What strategy should be used by the United States to implement the “Pivot to Asia” policy? It is of course to exploit China's internal contradictions and conflicts with its neighbors.

After all, who is changing the status quo?

In the 1970s, the Cultural Revolution in the mainland of China was in full swing and the political struggle consumed the national strength. In contrast, after defeating the US, Vietnam became complacent, aggressive, and immediately went further to capture the Paracel Islands (also known to the Chinese as Xisha Islands in the South China Sea) near China’s Hainan Island. In 1974, China with a weak force overcame a powerful opponent, the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), won the Battle of the Paracel Islands and took these islands back. But soon after the unification of North and South Vietnam, they together occupied more than twenty islands and reefs among the Spratly Islands (also known to the Chinese as Nansha Islands in the South China Sea). Vietnam started to engage in island infrastructure building and called for bids to develop oil and gas fields. It was also in the 1970s and 1980s that the Philippines occupied eight islands or reefs west of its Palawan Province and engaged in engineered modifications.

You might ask: Since the islands occupied by the two countries are related to the territorial disputes with China, did the US blame them for "changing the status quo", or accuse them for "impairing freedom of navigation" and being "aggressive"? It seems not, indeed! Not only has the US not done so, but also in recent years the US has been standing by their side to wrong or right China. In addition to actively cozy up to Vietnam, the US recently conducted a large scale joint military exercise with the Philippines in the vicinity of the Scarborough Shoal (also known to the Chinese as Huangyan Island in the South China Sea). Directed at China’s island-building activities, the US military aircraft and fleet repeatedly put on a show of force near the islands. Please answer me: From non-intervention to intervention, is the US not "changing the status quo"?

Vietnam and the Philippines occupied most of the Spratly Islands which had been China’s territory since early Chinese history.  But China did not use force to wrest these islands back. China was actually quite conciliatory and has requested one-on-one talks with them, but to no avail. So China picked three uninhabited reefs which protrude out of the water surface, and five submerged reefs (at high tide), and transformed them into islands. Since China was equipped with giant sand-dredging vessels and other heavy equipment, it took about less than two years to build huge man-made islands, which could not be accomplished by Vietnam and the Philippines over a few decades. However, because of this, the US said that China has "changed the status quo," "impaired freedom of navigation" and “possessed aggressiveness." Don’t you think this is wrong?

Diego Garcia

Some objective commentators could not accept this, they said: There is a small island in the Indian Ocean, called Diego Garcia, where had lived at least 1,500 indigenous people. Now, every one of them has left. It has become an important naval base for the US for controlling the Indian Ocean. Why? Who had forced the residents to move out of there? Interestingly, it was actually the US who bought the island and nearby small islets from the United Kingdom for 14 million US dollars and asked the British to force these people to move away. The British were very obedient, they caught these aboriginals and put them on boats and sent them to the Seychelles Islands one thousand nautical miles away. Do you think that this was not “changing the status quo?” Was it not depriving the freedom of navigation and human rights of these indigenous people? Was it not very aggressive?

International relations are such that an excuse can be found at will, whether it is weapons of mass destruction (in Iraq), the threat of genocide (in Libya), or impeding the freedom of navigation or disrupting the status quo (in the South China Sea). As long as a large enough propaganda machine can be used to fool the entire world, false pretenses can produce real results. From World War II until today, the US essentially has had the strongest military force and the largest propaganda machine to maintain what it considers the status quo. The US crushed the former Soviet Union which had had the control of the socialist camp; but this seemed not to be considered as changing the status quo. The US also depressed the economy of its ally Japan; but this also seemed to be not changing the status quo. Some commentators have even said that the US deliberately crushed the euro zone. True or not, we can leave it aside for the time being. In short, what the US is now directly against, very obviously, is China.

How to pivot to Asia?

Hillary Clinton, during her term as the US Secretary of State, together with the senior consultant of the State Department, the well-known Harvard professor Joseph Nye (the inventor of the concept of “soft power”), and the Assistant Secretary of State for the East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell, proposed a "pivot to Asia" strategy (this term was later considered too aggressive, so Obama changed it to “rebalancing towards Asia” strategy). They pointed out that the US has a huge geographical advantage: the east and west sides of the country are oceans; while the north and south sides have only Canada and Mexico, these two countries do not pose a threat. How about China? China has the world's most numerous neighboring countries, a total of fourteen, and has conflicts with several of them.

What strategy should be used by the US to implement the “Pivot to Asia” policy? It is of course to exploit China's internal contradictions and conflicts with its neighbors.

