Phil-Am Global is pleased to present Mr. Benjamin Blandin, a network coordinator at the Yokosuka Counsel for Asia-Pacific Studies. A PhD candidate in geopolitics at the Paris Catholic University, focusing on asymmetric warfare. He will also be at ADAS 2024 (www.adas.ph) Sept 25 -27 at World Trade Center.
Mr. Blandin will be making a presentations at the Manila Elks Club, 7th floor, Corinthian Plaza Building, Paseo de Roxas, Makati at 6pm on Sept 26th. This presentation is open to the public but limited space is available. Contact 968-887-2130 for reservations.
by Benjamin Blandin ( republished and edited excerpt by www.philam.news )
What does China really want in the West Philippine Sea?
Since the end of 2023, China has been scaling up the regularity, the diversity and the degree of violence of its action against the Philippines, using either sonars and surface sonic weapons, pointing floodlight projectors, jamming Filipino ships sensors, GPS and comms, employing helicopters and go-fast ships as means of intimidation, firing double-barreled water cannons at full power and point-blank range against fragile and un-armed wooden supply ships, and even, more recently, painted its maritime militia vessels to the China Coast Guard’s colors in order to blur the lines.
But is that anything new given the pattern of China’s behavior ever since the 1970s and 1980s, like when it fired anti-aircraft guns at unarmed Vietnamese soldiers stranded on Johnson South Reef, or when it built “weather stations” in the Spratlys in 1988, and fishermen shelters at Mischief Reef in 1995, both low-tide elevations that were in turn transformed into full-fledge naval and air bases just twenty years later, right after Xi Jinping promised they would be neither reclaimed nor militarized. And we should not forget the two major incidents that occurred in the EEZ of Vietnam back in 2014 and 2019 or the surprise takeover of Scarborough Shoal in 2012. Other actions have been witnessed in the Taiwan Strait, around the Senkaku Islands and in the Yellow Sea, in fact all over its near seas’ perimeter.
Over the years, experts have been giving a variety of reasons to explain such behavior, whether it is to control natural resources such as fish, polymetallic nodules and oil and gas, or to create a buffer zone in order to keep the United States away from a vital commercial artery, to secure a space to conduct military exercises, or to dilute the submarines harbored at Yulin naval base in Hainan, secure a future invasion of Taiwan, to (re)establish a regional predominance or prevent a return of the so-called “century of humiliation”. Let’s explore some of these to try understand what exactly is behind China’s aggressiveness.
The full version of this article is available on www.worldsecurity.news and on our digital platform www.zampenjournal.news
