which ruled that the broken line has no status under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
China has never before clarified whether its claims are territorial sovereignty or merely strategic control, perhaps wanting to keep the option open and its opponents guessing. The June 15 decree suggests that China now wants to clarify these definitions, at least in parts of the South China Sea.
Another fundamental reality, only made clear by China’s massive military buildup over the past two decades, is that there is a huge power imbalance between China, on the one hand, and Southeast Asian countries, on the other.
China currently has the world’s largest navy, but Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam have been unable to build up their own militaries to rival it due to weak economies and competing political priorities.
Among ASEAN countries in or near the South China Sea, only the city-state of Singapore and tiny Brunei spend more than 2% of their annual GDP on defense. Singapore’s 2023 defense budget of $13.4 billion is more than double the Philippines’ $6.1 billion.
Indonesia, ASEAN’s largest country by population (275 million), spent $8.8 billion, just 0.62% of its GDP. China’s official defense budget for 2023 was $219 billion.
This large imbalance reflects China’s great power aspirations, but also its phenomenal track record of economic growth. With Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam now growing faster than China, this imbalance is likely to narrow in the coming decades.
For example, if these countries grow at an average of 7 percent per year between now and 2050, and China’s average annual growth rate slows to 3 percent, their combined economies would account for 45 percent of China’s annual GDP by mid-century, up from just 15 percent today, and could be even higher if exchange rates move in Southeast Asia’s favor.
This growth will enable the Philippines and other countries to build a much stronger military that will stop China from pushing them around in the South China Sea. The problem is that correcting this huge economic imbalance will take time, while potential crises, conflicts and miscalculations are happening right now.
The appropriate long-term strategy is to pursue continued economic growth while taking advantage of the diversification away from China that many companies are pursuing, but the appropriate short-term strategy should be to continue to maintain ties with the United States and Japan, the South China Sea littoral states’ two best friends outside ASEAN.
Unless this huge power imbalance is reduced, the roles of the United States and Japan in the region will only grow.
Bill Emmott, former editor of The Economist, is currently chairman of the British Japan Institute, the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Institute for International Trade. In his new book,Deterrence, Diplomacy, and the Risk of Conflict over Taiwanwill be published by Routledge on July 15th.
This is an article originally published in Japanese and English by the Mainichi Shimbun in Japan, and in English by Bill Emmott’s Global View on Substack, and is republished here with permission.
