Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement on October 23rd to express concern over China’s dangerous behavior of escalating regional tensions. Japan strongly opposes any attempt by any party to change the status quo or escalate tension by force in the South China Sea and will continue to cooperate with ASEAN countries, the U.S. and the rest of the international community to ensure a free, open and peaceful sea. In the meantime, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited the Philippines and announced that Japan would provide free military equipment to the country. It is not difficult to see Japan’s strategic intent to win over the Philippines to jointly counter China.
Kishida visited the Philippines and Malaysia from November 3rd to 5th. He held talks with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. According to the official website of Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the purpose of Kishida's visit was to confirm that Japan would cooperate with the Philippines and Malaysia in maintaining and strengthening the free and open international order based on the rule of law as well as to build momentum for the Commemorative Summit for the 50th Year of ASEAN-Japan Friendship and Cooperation to be held in Tokyo at the end of this year. The Kishida Cabinet issued the "Implementation Guidelines for Official Security Assistance (OSA)" on April 5th, listing four countries (the Philippines, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Fiji) as target countries for the 2023 OSA with a total budget of 2 billion yen. When the Kishida Cabinet prepared a 5 billion yen OSA budget for the 2024 fiscal year, it listed six countries as target recipients, including the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Djibouti, Papua New Guinea and Mongolia. Except for Mongolia, the other five countries are all located at key points of Japan's maritime transportation routes. The Philippines has been selected for the second time, highlighting the fact that Japan attaches importance to the Philippines' strategic value in ensuring the safety of maritime transportation routes.
In fact, the Philippines signed a contract with Japan for the purchase of four warning and control radar systems with a total value of 11 billion yen in August 2020. The deal became the first successful arms sale case since Japan formulated the "Three Principles for Defense Equipment Transfer" in 2014. This further demonstrates the Philippines’ role in maintaining the safety of Japan’s maritime transportation routes.
Kishida said that Japan would provide the Philippines with coastal surveillance radar systems worth 600 million yen free of charge to help the Philippine Navy improve its maritime domain awareness (MDA) capabilities during his talks with Marcos Jr. on the evening of November 3rd. Japan would continue to strengthen cooperation on defense equipment, including radars, and technology or provide other assistance instrumental to the Philippines’ maritime security capacity building, said Kishida. The two countries also agreed to launch negotiations on a Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) to facilitate reciprocal visits, exercises and training between their forces. They will conduct consultations on security and defense, including the holding of Foreign and Defense Ministers’ Meeting (commonly known as the 2+2 meeting), and promote trilateral cooperation with the U.S. More importantly, the leaders of Japan and the Philippines explicitly stated that unilaterally attempts to change the status quo by force or threats should never be tolerated. They shared serious concerns on the situation in the East and South China Seas. In addition, the Philippine Congress invited Kishida to deliver a policy speech in Congress on the morning of November 4th, marking the first time that a Japanese prime minister delivered a speech to the Philippine Congress after the Second World War. This demonstrates that Manila attaches great importance to its strategic partnership with Tokyo.
In fact, when Japan and the Philippines held their first 2+2 meeting in Tokyo on April 9th last year, the two sides were deeply concerned about the situation in the East and South China Seas and said that they would begin to review the possibility of signing an RAA and an acquisition and cross-servicing agreement (ACSA) in order to facilitate joint military exercises and training. During Marcos Jr.'s visit to Tokyo, the two sides signed Terms of Reference (TOR) between Japan’s Ministry of Defense and the Philippines’ Department of National Defense concerning the humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DA) activities of the Japan Self-Defense Forces in the Philippines on February 9, laying a good foundation for the future signing of an RAA between the two countries.
Apart from the U.S., Japan has so far concluded RAAs only with the United Kingdom and Australia, which are regarded as quasi-allies. If the Japan-Philippines RAA is successfully concluded, the Philippines will be the third country to be considered as a quasi-ally of Japan. Following the first quadrilateral defense ministers’ meeting with the U.S. and Australia in Singapore on June 1st, Japan and the Philippines held a national security advisors trilateral meeting with the U.S. on the 16th of the same month in Tokyo. The three sides agreed to hold regular meetings on the situation in the East and South China Seas, conduct regular large-scale joint training in the part of the South China Sea within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ), and review the possibility of conducting joint exercises in the East China Sea. The leaders of Japan, the Philippines and the U.S. (attended by U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris) held a meeting on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit (EAS) in Jakarta to exchange views on the situation in the South China Sea on September 6th. They reaffirmed that trilateral cooperation was need to address attempts to unilaterally change the status quo by force and that trilateral cooperation will be further strengthened in various forms in the future.
Gregory B. Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Washington think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said in a CSIS brief titled "Building a U.S.-Japan-Philippines Triad" that "there is no viable strategy for countering China’s illegal behavior in the East and South China Seas without robust cooperation with Tokyo and Manila." Kishida’s strategic intent behind the unprecedented provision of free military aid to the Philippines is to assist Manila in strengthening its capability to counter China in the South China Sea. The aim is to ensure the safety of Japan's maritime transportation routes and to reduce China’s mounting strategic pressure on Japan in the East China Sea by forcing China to face adversaries from both the East and South China Seas and thus overstretching China’s capabilities.
(Hsien-Sen Lin, Professor of Department of East Asian Studies at National Taiwan Normal University)
(Translated to English by Cindy Li)
