In the middle of the night, a CBS News crew onboard the Cape Engaño woke to the sound of alarms. The Philippine sailors directed the media team to put on life jackets while the crew prepared to defend themselves with clubs against a potential Chinese boarding. About 60 nautical miles from the Philippine coastline, this Philippine Coast Guard ship and a ship from the China Coast Guard collided near the Sabina Shoal, a low-tide elevation feature well within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. The impact left a meter-long hole in the Philippine Coast Guard ship’s hull. By the time the Cape Engaño extricated itself from the encirclement of Chinese ships, Beijing had already released a statement blaming Manila for the incident. To contest the Chinese narrative, the Philippines could rely on the independent testimony of the CBS News crew who were on board the ship at the time of the collision. Further, the Philippine Coast Guard released pictures of the damage to their ship’s hull, denouncing China’s actions as “unlawful and aggressive.” This incident reflects an example of the Philippines’ “transparency strategy” at work.
Manila is implementing a deterrence posture that imposes reputational costs to China for its use of “gray-zone tactics” in the South China Sea. We use the term gray-zone tactics to define “a strategic approach that operates between conventional warfare and peacetime competition.” The Philippines’ “below-the-threshold” approach to deterrence uses non-military means to impose costs, limiting the risk of escalation while establishing credible threats. Reportedly, Manila has integrated transparency initiatives as a component of its January 2024 Comprehensive Archipelagic Defense Concept.
Manila’s transparency strategy disseminates raw footage and promotes independent reporting to expose dangerous China Coast Guard and maritime militia actions at sea. This approach aims to garner domestic and international support for the Philippines’ stance against China in the South China Sea, as Manila aims to protect its sovereign rights under the U.N. Convention on the Laws of the Sea. The Philippines is not the first government to integrate journalists onboard its vessels to document the unprofessional and dangerous behaviors of the People’s Liberation Army, China Coast Guard, and China’s maritime militia. However, the Philippines’ systematic use of media reporting as a clearly defined and consistently implemented strategy is novel.
Manila’s Transparency Strategy
The official positions of the Philippines on South China Sea issues gain credibility when coupled with the photographic and video evidence made widely available. These positions also gain credibility through the legitimacy of independent journalism. The Philippines’ strategy discredits the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ narratives about events and proves the culpability of China in South China Sea confrontations, thereby imposing costs to Beijing’s international reputation. Although China consistently denies responsibility for what its own actions have caused, its denials are increasingly untenable in the face of evidence made available by independent reporting and the Philippine Coast Guard.
Examples of the transparency strategy at work are plentiful. In October 2023, a journalist from ABS-CBN News was onboard a Philippine Coast Guard vessel and documented a Chinese flotilla intercepting and ramming a resupply mission to the Sierra Madre, a World War II–era ship that the Philippines deliberately beached on Second Thomas Shoal to function as an outpost in 1999. In April 2024, a reporter from The Telegraph was onboard a Philippine Coast Guard ship navigating near Scarborough Shoal when a China Coast Guard vessel began firing a watercannon while another China Coast Guard vessel performed blocking maneuvers. In August 2024, the Philippine Coast Guard released footage that undeniably displayed dangerous maneuvers on the part of the China Coast Guard, such as directly ramming Philippine vessels.
It is important to observe whether the governments of other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations take inspiration from Manila’s transparency strategy. The Indonesian Maritime Security Agency released footage of an incident in October 2024 where one of its vessels drove away a China Coast Guard vessel that was operating within the Indonesian exclusive economic zone off the Natuna Islands. This level of transparency is quite unusual when compared to the responses of other littoral South China Sea states. Indonesia and Malaysia mainly protest China’s expansive maritime claims diplomatically, such as through notes verbales (i.e., semi-formal diplomatic communications) or by having their foreign ministries refute Chinese-state publications that contradict their maritime claims. Hanoi is more forthright than Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur: Vietnam has historically confronted China in the South China Sea, as evident in the 1988 Johnson South Reef skirmish and in multiple standoffs in the 2010s. Hanoi also uses legal means and has previously published footage of confrontations. However, in 2024, Hanoi was more cautious about publicizing South China Sea flashpoints (with exceptions), rendering Manila’s systematic use of media salient compared to other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Imposing Costs Below the Threshold
The concept of the gray zone is a subject of debate. One author argued in 2015 that analysts ought to abandon the concept altogether. In these pages, two authors have engaged Chinese primary sources to argue that Chinese military leaders conceptualize the use of military force on a spectrum. They emphasize that the term gray-zone is absent from Chinese sources. However, the U.S. Department of Defense relies on this term to understand China’s strategic approach to its adversaries, and so do analysts who work on Russian and Iranian foreign policy. The common use of the term is indicative of the concept’s value in describing events below the threshold of war. Although scrutiny of the concept is important, fundamentally, China’s actions in the South China Sea deliberately operate in the ambiguous zone between war and peace, which is denoted by the concept. Therefore, despite some conceptual debate, the central policy challenge remains: how to deter Chinese military confrontations that occur below the threshold?
