Between a Rock and a Hard Place in the South China Sea

On Thitu, a tiny dot of coral reef and palm trees in the South China Sea about 300 miles off the coast of the Philippines, the inaugural Mrs. Kalayaan Pageant was the event of the night, the week, and quite possibly the month. When I was there in May, the entire island’s population, some 250 people, seemed to have gathered around a nautical-themed stage to see who would win the sash and crown. You might think that a local beauty contest would not involve geopolitics. You would be wrong.

“Given the current situation, if your child wanted to join the navy or coast guard, would you let them?” one of the judges asked a contestant who was dressed in a floor-length red gown and a tiara. “They give a lot to this community,” she responded, “so if that is what they want, they should do it.” The crowd applauded and cheered with approval.

The oblique reference to the “current situation” was lost on no one. As the pageant proceeded, more than a dozen Chinese-militia vessels loitered offshore; closest at hand, a sleek Chinese-coast-guard ship patrolled back and forth.

Thitu, the only land mass with a civilian population in the collection of sandbars, reefs, and islets known as the Spratly Islands, is on the front line of potential conflict. Vietnam, Taiwan, and China also all claim the 105-acre Thitu, but the Philippines’ sovereignty is reinforced by the Filipino settlers who live in a ramshackle village between an airstrip and a ribbon of beach, their livelihoods subsidized by government handouts and by Manila’s grant of easy government jobs. The pageant was part of a week-long festival meant to bring a touch of normalcy and entertainment to the island. Yet even aspiring beauty queens have to reckon with the looming menace.

Tensions in the South China Sea, one of the most contested and militarized waterways in the world, are long-running but have heightened considerably over the past year, as Beijing pursues a policy of expansionism. The Philippines—an archipelago of thousands of islands—is frequently a target of this belligerence. Chinese ships have rammed or blockaded Philippine vessels; in March, three Filipino-navy personnel were injured by a water cannon fired from a Chinese-coast-guard vessel.

Speaking at an international defense forum in Singapore last month, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. stated that any fatality could be tantamount to “an act of war.” Two days later, the Chinese defense minister warned that there is “a limit to our restraint.”

The U.S. has a mutual-defense pact with the Philippines, a former colony. As President Joe Biden builds an allied coalition that he hopes can counter China’s influence in the Pacific and deter a war over Taiwan, Marcos has increased American access to bases across the country and expanded military exercises with U.S. troops. For the first time, the U.S. temporarily moved an advanced long-range missile launcher to the Philippines during one such exercise this spring. So much anxiety for the West and its allies about Beijing’s bellicosity and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ambitions focuses on Taiwan—for good reason. Yet Washington has to stay vigilant, too, about what’s happening around Thitu. Any outbreak of hostilities there would have consequences far beyond the South China Sea.

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Reporting on the South China Sea has significant logistical complexities, not least because its contested nature imposes travel restrictions, typically leading to a reliance from afar on official government statements. Access to a hot spot like Thitu had eluded me until I learned last year about an unconventional package tour to the island.

In early May, I gathered with other tourists on a pier in southern Palawan, some 250 miles east of Thitu, to listen to a pre-trip briefing. Ken Hupanda worked for the municipality of Kalayaan, which encompasses the Philippine-claimed areas of the Spratlys, including Thitu. He began running trips to these islands last year. The aim was twofold: to diversify the almost nonexistent economy and to bolster the Philippines’ presence in the area.  

Hupanda warned that we would likely encounter a Chinese escort ship. He cautioned against making any provocative gestures toward it or posting content about it on social media that Chinese authorities could deem offensive.

The boat trip would, depending on the weather, take about 32 hours. The Lady Hadzraima II was a 57-foot wooden kumpit, a type of cargo vessel with a crescent-shaped hull that is typical in the Philippines. The ship had been retrofitted for tourists in a rudimentary way.  

