Joe Biden won’t soften US stance on South China Sea, experts say

While his administration will be more civil than Trump’s, Washington will continue freedom of navigation operations in the disputed waterway, analysts say

Biden has over the years become increasingly critical of Beijing, calling President Xi Jinping a ‘thug’ and attacking China’s actions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang

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The USS Blue Ridge (LCC-19) anchored off Manila Bay in 2019. File photo: AP

Published: 11:00pm, 9 Nov 2020Updated: 4:46am, 10 Nov 2020

The United States will take a far more civil and consensus-driven approach to international relations under Joe Biden’s presidency, but while the “eccentric” and “destabilising” anti-China rhetoric will be gone, analysts say, his administration is likely to be as tough as President Donald Trump’s on issues such as the South China Sea.

“Given Biden’s background [as a veteran lawmaker], we will see more heads brought to bear on the problems worldwide,” said Professor Jay Batongbacal, director of the University of the Philippines Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea, at a virtual forum on Monday organised by the Foreign Correspondents’ Association of the Philippines.

Southeast Asia specialist Carl Thayer, also speaking at the event, said there would be less pressure on regional states to take sides amid the US-China tensions.

The US alliance with Japan and South Korea would be “less antagonistic” under Biden, whose officials were likely to hold “informal talks over coffee” with stakeholders to “come up with a strategy to push back” against China, said Thayer, emeritus professor of politics and visiting fellow at the University of New South Wales.

Both experts said Washington was likely to continue its policy of holding freedom of navigation operations (FONOPS) in the South China Sea, and also to deepen efforts to include the Philippine-held Kalayaan Island Group in the contested waterway by expanding the definition of the word “Pacific” in the US-Philippine-Mutual Defence Treaty (MDT).

Members of the Democrats Abroad Philippines hold slogans with images of President-elect Joe Biden in Makati, the Philippines. Photo: AP

Under the pact, signed in August 1951, an armed attack “on the island territories under its jurisdiction in the Pacific Ocean, its armed forces, public vessels or aircraft in the Pacific” would trigger a mutual response of aid.

Thayer said that the treaty was signed before the Philippines made claims to the Kalayaan Island Group, which includes Pag-Asa island, a region where Chinese fishing vessels and coastguard ships have reportedly been swarming in recent years. Under the Obama administration, he said, Washington’s position was that it could not guarantee the treaty covered that particular area, because the Pacific region stopped on the east coast of the Philippines.