Be wary of China's 'gentle approach' – expert

Be wary of China’s ‘gentle approach’ – expert

A MARITIME security expert said the Philippines should be wary of China’s “gentle approach” to the West Philippine Sea (WPS) issue, noting it is likely a cover-up for its true intentions.

“[China’s] ambition is to dominate the West Philippine Sea, and that comes into direct conflict with the Philippine sovereign rights. Those two things can’t be reconciled, so China essentially tries to wrap its ambitions in a covering of reasonableness and gentle approach,” former United States Air Force colonel and SeaLight Director Raymond Powell told The Manila Times.

Powell said the latest reconnaissance photos of the disputed territory by the Philippine Coast Guard and the Armed Forces of the Philippines indicated otherwise.

He said China’s territorial claims violate international law.

“China knew going in that the [2016 arbitral] ruling was going to go against them because their claims fall outside the structure of international law. It’s easy to overlook how remarkable the [United Nations] Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos) was when it was put together in the 1980s. China signed the convention and therefore agreed to an oversight,” Powell said.

“But its nine-dash or ten-dash line claim has always fallen outside of [Unclos], so China is trying to do both at the same time, claiming to be agreeing with international law and yet, cutting out something separate from international law to say, ‘Well, international law doesn’t apply to this part, because this is historically ours. And so, those two things were not going to be reconciled in The Hague; it was going to go the Philippines’ way unless something nefarious from outside intervened, but it did not. The judges decided fairly, which is why China decided not to participate at all… it had no chance there,” he added.

Powell warned that China is bound to be more aggressive in the future and that common grounds would be hard to come by because of its expansionist ideals.

“You have a China that’s going to be less likely to want to negotiate on even terms, it’s going to push its claims to the very limit, and it believes that it can out-escalate the Philippines because it has more capacity, which is why the Philippines recently has recognized that its best option is to network itself in with strong allies and partners like the United States and Japan to try to dissuade China to interrupt or diminish China’s confidence so that China has to recalculate and not think that its ambitions are quite so close as it perhaps it would otherwise,” he said.