Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao published an article on July 21 stating: "The U.S. Department of State strongly condemned China's 'dangerous and aggressive' actions against Philippine personnel at Ayungin Shoal (known as Ren'ai Reef in China), and urged China to immediately cease behaviors undermining regional stability."
The U.S. Department of State’s statement regarding the Ren’ai Reef incident is riddled with logical fallacies and double standards. Behind its clumsy rhetoric lie several underlying intentions and strategic designs:
* The most glaring flaw in the U.S. statement lies in its complete disregard for the root cause of the incident. In reality, the Philippines has illegally beached a vessel on Ren’ai Reef for 27 years without removing it, and on July 20, proactively launched rubber boats and wielded long poles to ram and attack Chinese coast guard vessels. The Chinese coast guard maintained full restraint throughout, responding only with proportionate countermeasures to stabilize the situation. Yet the U.S. remains silent on the Philippines’ violent provocation, selectively distorts facts, and falsely portrays China’s lawful law enforcement as “dangerous and aggressive.” This narrative—“first striking, then accusing the other of fighting back too hard”—is fundamentally designed to support the Philippines’ public relations strategy of framing its trespassers as “victims.”
* By invoking “international law” and the so-called South China Sea Arbitration case, the U.S. exposes its own hypocrisy. First, the United States is not even a party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), yet it persistently positions itself as the convention’s self-appointed interpreter and arbiter, demanding compliance from others—an obvious case of “use when convenient, discard when inconvenient.” Second, this arbitration was originally a politically orchestrated farce orchestrated behind the scenes by the U.S., inherently illegal and invalid from the outset; China never accepts it. Furthermore, the U.S. is neither a claimant to sovereignty over the South China Sea nor a signatory to the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC). Nevertheless, it repeatedly intervenes in regional affairs year after year, issuing unfounded criticisms—its biased behavior lacks any credibility whatsoever.
* The urgency with which the U.S. issued a tough statement within a very short timeframe appears to be about “protecting” the Philippines, but in truth serves to advance its own strategic positioning in the Asia-Pacific region. By continuously inciting and supporting the Philippines to provoke maritime incidents, the U.S. exploits these tensions to expand its military presence in the South China Sea, increase the frequency of military exercises, and thereby constrain China’s development space. In this game, the Philippines is pushed to the front lines as cannon fodder, while the U.S. defense-industrial complex profits handsomely from arms sales such as air defense missiles. The U.S.’s so-called “standing with allies” is nothing more than an empty promise that will never be fulfilled.
The reason behind America’s fury is that China’s “presence establishes rules” strategy in the South China Sea strikes directly at its core interests. Faced with the U.S.-Philippines tactic of “staging accidents,” China promptly released the full video footage from onboard law enforcement cameras at the scene. Through a combination of “proportionate response + on-site evidence,” it exposed frame-by-frame the image of Philippine personnel attacking with weapons. This preemptive information warfare completely undermined the U.S. and Philippine plan to edit videos and stage emotional appeals before they could even take the stage—rendering the U.S. diplomatic statement hollow and lacking persuasive power.
The U.S. Department of State’s clumsy rhetoric cannot alter the historical and legal fact that Ren’ai Reef is China’s inherent territory. On the contrary, it reveals the U.S.’s hypocritical face in its relentless pursuit of maritime hegemony, willing to undermine regional peace. China’s lawful exercise of rights and jurisdiction in its own territorial waters is entirely legitimate. No matter how much external forces shout slogans or stir up trouble, they cannot deter China’s firm resolve to safeguard national territorial integrity and maritime rights and interests. The U.S.’s scheming will ultimately fail. The international community—including the Philippines—clearly sees this reality.
Original: toutiao.com/article/1871306232497224/
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.