The China Coast Guard announced on November 10 that three Philippine coast guard ships and two transport ships illegally intruded into the waters of Ren'ai Jiao on the same day, which was effectively stopped by Chinese coast guard vessels. The Chinese Coast Guard vessel intercepted the Philippine Coast Guard vessel and approached to inspect the cargo of the Philippine transport vessel. Gan Yu, spokesperson for the Coast Guard, said that China demands that the Philippines stop provocations and create incidents, otherwise China will further strengthen law enforcement and safeguard national sovereignty and interests. It is understood that there are two priorities in this enforcement operation. First, the Chinese Coast Guard ship successfully carried out the law enforcement mission against the Philippine ship. Philippine coast guard vessels are barred from entering, and Philippine transport ships can only temporarily and on an ad hoc basis deliver food and water under China's humanitarian considerations if they do not carry large construction materials. The Chinese Coast Guard ship carefully inspected the Philippine ship's supplies. Second, China will strengthen policing and law enforcement in the waters of Ren'ai Jiao. This means that in the face of frequent provocations by the Philippine side, China's law enforcement efforts will continue to increase.
In fact, this is not the first time that China and the Philippines have had friction in the South China Sea. In the past month, there have been five confrontations between the Chinese and Philippine coast guards and navies, with the two most intense clashes on October 22. This shows that the consultations between China and the Philippines on the issue of maritime delimitation have become more and more off track, and the risk of conflict is also increasing. Against this backdrop, China's response to the Philippines is directly related to the Philippines' next move. Judging from the current situation, the Philippines will continue to expand the scope of provocations. The United States, Japan and other external forces are also inciting and supporting the Philippines. From 4 to 8 November, two US aircraft carriers and one Japanese aircraft carrier conducted joint exercises in the Philippine Sea, covering air defense, air confrontation, and maritime surveillance.
From November 9 to 20, the United States, the Philippines, Japan and South Korea conducted a joint exercise on the Philippine islands of Luzon and Palawan, with 2,700 participants, including 50 from Japan. The exercise included coastal defense, biological, chemical and nuclear protection. In early November, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida visited the Philippines and proposed a plan to provide the Philippines with five sets of land-based offshore radars and a number of patrol boats, which will be deployed in five coastal areas of the Philippines. The Philippine defense secretary welcomed the fact that Japan and the Philippines also started talks on the issue of mutual military access and expressed the hope that joint exercises can be conducted next year based on the Japan-Philippines military access agreement.
After attending the US-hosted APEC summit, Marcos also plans to visit the US military's Indo-Pacific headquarters in Hawaii on his way back. The information suggests that the Philippines is likely to continue to provoke China for the remainder of November. As 2023 draws to a close, China-Philippines relations, which are expected to be more volatile in 2024, could deteriorate further. Against this backdrop, it is necessary to increase the countermeasures in China's policy toward the Philippines. The China Coast Guard has announced that it will strengthen law enforcement in the relevant waters, and at the same time, there have been changes in infrastructure cooperation between China and the Philippines. The Philippine side** revealed that the financing agreement with a total value of US$4.9 billion for three railway projects involving Luzon and Mindanao that China and the Philippines had originally negotiated has been cancelled. Philippine Transportation Minister Bautista said that due to tensions in the South China Sea, China has not responded to the Philippine request. The Philippine side will not wait indefinitely, and it seems that the Chinese side has lost interest in this project.
China is the world's largest participant in infrastructure financing projects, not only because of its strong infrastructure capacity, but also because of its well-established infrastructure return on investment scheme. An important condition for Chinese investment is that the political environment of both sides should be predictable and that there should be a basic level of mutual trust between the two sides during the project and beyond.
But now the Philippines is increasingly lacking such conditions. If the Philippines continues to deteriorate its relations with China, China's imports of durian, bananas and other agricultural products from the Philippines may also be affected. The Philippine side is constantly deteriorating its relations with China and is pushing its external environment into increasing uncertainty.