David has the edge in word war with Goliath on Julian Felipe Reef
THE last time I wrote on the South China Sea (SCS) dispute back in year 2014, I predicted that the dispute would become a battle of public diplomacy between China and the Philippines. I wrote then:
“Both countries have to employ public diplomacy to effectively communicate with publics around the world in order to get their policies or positions understood and supported by the international community.
Alan Henrikson, professor of diplomatic history, defines public diplomacy as ‘the conduct of international relations by governments through public communications media and through dealings with a wide range of nongovernmental entities . . . for the purpose of influencing the politics and actions of other governments.’”
In this battle, China’s resources and reach are massive. Its communications reaches all corners of the globe. It has media defenders and advocates on every front. By contrast, the Philippines engages now only in limited public diplomacy. Much of our effort appears directed to US media and publics, owing to reliance on the services of hired US PR firms and the assistance of the US government.
Regardless of the uneven relation of forces, however, Philippine prospects in this kind of battle are very good. Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. and Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana should not weary of the fight they have spiritedly waged so far. They should take heart and keep the pressure on China to pull out its vessels from the Julian Felipe Reef.
The need for a strategic plan has become more compelling because China adopted this year a more strident and combative tone, not only in the SCS issue, but in its foreign policy as a whole. The change is encapsulized in the term, “wolf warrior diplomacy,” which suggests a new creature on the block.
David and Goliath factor
Under normal circumstances, according to public relations professionals, the little guy (David) has a good chance of winning a public relations battle against a vastly stronger adversary (Goliath). Public sympathy instinctively lines up with the underdog because he is puny and faces tough odds. There is instinctive rooting against the stronger side.
The rule rings true in international politics, business and sports. Wherever public opinion and sentiments have a say, the pendulum swings toward David. Nobody loves Goliath.
I think about the biblical story as I see our country increasingly bullied in this public spat with China over our exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the South China Sea. And I dearly hope that international opinion will favor David in this spat, as it has in other international disputes.
The analogy does not necessarily apply in the current dispute between the Philippines and China in the SCS. The word war must be won by formal and superior arguments, and by the astute art of persuasion and communications savvy.
The Philippines must have solid stones to load in its slingshot, knowing that China will likely have many weapons.
Outline for PH public diplomacy
The Philippine government should design and craft a full program for public diplomacy concerning the row with China over the Spratlys.
The program should be broken down into key strategies, position papers, documents, activities and projects that can be implemented by the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Presidential Communications Office together.
The strategic objective should be to project the Philippines’ position in the strongest and best light, and conversely to expose the weakness of China’s claims in the dispute.
Offhand, I can think of a number of elements that should be considered essential parts of the program:
A claimant far, far away
1. Start with mapping and a measure of distances. Is the world even aware of the remarkable and compelling fact that China is “far, far away” from the Spratlys. The facts are these: “The Spratly Islands, of which the Julian Felipe Reef is part, are located 120 miles west of the Philippine island of Palawan. In contrast, they are located 900 miles south of the Chinese island of Hainan, which is the closest Chinese territory to the Spratlys.
In further contrast, the other claimants from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) can at least talk of proximity to the Spratlys: Vietnam, 230 miles away; Malaysia and Brunei, 150 miles away.
Why is China, 900 miles away, laying a claim here at all?
For many, this has always been the outrageous and incomprehensible part of China’s extravagant claims in the SCS.
2. Unclos defines the rights of nations — The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos), whose most recent charter came into force in November of 1994, constitutes the current basis of international law in the South China Sea disputes.
All claimants in the South China Sea disputes, including China, are signatories to Unclos, which sets forth clear laws for the waters surrounding the territories of nation-states. All regulations are established from the baseline of sovereign and inhabited islands. Legal maritime rights in terms of Unclos are derived from the status of land features, which are the focal point of claims made to islands in the South China Sea by Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and other Asean claimants.
Unclos provisions and regulation areas cover: a) territorial waters — 12 nautical miles from low-water line, can use all resources and set all regulations; b) contiguous waters — 12 nautical miles beyond territorial water boundary, can enforce only taxation, immigration, customs and pollution regulations; c) exclusive economic zone, or EEZ — 200 nautical miles from low-water line, has exploitative rights to all natural resources. Can regulate but must maintain freedom of maritime navigation and overflight.
The Spratlys claims of the Philippines and other Asean states make specific reference to their EEZs.
China’s claim has nothing to do with EEZ.
3. China’s historical claims — China’s maritime claims to the region are not based on a claim to land features and therefore does not fall within the legal maritime framework of Unclos.
China’s legal claim rests on an assertion of first discovery in the second century CE (Tang, 1991). China also asserts that the South China Sea was mapped by Chinese scholars in the third century CE and that archaeological evidence from several islands match Han dynasty era artifacts (placing them in the early second century CE).
4. The ruling of International Court of Arbitration governing maritime disputes in its judgment of the Philippine suit before the tribunal, ruled that in legal terms China’s historical claims are wholly irrelevant to territorial and maritime disputes in the South China Sea.
The arbitral ruling buried forever China’s nine-dash-line map. Even so, China continues to assert the relevance of its historical claims. The existing debate over Chinese historical claims is whether they are relevant to the present-day territorial and international waters in the South China Sea.
At the time of the ruling, the great majority of states in a public poll, expressed their support for the PCA decision.
5. China claims rights of archipelagic states.
In an insightful paper for the Lowy Institute in Australia, Oriana Skylar Maestro presented in detail how China is bending the rules in the South China Sea.
She writes that in order to back its claim to 90 percent of the South China Sea, China wants to have the same rights as archipelagic states, those countries mainly made up of islands.
“One of the benefits of archipelagic status is that the waters between islands are considered internal waters, like rivers inside a country. Other countries have no right to transit these waters without permission. This archipelagic status is conferred through the United Nations and only 22 nations claim it.”
The Philippines is one of them.
Wolf-warrior diplomacy
Faced with negative international opinion on its claims and military constructions in the South China Sea, China has adopted a more strident and combative tone in its foreign policy. It has launched an aggressive program of public diplomacy to change international perceptions of its government. This has involved winning governments through loans and economic assistance. It has been coopting media organizations, journalists and academics in foreign countries.
Dubbed as “wolf-warrior diplomacy,” this new approach consists of a shift inside Chinese diplomacy from conservative, passive and low-key to assertive, proactive and high profile.
The name was taken from two films, “Wolf Warrior” and ”Wolf Warrior II,” Chinese action blockbusters that highlight agents of Chinese special operation forces. They have boosted national pride and patriotism among Chinese viewers.
According to an analyst of the Diplomat, “wolf warrior diplomacy” describes offensives by Chinese diplomats to defend China’s national interests, often in confrontational ways.
Why is China resorting to wolfwarrior diplomacy?
The suspicion of many is that the objective is to deflect blame for the origination of the coronavirus in China and the Chinese Communist Party’s suppression of information on the outbreak.
In the row over the 200 Chinese ships at the Julian Felipe Reef, the wolf warrior style has been in stark display.
The Chinese embassy flatly says that the Julian Felipe Reef is the Niu’e Jiao, a part of the Nansha Qundao, China’s name for the Spratly Islands, which belongs to China.
The Reef is within the Philippine exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and continental shelf, over which the country enjoys the exclusive right to exploit or conserve any resources, which encompass both living resources such as fish and nonliving resources such as oil and natural gas.