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President Joe Biden will warn China about its increasingly aggressive activity in the South China Sea this week during summits with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
Two senior U.S. officials said Biden would express serious concern about the situation around Second Thomas Shoal, a submerged reef in the Spratly Islands where the Chinese Coast Guard used water cannons to prevent the Philippines from resupplying Marines on the Sierra Madre, a rusting vessel which has been housed on the reef for 25 years.
Biden will emphasize that the US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty applies to the Sierra Madre, officials said, adding that he expressed “deep concern” when he spoke with President Xi Jinping on Monday.
“China is underestimating the potential for escalation. We tried to clarify this in a series of conversations. . . that our mutual defense treaty covers Philippine sailors and ships, and by extension. . . the Sierra Madre,” an official told the Financial Times.
“China must examine its tactics or risk serious backlash.”
Admiral John Aquilino, head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, recently issued a similar warning to a delegation of retired Chinese military officers and Cui Tiankai, China’s former ambassador to the United States, according to people familiar with the situation. Indo-Pacom did not comment. The Biden administration has also enlisted other retired US officials to deliver similar private messages to Beijing.
Officials have said the United States is cautious about establishing a “red line” with Beijing. “If you give the Chinese a red line, they will go just below that line and do everything,” one official said.
The second official said China may believe its actions fall below the threshold of U.S. commitments under the mutual defense treaty.
“The reality of their rules of engagement and how accountability evolves may mean that ultimately they don’t have perfect control over this fact,” the official said. “We would not want to create an artificially clean distinction when they themselves are not fully capable of controlling their own actions.”
Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the German Marshall Fund, said that “the greatest risk of a direct military confrontation between the United States and China today is at Second Thomas Shoal.”
“If Beijing directly attacked Philippine ships or armed forces, Washington would be forced to respond,” he said. “It would result in a major political crisis between the United States and China and, in the worst case scenario, a broader military conflict.”
Jose Manuel Romualdez, the Philippine ambassador to the United States, said the two allies hoped the treaty would never have to be invoked, but warned that “we will not hesitate to do so” if warranted.
The Second Thomas Shoal is one of many contested locations in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. The Philippines anchored the Sierra Madre reef in 1999 as part of its effort to strengthen its claims to this structure. The Philippine Army has stationed marines on the ship who need to be periodically resupplied.
China says Manila is bringing building materials to the shoal to reinforce the rusting World War II ship, which is in danger of disintegrating. It also accuses Manila of reneging on a promise it made years ago to remove the ship, a claim the Philippines has rejected.
Dennis Wilder, a former CIA China analyst, said Beijing is trying to test what the U.S. response would be if China attempted to remove Philippine marines from the Sierra Madre and destroy the ship. He said he probably wanted to build a military outpost on the reef as he has done elsewhere in the South China Sea.
“A base closer to the Philippines would both secure China’s claim to the area and provide a forward operating position for combat operations against U.S. forces operating from Philippine territory in a conflict in the Taiwan Strait,” Wilder said.
Jeff Smith, an Asia expert at the Heritage Foundation, said the United States should take a tougher stance. “The United States should participate in joint resupply missions with Philippine forces and explore options to replace the deteriorating Philippine vessel,” he said.
“The United States cannot repeat the same mistakes it made in 2012, when China set a terrible precedent by using military coercion to seize control of Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines.”
Underscoring growing concern over the Second Thomas Shoal, the United States, Japan, the Philippines and Australia have announced they will hold their first joint military exercises in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.
In a joint statement, the defense ministers of the four countries made clear that they support the outcome of a 2016 arbitration in The Hague that rejected Chinese claims to historic rights to most of the South China Sea within a demarcation called “ nine-dash line”. ”.
The Chinese embassy in Washington said Xi stressed in his phone call with Biden that Beijing has sovereignty over the Spratlys, including the Second Thomas Shoal. The “root cause” of the dispute is that Manila “has repeatedly backtracked on his words and sought to build permanent outposts on the uninhabited reef.”
“The United States is not a party to the South China Sea issue, yet it continues to meddle in the issue, sowing discord on maritime issues between China and the Philippines and falsely blaming China, causing instability in the region,” said Liu Pengyu of the embassy . spokesman.