Advertisement
China’s military
ChinaMilitary

South China Sea: Beijing should respond to ‘blatant provocation’ after US-Philippines joint military drills: report

  • Chinese think tank calls for strong response, ‘countermeasures’ after Balikatan exercise sent ‘increasingly dangerous’ signal on Taiwan
  • Annual US-Philippines joint combat drill, which ended last week, shifted focus northward towards Taiwan Strait, according to analysis

Reading Time:2 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
49
A Philippine soldier guards a US military hovercraft in Palawan on May 1 during the annual Balikatan joint military exercises. The annual combat drill this year took place outside the Philippines’ 12 nautical mile territorial waters for the first time. Photo: Kyodo
Hayley Wongin Beijing
China should respond strongly to “blatant provocation” after an annual US-Philippine annual military exercise in the South China Sea put unprecedented focus on Taiwan, a Beijing think tank has said.
Advertisement
The assessment by the South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative – which has published annual reports about US military activities in the disputed waters since 2019 – was made in an analysis released on Monday.
The report said that this year’s Balikatan military exercise, which ended last week, had “envisaged an escalation of disputes in the South China Sea and contingencies in the Taiwan Strait”.

The area of focus had “shifted from the western waters of the Philippines in previous years to cover both the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait [this year], which evidently exposed the attempt by the United States and the Philippines to instigate coordination between the two seas”, the report said.

A US Army CH-47 helicopter flies over the northern Philippines during a joint military exercise on May 6. Photo: AP
A US Army CH-47 helicopter flies over the northern Philippines during a joint military exercise on May 6. Photo: AP

“This also means that the US-Philippines military alliance now has wider coverage, has become more offensive, and will have an increasingly negative impact on the regional situation.”

Advertisement

China should respond to the “frequent provocations in the South China Sea” and Manila’s increasingly “dangerous” policy direction with a strong tone and countermeasures, the report added.

Advertisement