My travel companions were all Filipino, among them a few lawyers, a retired grandmother, and a priest. For many, their sense of adventure was imbued with a streak of nationalism; the voyage, one told me, was one of the most important trips he could make as a Filipino. Another said that he wanted to visit Thitu as soon as possible. If he were to wait any longer, he joked, he might need a Chinese visa.

Beijing claims almost the entire South China Sea by means of an imaginary demarcation known as the “nine-dash line.” But the sea also contains some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes and fishing grounds, which many countries rely on. China’s boundary claim was struck down by the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague in 2016, though Beijing does not recognize the ruling.

For many hours after we embarked, the boat was accompanied only by schools of silvery flying fish skimming alongside the bow, but early the next morning, I awoke to see a gleaming white Chinese-coast-guard ship sailing a few hundred yards off our port side. China has the largest coast guard in the world, employing it as a maritime enforcer—and it is resented as such by many Filipinos, who have borne the brunt of its militarized, aggressive patrolling of the waters that China claims.

In the decade since it was formed, the Chinese coast guard has upended the traditional role of such naval branches, which has generally been limited to law enforcement and maritime safety. “You see China Coast Guard conduct themselves in ways that are inconsistent with that rule of law,” Admiral Linda Fagan, the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, said to reporters last month. “It is troubling to see.” The Chinese force said that this month, it will begin detaining foreigners accused of trespassing in the areas of the South China Sea that Beijing claims, a move that will further escalate tensions.  

My travel companions expressed understandable nervousness about the Zhaojun-class cutter, which not only dwarfed our craft but also carried a 76-millimeter naval gun on its deck. A week earlier, a similar Chinese ship had used a water cannon to blast another Philippine boat not far from where we were sailing. I learned later that during the night, our boat’s captain had received a warning call from the Chinese navy saying that we risked entering Chinese waters and needed to change course.

One of the tourists, who borrowed my binoculars to peer at the Chinese vessel, wondered aloud if the Chinese had sophisticated cameras on board that might be able to record images and identify us. This type of anxiety became a recurring theme: a begrudging awe of Beijing’s capabilities and technology, coupled with frustration and shame that the Philippines lagged China both economically and militarily. People reluctantly accepted that Manila needed the increased U.S. support it has received since Marcos shifted the country’s foreign policy to be more closely aligned with Washington. “I don’t think we are really capable of defending ourselves,” J. V. Ejercito, a Philippine senator who visited Thitu last month with military leaders, told me. Beijing, which has seethed at Manila’s turn toward the U.S., nevertheless failed to browbeat the senator and his companions into canceling their trip.

China accuses the Philippines of being an American pawn set on stirring up conflict at Washington’s behest. The U.S. decision to deploy the missile launcher this year had a “strong Cold War color,” China’s defense ministry said, and brought “huge risks of war into the region.”  

After shadowing us for several hours, sometimes drawing close, the cutter peeled away and sailed out of sight. Xi has said that China “will unswervingly follow the path of peaceful development, and always be a builder of world peace.” Yet here was the Chinese military, threatening a little tourist boat.

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As Thitu came into view late that afternoon, so too did the Chinese flotilla that local fishermen later told me is a constant presence around the island. A majority of these ships were disguised as fishing vessels, but they actually belonged to Beijing’s maritime militia, according to Gregory Poling of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who reviewed photos of the ships. Another Chinese-coast-guard craft, slightly smaller than the one we’d encountered previously, led the armada.  

After disembarking, I met Milenia Greganda and her 6-year-old daughter. Like more than three-quarters of Thitu’s residents, Greganda works for the local government—in her case, as a nurse’s aide. As part of the tour package, I would be staying in her home. The additional money that islanders can make in this way has helped ease some initial skepticism toward outsiders.  

That people lived on Thitu at all was the work of Eugenio Bito-onon Jr., a former municipal-planning officer who began visiting the island in 1997 and came up with the settlement program that started a few years later. “From the outset,” he told me, “this was a push for sovereignty.”  