Although we would not dare to doubt the lofty status of the Nobel Peace Prize and believe that the selection of laureates definitely has not suffered underhand political manipulation, sometimes we, as ordinary men and women, just find it difficult to understand over-stretched noble ideas. For example: Why was the Peace Prize conferred to Obama while he was fighting two raging wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? It was also unclear why the Peace Prizes were awarded at the crucial moment to Liu Xiaobo (a Chinese literary critic, writer, professor, and human rights activist who called for political reforms and the end of communist single-party rule) and Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi (a Burmese social democratic stateswoman, politician, diplomat and author)? In retrospect, perhaps people still remember how Aung San Suu Kyi was warmly embraced by Hillary Clinton and Obama. In addition, before and after she received the award, she was showered with crowning glory in the UK, the US and throughout Europe. (But Aung San Suu Kyi seemed to have understood the profound meaning of the Peace Prize, and appeared indifferent to these courtesies; perhaps she was not bought.  Prior to the election victory of her National League for Democracy Party, she visited Beijing, and after winning the election her first invited guest to Myanmar was Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.)

China has fourteen neighboring countries: North Korea, Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam. In addition, across the nearby sea are these countries: Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia. In fact, we should also take into account other ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries such as Thailand and Singapore. In short, China's border environment is very complex and full of multifaceted conflicts of interests, which makes cooperation very challenging. If some foreign countries intend to provoke conflict, there should be a lot of opportunities, and the consequences could be very serious. For example, Scarborough Shoal, known to the Chinese as Huangyan Island, is a good case (it is an atoll, a ring or partial ring of islands formed by reefs surrounding a lagoon),

Huangyan Island: the US desired entry point    

Scarborough Shoal is one of the Macclesfield Islands (also known to the Chinese as Zhongsha Islands in the South China Sea). It protrudes alone from the deep sea. At high tide, it reveals only a few square meters of rock above the water surface, but just right beneath the shallow water, the base is very large. According to Baidu's data, the size is about 140 square kilometers, and the distance from the Philippines’ Subic Bay (which hosted the largest US naval base in Asia until 1992) is only 230 kilometers. Its strategic position is extremely important. The interior area of the atoll is a large bay, known as the lagoon. It is about 95 square kilometers. It is an excellent sheltered harbor and has good fishing grounds nearby. Of course, for China, it also has great potential for island-building.

Since 1978, China and the Philippines have continued disputes here, and the Philippines often seized fishing vessels of other countries, including fishing boats and fishermen from the mainland of China and Taiwan and demanded ransoms. In April 2014, the so-called Scarborough Shoal Incident broke out here. At that time, both sides (the mainland of China and the Philippines) were very nervous and they wanted to actively take care of the matter. But they did not foresee that the incident could have become a big event that would eventually change the pattern of the South China Sea struggle. The reason is that it has given the US a chance it has long coveted.

During that incident, the Philippines dispatched coastal defense ships which carried weapons and blocked more than a dozen Chinese fishing vessels inside the lagoon, in an attempt to hold them in custody. At this critical moment, China's two ocean surveillance ships rushed to the site, and confrontation started to escalate. Due to the serious situation, representatives from China and the Philippines started to negotiate in the capitals of both countries.

Peter Lee is a reporter (probably of Philippine-American nationality). Recently he published on his blog China Matters and the Hong Kong-based English website Asia Times an article entitled “South China Sea Dispute: Rewriting the history of Scarborough Shoal” (http://atimes.com/2016/04/south-china-sea-dispute-rewriting-the-history-of-scarborough-shoal/). In the article, he described the ins and outs of the circumstances surrounding this matter. The content is quite complicated and readers can refer to the original article. I am here to state it only briefly. The key is that he revealed how the US meddled in this situation and completely undermined the Sino-Philippine relations.

The problem is: bi-lateral resolution or internationalization of the issue?

Four key players were involved in this matter. The first was Philippine Senator Antonio Trillanes IV (he participated in the vice-presidential election in May this year), a confidant of President Benigno Aquino III. He was the only pro-China political heavyweight among the four. The second was Secretary of Foreign Affairs of the Philippines Alberto Del Rosario. He was anti-China and pro-US, hence Trillanes’ political opponent. The third was the previously mentioned US Assistant Secretary of State for the East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell. The last was the US Ambassador to the Philippines Harry Thomas. After the Scarborough Shoal standoff occurred, Aquino asked Trillanes to hold secret negotiations with the Chinese, hoping to achieve a peaceful settlement. Trillanes and the Chinese representatives including Fu Ying (she is the current vice minister of the Foreign Ministry of the People's Republic of China, PRC.) travelled back and forth between the capitals of these two countries, and held a total of 16 talks. Both sides agreed to withdraw from the Scarborough Shoal sequentially rather than simultaneously. This was because there were many ships inside the lagoon, and the mouth of the shoal was too narrow for a simultaneous withdrawal. They also agreed that after the withdrawal of both sides, they would discuss how to share the resources of the sea. An important condition raised by the Chinese side was not to internationalize the issue.

However, according to the evidence provided by Peter, Foreign Minister Rosario tried to obstruct the agreements reached by Trillanes with China. The US Ambassador to the Philippines Harry Thomas apparently received Campbell's instruction to call the Philippine Foreign Minister Rosario in the middle of the night. Thomas instructed Rosario to reject the agreements reached by Trillanes with China, and claimed that the vessels of the two countries must withdraw simultaneously. However, the reality was that the Philippine vessels had already withdrawn first. Then Rosario put forward the allegation that the Chinese vessels still stayed there and this was bad faith. So he maintained his consistent advocacy and internationalized the matter.