Gray-zone tactics are effective because they aim to circumvent a state’s defensive commitments. While all states are committed to defending themselves against aggression, there are uncertainty gaps as to the exact “red lines” that the state will initiate conflict over. Thomas Schelling wrote: “There is a threshold below which the commitment is just not operative, and even that threshold itself is usually unclear.” Commitments are eroded when these gaps are exploited by the aggressor and the defender does not respond, as it sets the precedent that such actions will be left unpunished. Despite the disruptiveness of China’s gray-zone tactics, China has faced relatively few consequences for using them because the below-the-threshold character of these tactics evade punishment. Manila’s transparency strategy aims to correct this by imposing costs and therefore direct consequences, affecting Beijing’s strategic calculus when it considers using gray-zone tactics to achieve its foreign policy goals.
Manila’s approach is therefore a nuanced means of imposing costs to produce a deterrent. Conventional deterrence measures typically include increasing military capabilities and developing stronger alliance commitments (which the Philippines has also committed to).
Proposals for enhanced Philippine deterrence have focused on the conventional approach. Indeed, there are calls for the United States to reassert its commitments to defending its ally, arguing that Washington ought to consistently warn Beijing not to set in motion Article 5 of the United States–Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty. Derek Grossman notes the option of updating the treaty so that gray-zone aggression would trigger it. There are also various calls for enhancing United States assistance to Philippine resupply operations to the Sierra Madre, with the aim to “undermine China’s confidence that it can comfortably stay in the gray zone.” Herzinger has gone further to argue for the establishment of a combined forward operating base on Second Thomas Shoal.
These proposals rely on improving the conventional deterrence posture that gray-zone tactics are already designed to circumvent. Arguably, the U.S.–Philippine alliance is preventing conventional military attacks and imposing a ceiling on the intensity of the means used by Beijing. But China has resorted to gray-zone tactics precisely because these tactics fall marginally below the ceiling of alliance and military deterrence. This is why the transparency strategy is effective, as it imposes costs to below-the-threshold activities.
Deterring Below the Threshold
The Philippines’ transparency strategy is an epitome of establishing a deterrent targeted at gray-zone tactics. Manila’s strategy deters China’s tactics by challenging Beijing’s international reputation and the credibility of China’s diplomatic positions, which hold that China abides by international law and is “Committed to Peace, Stability, and Order in the South China Sea.” In the long run, the Philippines’ strategy could cause Beijing’s decision-makers to place a ceiling on the intensity of the gray-zone tactics that China exerts against the Philippines. The logic that underlies the Philippines’ transparency strategy should be a source of inspiration to policymakers and strategists that aim to effectively respond to gray-zone tactics.
Kurtis H. Simpson, Ph.D. is a senior defence scientist at Defence Research and Development Canada’s Centre for Operational Research and Analysis, specializing in the Indo-Pacific. The Centre for Operational Research and Analysis provides strategic analysis and joint targeting expertise to Canada’s Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces. Over his career, Simpson has worked on Indo-Pacific affairs at Global Affairs Canada, the Privy Council’s Office, and the Department of National Defence.
Raphael Racicot is a student researcher at Defence Research and Development Canada’s Centre for Operational Research and Analysis. An ex-officer in the Canadian Armed Forces, Raphael is pursuing an M.A in International Affairs at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University.
Jacob Benjamin is a student researcher at Defence Research and Development Canada’s Centre for Operational Research and Analysis. Jacob is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Waterloo and the Balsillie School of International Affairs. Jacob’s personal work on the Indo-Pacific has appeared in International Journal, Canadian Naval Review, and The Diplomat.
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of National Defence or any other organization of the Canadian government.
Image: Philippine Coast Guard via Facebook.
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