Explaining Vietnam and the Philippines’ Divergent South China Sea Strategies

On June 17, Chinese vessels forcefully blocked a Philippine resupply mission to its isolated outpost at Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly Islands. During the operation, Chinese personnel on board motorboats repeatedly rammed and then boarded two Philippine Navy rigid-hulled inflatable boats in order to prevent Filipino personnel from transferring supplies, including firearms, to the BRP Sierra Madre, a warship that Manila grounded on the shoal in 1999. In the ensuing melee, a number of Filipino navy personnel were wounded, including one who reportedly lost his right thumb. The Philippine military likened the action to “brazen act of aggression” and  “an act of piracy.”

The incident marked the culmination of 18 months of tensions around the shoal, which has now emerged as the primary flashpoint in the South China Sea.

While tensions have grown between China and the Philippines, Vietnam, another nation that disputes China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea, has been quietly reinforcing the features under its own control. In a briefing published last month, the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, a part of the Center of Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, reported that Vietnam had “significantly accelerated” the expansion of its outposts in the Spratly Islands over the past six months, creating “almost as much new land as it had in the previous two years combined.”

The conjuncture raises the question of why China has taken such strong actions against the Philippines, while seemingly turning a blind eye to major land reclamations by Vietnam. As Zack Cooper and Gregory Poling wrote in a June 18 article for War on the Rocks, this is a question with potentially far-reaching implications. They argued that “understanding the logic behind China’s (lack of) response is especially critical because it might help decipher Beijing’s response to future activities.”

In response, the authors adduced four factors to explain the divergence in treatment. The first is simply that Chinese leaders may wish not to provoke a second major standoff in the South China Sea – a judgment that appears to fit with Beijing’s “divide and rule” approach to the maritime conflicts. The second is that Vietnam had both the will and the ability to push back against any Chinese escalation, which carried the implication that Beijing had identified the Philippines in general, and its toehold on Second Thomas Shoal in particular, as a point of weakness.

Third, Cooper and Poling argued that the difference can be explained by the Philippines’ treaty alliance with the United States. Finally, they argued that tensions between Beijing and Hanoi had been contained by their “longstanding cooperative relationship.” While the first two points are arguably relevant, these latter two points get closer to the nub of the issue – and suggest that the periodic stand-offs between Vietnam and China, while they carry the same potential to spark a wider conflict, are governed by very different dynamics.

On the first point, it is clear that it is the U.S. alliance has played its role in China’s growing pressure campaign, in particular, the Philippines’ decision to strengthen this alliance in response to growing Chinese aggression in disputed waters. Over the past two years, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has expanded U.S. access to Philippine military facilities and inaugurated joint patrols with the U.S. and other partners. On numerous occasions, U.S. officials have assured Manila that an armed attack on any Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft in the South China Sea will oblige it to come to the Philippines’ aid under the two nations’ Mutual Defense Treaty.

The Vietnamese approach has been very different. As Khang Vu noted in an article for The Diplomat in February, where the Philippines has expanded its cooperation with the U.S. in response to Chinese pressure, the Vietnamese government has stuck fast to its nonaligned foreign policy. While Hanoi did upgrade its relations with Washington to the level of a comprehensive strategic partnership in September, this was nestled within diplomatic outreach to China that culminated in Xi Jinping’s visit to Hanoi two months later. That visit, conducted against the red-yellow backdrop of Chinese and Vietnamese flags, drove home the point that Vietnam “puts its relationship with China above that with the U.S.”

Khang argued that there are good reasons for Vietnam to adopt such a policy, rooted in the country’s geographic realities. Vietnam, he noted, “is the only South China Sea claimant sharing a land border with China and has been a victim of Chinese bullying by land in the past, in addition to bullying at sea.” To offset this geographic handicap and the associated security vulnerabilities, Vietnam has adopted a foreign policy rooted in diversification, with a key note of constant assurance to China – as embedded in the “Four Nos,” for instance – that Vietnam will never become an ally of any hostile foreign power.

“Such confinement of maritime disputes also explains why China has not criticized Vietnamese activities aimed at asserting its maritime claims as harshly as it has criticized the Philippines,” Khang argued.

On the last factor mentioned by Cooper and Poling, this tendency is facilitated and strengthened by the countless historical, political, and cultural ties that bind the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) to its counterpart in Beijing. These both create a degree of shared interest – a joint opposition to U.S.-led “peaceful evolution” being at the top of the list – and facilitate a degree of mutual understanding.

In Vietnam’s case, the real risk at present is less a Chinese attempt to seize Vietnamese-held features in the Spratly Islands, than the possibility that popular nationalist sentiment would arise to challenge the CPV over its more accommodating – some would say cowardly – approach toward Beijing.

In comparison, the Philippines exists at a greater remove, beyond the Confucian-Leninist orbit inhabited by the two communist parties and their leaders. Instead it has much more cultural and historical kinship with the United States. (Not for nothing did Stanley Karnow once liken the Filipino people to “some kind of lost American tribe that has somehow become detached from the U.S. mainland and floated across the Pacific.”) The extent to which Beijing and Manila have been talking past each other during the ongoing stand-off over Second Thomas Shoal offers ample evidence of this.

All of this makes it tempting to conclude that the Philippines’ decision to double down on the U.S. alliance, albeit unsurprising given the country’s own history of intimate relations with Washington, is something of a double-edged sword. The possible deployment of the U.S. military is a powerful potential deterrent to China. It also raises the stakes if China commits an act that unequivocally triggers the collective defense provisions of the U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty.

At this point, the conflict over Second Thomas Shoal would cease to be a maritime dispute between the Philippines and China, and would become a test of U.S. resolve. For policymakers in Washington, especially those of a more hawkish persuasion, the question of Philippine territorial integrity would be superseded by the question of maintaining U.S. primacy in the Western Pacific. In this conflict, the Philippines would find itself on the frontlines.

It is unclear whether either Vietnam or the Philippines could realistically hope to adopt the other’s approach, given the extent to which they are shaped and conditioned by their own geographic, political, and cultural circumstances. For Vietnam, the confrontational policy of the Marcos administration, let alone a formal security alliance with the U.S., is a non-starter.

Likewise, the Vietnamese approach is arguably ill-suited to the Philippines. Former President Rodrigo Duterte attempted some version of this, downplaying the maritime disputes in the interests of good relations with China (and dollops of Chinese infrastructure funding). But while this coincided with a period of relative quiescence in the South China Sea, it did not stem Chinese incursions into areas claimed by the Philippines; nor did it seemingly cure Chinese strategists of their tendency to view the Philippines as a proxy for the United States.

All of this highlights just how difficult the Philippine position in the South China Sea has now become. While Manila is not responsible for the situation at Second Thomas Shoal, its move toward the U.S. has only provoked a stronger Chinese reaction. But to back down now would be to court capitulation, and show the leaders in Beijing that aggression can be an effective strategy. As tensions between China and the U.S. increase, Manila’s space for independent maneuvering is gradually narrowing.