The inside information of this case was disclosed only in hindsight, that is, after Trillanes’ proposed agreement was rejected by the Philippine Senate. He revealed this to the Manila Star columnist Rigoberto Tiglao in a four-page “Aide Memoire”, part of which reads as follows:

 “PNoy [President Aquino] directed me to work on the sequential withdrawal of government ships inside the shoal. However, on the morning of June 4, PNoy called me to inform me that our BFAR [Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources] vessel has already left the shoal but China reneged on the agreement of simultaneous withdrawal of their ships, so two of them [were] still inside the shoal.

“I asked him who agreed with what, since I was just hammering out the details of the sequential withdrawal because the mouth of the shoal was too narrow for a simultaneous withdrawal. The President told me that Sec. del Rosario told him about the agreement reached in Washington.

 “This time I asked PNoy: ‘If the agreement was simultaneous withdrawal, why did we leave first?’ PNoy responded to this effect: “Kaya nga sinabihan ko si Albert kung bakit niya pinalabas yung BFAR na hindi ko nalalaman.” (“That’s why I asked Albert [del Rosario] why he ordered the BFAR vessels to leave without my permission.”)

Lee wrote: “Just to make it clear what happened: Trillanes is negotiating a sequential withdrawal as Aquino’s representative. Del Rosario, who is not conducting the negotiations, gets a phone call from the US (apparently in the middle of the night from US Ambassador to the Philippines Harry Thomas), orders a unilateral withdrawal without telling his own president, and accuses the PRC of violating an agreement for a simultaneous withdrawal.” Lee explained elsewhere in his article that this phone call was instructed by Campbell.

That is to say, a midnight phone call completely changed China-Philippine relations!

By Trillanes’ account, the sequential withdrawal agreement was still alive in early July. The final deliverable would be the Philippines not internationalizing the dispute by declining to raise it at the ASEAN Regional Forum in Cambodia, at which time the PRC would withdraw its last three ships. However, the Philippine side raised the issue, but the Forum was influenced by China and did not include the issue in the agenda, so the Philippine side decided to present it to the International Court of Arbitration. In this way, the China-Philippine relations suffered a falling out. As a result, China occupied the Scarborough Shoal and the Philippines decided to embrace the US.

Lee said that the Western media distorted the sequence of this incident and put the blame on China’s expansionism and aggressiveness.  So, in 2012, the US found a strategic entry point for pivoting to Asia and then the aircraft carriers came.

Aquino's mother in 1992 drove the US out of the two military bases in the Philippines, and now regretfully, Aquino has invited the US military back.

This is a real example of the US “pivot to Asia” strategy (started from “pivot to the Philippines"). Driving a wedge between China and its neighbors is the top priority of this strategy.

Conclusion

In 1986, a sensational world event occurred in the Philippines, that is, "people power" ousted the corrupt Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. The event was sparked by Aquino's father being shot and killed by Marcos’ man in the Manila airport. Aquino's widowed mother was chosen by the general public to compete in the campaign against Marcos. Marcos worried that he might be defeated, so he manipulated the ballots. This aroused public indignation and rallied their demonstrations. Marcos tried to suppress the demonstrations. Some people may still remember the touching scenes of Catholic nuns sitting on the street ground trying to block the tanks. In the end, the masses were victorious. The Marcos couple had to use military aircraft provided by the US to flee to Hawaii to spend their remaining years. Some people may also remember that rioting masses broke into the presidential palace and seized 3,000 pairs of shoes collected by Marcos’ wife, Imelda Romuáldez Marcos.

The US waited until the last minute to give up support for the dictator Marcos, so that, after Mrs. Aquino took office as the president, she and her supporters were very anti-American. She decided to discontinue the lease of two large US military bases in the Philippines: Clark Air Force Base and Subic Naval Base. In other words, in the first island chain containing China, there appeared a huge opening.

The current incumbent President Aquino did not bear in mind his parents' willpower in pursuing political autonomy. It is, in any case, regretful that he was manipulated by pro-American politicians like Rosario. Recalling the 2012 negotiations, Beijing probably did not have a plan to occupy the Scarborough Shoal, but only wanted to find out the proper way to share the marine resources with the Philippines. The portion of the Scarborough Shoal which is protruding out of the water surface is too small. Without spending great effort in building a man-made island, it would be hard to control the shoal. However, since the Philippines had asked for trouble, it almost forced Beijing to try to turn the Scarborough Shoal into a habitable island.

The Scarborough Shoal’s area has considerable potential to be expanded and the shoal can become an excellent port. Once the Chinese decides to build the island, it will become a great threat to the US hegemony in the South China Sea. This is the reason why the game played between the two countries will almost certainly be exacerbated.