The Philippines government has changed its strategy from pretending that China isn’t acting like a territory-grabbing bully in the South China Sea to routinely publicizing the bigger country’s incursions.
In an April 2023 piece for The Diplomat, Jay Tristan Tarriela writes that under the previous government of the Philippines, incidents involving Chinese aggression were publicly reported only when particularly severe, as in the case of China’s sinking a fishing boat or China’s use of a water cannon against a Philippines army vessel “in a bid to block a mission to resupply Filipino troops stationed on Second Thomas Shoal.”
Moreover, some incidents were either underemphasized or denied entirely when reported by international media outlets.
However, under the current leadership of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., there has been a notable shift after the laser-pointing incident. The PCG [Philippine Coast Guard] now publicly reports the swarming of CMM [Chinese Maritime Militia] vessels within the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), and has even publicized the presence of the People’s Liberation Army Navy ship within the territorial sea of Thitu Island. One noteworthy development is the PCG’s decision to embed journalists and media reporters on their Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) flights to disseminate accurate information not only to the Filipino public but also to the global community.
In the ”laser-pointing incident,” a China Coast Guard vessel pointed a military-grade laser at a Philippine Coast Guard vessel.
Reporting China’s aggression is better than not reporting it. It won’t go away if unreported, and the scope of what China is doing won’t be accurately conveyed if some country governments remain silent about it. The Chinese government won’t be deterred if its victims pretend that it is not doing what it is doing to expand its control over areas of the South China Sea.
