By Dai Fan

The Philippines has kept taking petty actions on the South China Sea issue since the beginning of 2023. In particular, it has repeatedly made provocations in the waters off Ren'ai Jiao and Huangyan Island from August onwards, persistently seeking to deliver construction materials apart from supplies to the landing ship BRP Sierra Madre (LT-57) running aground Ren'ai Jiao in order to reinforce the dilapidated vessel and substantiate the fact of its illegal occupation in the reef.

Still feeling this event is not impactful enough, some people in the Philippines continue to incite nationalist sentiment in the country and hype up it in cooperation with some domestic and international media. One of such absurd and puzzling moves is that the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) released a video describing their marine personnel diving into the sea to cut the so-called Chinese buoy rope, but eventually got a slap in the face by the proof of manipulated video content.

In the past, the Philippine government focused on manipulating the legal and ally aspects to pursue its illegal rights and interests in the South China Sea and adopted an approach of avoiding confrontation at the military level, which confines the gaming and combats around the South China Sea within the scope of international public opinions in a large part. However, the current series of increasingly deflected actions of the Philippines are completely bewildering.

Since coming into power, the Marcos government has been claiming that the external interpretations of the Philippines overly fixate on the influence of great-power competition factors on their foreign policy, while ignoring their determination to safeguard its own national interests as a sovereign country. Despite the plausibility of this statement, another fact that needs to be emphasized is that any rational foreign policy is undoubtedly based on an accurate assessment of the national strength as well as a keen judgment of the diplomatic counterpart and international situation, rather than the simple clamor and manipulation of the public opinion.

Judging by some behaviors of the current Philippine administration demonstrated thus far, the country's comprehension of China leaves much to be desired compared with that of other ASEAN powers at least. Especially as the US has increasingly cajoled and resumed or even expanded cooperation on military security with the Philippines, the pro-American tone in the country has risen and shows signs of evolving into "political correctness" within this society.

Such a political and social ecology is prone to misleading the political and social elites and even the common people in the Philippines, further exacerbating their lack of rational understanding and balanced command of affairs related to China. It will also make the country's policy towards China, especially its stance on the South China Sea issue, seem odd amid the overall ASEAN seeks to reach a Code of Conduct (COC) in the South China Sea to manage and resolve differences in the region through dialogues.

But an obvious fact is that any strategic miscalculation by the Philippines in the South China Sea issue, whether egged on by extra-territorial powers or resulted from its own cognitive deficiency, may come at a cost to itself. China does not lack the means or strategic will to safeguard its sovereignty and legitimate rights and interests in the South China Sea.

All ASEAN countries including the Philippines are highly valued regional partners for China. For long, China has always wished to continue and maintain friendly relations and promote deepening bilateral cooperation on all fronts with Southeast Asian countries including the Philippines. China's appropriate tolerance towards the country's provocative actions in the South China Sea largely originates from China's consistent advocation for peaceful settlement of the South China Sea disputes and not to undermine the entire peaceful and stable environment in the region.

China loves and cherishes peace, but its overall history since the founding of the People's Republic of China has demonstrated that the nation dares to wield the sword in defense of its national sovereignty and security interests even during specific periods of limited national power.

(The author is Deputy Dean of the School of International Studies and Director of the Center for Philippine Studies, Jinan University)

Editor's note: Originally published on huanqiu.com, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.