Realyn Limbo, who runs the island’s school, told me the infrastructure had improved considerably from when she arrived, in 2015. A freshwater source is one of the island’s few natural blessings. But to begin with, Thitu had no mobile-phone coverage and no electricity. As for health services, the island has a dedicated nurse, but to give birth, for instance, expecting mothers must travel back to Palawan, a trip that can take up to three days by boat.

The island’s only doctor is attached to the Philippine Coast Guard, which keeps a small detachment on Thitu, as does the navy—a situation that illustrates the huge asymmetry between China’s resources and the Philippines’. Commodore Jay Tarriela, a spokesperson for the coast guard, told me that the South China Sea was too large and the Philippine fleet too small to permanently base a ship there. Despite a modest upgrade last year, the outpost had only a speedboat.

The threat posed by China has added a level of urgency to developing the island. A harbor was nearing completion, and workers were also constructing a terminal building at the airstrip. But the basic character of Thitu’s facilities was all too apparent: Destruction to trees and buildings from a 2021 typhoon that tore across the island was still visible. The Wi-Fi connection worked in only two places.

Bito-onon, who twice served as the island’s mayor, blamed the state of things on political corruption and infighting. For decades, he said, no one in the national government seemed to care about the island. The vibrant reef dotted with giant clams that he had once hoped would make the island an ecotourism destination has been decimated by Chinese, Vietnamese, and Philippine fishing operations. “Are we militarizing? Are we civilianizing?” he asked Manila, but never got an answer.

Meanwhile, China has invested heavily in fortifying its positions. For 10 years, Beijing has toiled at the herculean feat of building islands in the South China Sea with material dredged from the seafloor. Once the engineers are done, the military takes over. One such project is only 14 miles from Thitu, visible on a clear day with good binoculars. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Subi Reef, where land reclamation began in 2014, now amounts to a land mass of 976 acres, and possesses a sophisticated radar system and a battery of surface-to-air missile systems.

Everyone I spoke with on Thitu talked openly about the Chinese presence; most seemed to have grown uneasily accustomed to it. The islanders most affected—and most angry—were fishermen. The Chinese boats blocked access to their fishing areas, and they’d seen a marked falloff in their catch.

One morning, members of our tour went to watch a display mounted by the island’s fishing boats, decorated for the occasion with streamers and flags. The Chinese-coast-guard ship, apparently alarmed by the show, suddenly motored toward the island in an abrupt act of intimidation.

On my final day on Thitu, I paid two fishermen to take me out to see the Chinese ships up close. They insisted that I wear a hat, a hoodie, and sunglasses, to make it look as if I was a workmate. They urged me to be surreptitious if I used my phone to take pictures. The fishermen’s boat felt small and vulnerable as we weaved through the militia fleet. Although Beijing claims they are fishing vessels, I saw no activity on deck, and their fishing equipment was not in use. As we passed by one ship, a man emerged and began filming us.

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On Thitu, theories abounded about what China would do next to advance its interests. Some speculated that other island-building projects would eventually encroach further on Thitu. Most thought that Beijing’s strategic goal was to secure Reed Bank, an area east of Thitu believed to have substantial oil and gas reserves. Senator Ejercito told me he believes Beijing is “testing the tolerance” of the Philippines and its allies to see “if they will really step in” to defend the country.

Last month, Beijing nearly found out. At a Spratly Islands reef known as Second Thomas Shoal, Chinese-coast-guard forces seized supplies that had been air-dropped for Philippine troops stationed there on a grounded warship. The Chinese also impeded the medical evacuation of a sick soldier. The scene near the ship was chaotic and dangerous: Inflatable boats belonging to both sides circled and buzzed one another, and Philippine marines drew their weapons, before the two forces disengaged.

A Philippine Coast Guard official called China’s actions “barbaric and inhumane.” Echoing Marcos’s warning, he said that “the possibility of a death is very likely” if China continues acting in this manner. Because Beijing seems bent on so recklessly pursuing greater control of the South China Sea, Thitu’s fishermen and pageant contestants find themselves in a cold-war zone.