South China Sea: what can the Philippines do to counter Beijing’s island-building?

Beijing’s build-up of military bases in the heavily disputed waterway over the last 13 years represents a major strategic challenge for the Philippines, analysts say, as the country lacks the capacity to counter such developments militarily.

They argue Manila must now rely on diplomatic and legal measures to push back against China’s expansionism.

Navy spokesman Commodore Roy Trinidad said in a press briefing on Tuesday that China had built bases on Gaven Reef, Zhubi Reef, Fiery Cross Reef, which are outside the Philippines’ EEZ; and on Mischief Reef and Johnson South Reef, within the EEZ.

Trinidad said such bases had everything from airstrips and seaports to fuel depots and resting facilities for troops, giving Beijing the ability to easily position warships and aircraft in the West Philippine Sea, Manila’s term for the part of the South China Sea that lies within its EEZ.

“It will be easy now to project their forces in the West Philippine Sea,” Trinidad said, noting that the Chinese vessels deployed to interrupt Manila’s rotation and resupply missions to an outpost on the nearby Second Thomas Shoal had come from those bases.

“If they didn’t have that staging area, they would have to come all the way from mainland China. That’s about 600 nautical miles going to the Philippines EEZ. It’s far. and their capability to stay longer at sea would be less,” he said.

Abdul Rahman Yaacob, a research fellow in the Southeast Asia Programme at the Lowy Institute based in Sydney, said from a political point of view, China’s fortification of bases in the South China Sea reinforced its claims to that territory.

“At the military level, the bases project China’s military power across the South China Sea and sustain their naval presence in those