Why does China care about a rust bucket in the middle of the sea?
Beijing and Manila have struck a provisional deal to allow the resupply of the dilapidated Sierra Madre in the South China Sea, which has become a potential conflict point.
A dilapidated World War II-era vessel, the Sierra Madre, run aground on a tiny reef in the South China Sea has emerged as a potential flash point that could trigger a regional war, with the Chinese coast guard repeatedly swarming and ramming into Philippine vessels to stop them from resupplying the ship.
Beijing and Manila have now forged a provisional agreement that would allow the Philippines to take supplies out to the ship, hoping that it will end the recent escalation in tensions in the contested waters of the South China Sea.
The intensifying territorial dispute had threatened to drag the United States, a security ally of the Philippines, into another global conflict.
“Both sides continue to recognize the need to de-escalate the situation in the South China Sea and manage differences through peaceful means,” the Philippines’ Foreign Ministry said in a statement Sunday.
The Chinese foreign minister confirmed the two sides had reached a “temporary arrangement on the transportation of humanitarian supplies” and to “jointly manage maritime differences and promote the cooling of the situation in the South China Sea.”
The territorial dispute centers on Beijing’s claims of sovereignty over the vast majority of the South China Sea — claims that neighboring countries reject, leading some Southeast Asian nations, including the Philippines, to exert their economic and maritime interests.
Here’s how Beijing views this conflict.
Why does China care so much about the Sierra Madre?
In 1999, the Philippines grounded the Sierra Madre on a half-submerged reef known as the Second Thomas Shoal, part of the Spratly Island chain, to lay claim on the islands. Manila now uses it as a naval outpost for a small group of troops stationed there — serving as an extension of Philippine sovereignty — and it sends resupply shipments of food, water and fuel for the Marines posted there.
The Second Thomas Shoal, which the Chinese call Ren’ai Jiao, is located in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone but also falls within China’s “ten-dash line,” a swath of the South China Sea that Beijing claims as its territorial waters. The U-shaped area goes from China’s southernmost Hainan province, down past Vietnam to Malaysia, then up past the Philippines and behind Taiwan, incorporating the island into Beijing’s territory.
China’s maritime claims
Paracel
Islands
Scarborough
Shoal
Second Thomas
Shoal
Seven islands
occupied by
China within the
Spratly Island
chain
A 2016 arbitration ruling by the U.N. Convention of the Law of the Sea overwhelmingly sided with the Philippines, finding that China’s territorial claims to the Second Thomas Shoal were unlawful and that the reef lies inside the Philippine exclusive economic zone. Beijing rejects the ruling as “null and void” and has refused to adhere to it.
Chinese experts claim the other countries are the ones in the wrong.
“These countries illegally occupied these islands and reefs, so they tried to rationalize it and win international recognition. So this is the true intention behind internationalizing and escalating the South China Sea issue,” Wu Shicun, chairman of Hainan-based Huayang Research Center for Maritime Cooperation and Ocean Governance, said in a Chinese media documentary about the conflict.
China has repeatedly tried to block Philippine resupply missions that Manila calls “humanitarian” and wants to watch the disintegration of the ship so that Manila can no longer lay claim using the ship, experts say.
Both sides want the “status quo” in the South China Sea, but sharply differ in how they define it, said Yun Sun, senior fellow and director of the China program at the Washington-based think tank Stimson Center.
For the Philippines and the United States, the existence of Sierra Madre where it is now is the status quo. For the Chinese, it is how things were pre-1999 — which they believe the Philippines violated, Sun said.
Why has this come to a head now?
Beijing views the delivery of construction materials to the ship, part of an effort to reinforce it and prolong its life, as a deliberate act designed to escalate tensions. China claims such shipments have increased in recent years, leaving it no choice but to act.
The Financial Times reported last week that the Philippines has secretly conducted missions to extend the life of the ship by sending construction materials to it “in recent months.”
Philippine officials say they are making “superficial repairs” so that soldiers can live on the boat. Beijing has rejected this characterization.
Chinese analysts say Manila has become more hostile toward Beijing under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who took office two years ago. In contrast to his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, who had forged closer ties with China, Marcos has increasingly asserted his nation’s claims in the South China Sea and has drawn closer to Washington.
Marcos is framing China as a threat to bolster his own domestic image, said Ding Duo, associate research fellow at the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, also based in Hainan. But for China, Marcos’s actions — including drawing closer to the Biden administration, which wants to counter China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific region — symbolizes a provocative stance toward Beijing, Ding said.
“The United States and other countries outside the region view the South China Sea issue as a security issue and a geopolitical issue, while China views it as an issue of safeguarding its own territorial sovereignty,” Ding said.
Chinese officials allege that the resupply trips under Marcos run afoul of an unwritten “gentlemen’s agreement” through which Duterte agreed not to bring in construction materials without Beijing’s approval or inspection.
The Chinese also claim that they had reached a “consensus” with the Philippines that Manila would tow the ship away, and that servicing the ship violates that agreement. (Philippine officials deny the existence of any such agreements, and Marcos has rejected “secret” arrangements that Duterte may have made with the Chinese.)
Why is the Second Thomas Shoal strategically important for China?
For China, its core interest in the Second Thomas Shoal conflict is territorial sovereignty and integrity, which is critical to maintaining its centuries-long claim over the waters, experts say.
“What is more important to China may be that it involves the honor of the country, the reputation of the country, the obligation … to safeguard its sovereignty,” said Hu Bo, director of the Center for Maritime Strategy Studies at Peking University in Beijing.
Amanda Hsiao, senior analyst for China the International Crisis Group, said it is also important for Beijing to signal to the Philippines and other governments with whom it has territorial dispute that it’s willing to “impose costs on those who publicly defy Beijing.”
“In doing so, it seeks to deter bolder assertions of sovereignty by Manila and others,” Hsiao said.
China also may want to use the conflict to test Washington’s security commitment to Manila and the region, especially during a time when the United States is engaged in prolonged global conflicts elsewhere and facing a presidential election that could upend both domestic and international politics.
“If China is able to grab the shoal from the Philippines … and the United States fails to directly intervene and help the Philippines retain its occupation of the shoal, the credibility of U.S. security commitments to its allies in the region may be damaged,” said Li Mingjiang, nonresident scholar at the Singapore-based Carnegie China. “This may be the strategic calculation in the minds of Chinese decision-makers.”
What are China’s wider ambitions?
The South China Sea is so important to China because it is the entry point into the Pacific Ocean, where it has ambitions to eclipse the United States’ post-World War II military dominance in the Asia-Pacific region. It has been gradually building its military presence throughout the Pacific — an effort the United States is trying to counter alongside its Asian security allies like Japan, Australia and the Philippines.
China has already demonstrated its ability to militarize tiny coral reefs, even turning them into artificial islands that it claims as its own.
In 1994, China seized Mischief Reef, located northwest of Second Thomas Shoal, and built small huts on stilts that it said were shelters for fishermen. Over two decades, China has built that reef into a major military outpost, which has given Beijing the ability to influence and monitor events across the sea, said Hsiao, of the International Crisis Group.
China views it necessary to establish dominance in the South China Sea, especially in the face of what it perceives as a growing security threat from the United States, Chinese experts say.