Standing with the Phl

When I was still a regular visitor to China, one mark of that country’s dizzyingly rapid economic progress that I noticed was the disappearance of bicycles from the streets of Beijing, and their replacement with cars.

Noteworthy was the high number of pricey German-made luxury vehicles: Mercedes Benz and BMW were preferred brands. Volkswagen’s Touareg SUV was also popular.

A visit to the northeastern city of Qingdao was also memorable. It’s home to China’s famous Tsingtao brewery, which was founded in 1903 by German and British merchants. If the Chinese resented the 16-year German occupation, you wouldn’t see it from how much Qingdao resembles a European city rather than a Chinese one.

I can imagine economic / trade ties to be considerable between the biggest economies of Asia and Europe.

So I find it significant that for the first time in 20 years, Germany has two warships – the frigate Baden-Württemberg and combat support ship Frankfurt am Main – currently on port call in Manila, as part of a freedom-of-navigation deployment in the South China Sea and the greater Indo-Pacific. The vessels had sailed from South Korea to Manila through the Taiwan Strait, raising the hackles of Beijing, which claims the strait (and all waters around it, for that matter) as its own.

During a 2021-2022 naval deployment, Berlin reaped domestic criticism for skirting the Taiwan Strait to avoid ruffling the feathers of Beijing. This time, Germany has decided to stand with its allies in emphasizing the nature of the strait as international waters.

I couldn’t attend the reception last night on the Frankfurt am Main. But on the eve of the port call, German Ambassador Andreas Pfaffernoschke wrote in these pages last Sunday that his government considered the 2016 ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration to be binding on the parties concerned.

That’s the arbitral ruling that defined the Philippines’ maritime entitlements and sovereign rights in the
South China Sea, based on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Also based on UNCLOS, the arbitral court invalidated Beijing’s nine-dash-line claim over nearly the entire SCS.

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The title of the ambassador’s article says it all: “German Navy port call in Manila: We stand firm in protecting the international rules-based order.”

He expressed concern over the recent “dangerous clashes” and incidents between China and the Philippines in the SCS, at sea and in the air.

It wasn’t the first time, of course, that Germany has issued such a statement. The Group of Seven industrialized economies, including Germany, previously issued statements describing the arbitral award as binding on the parties, and calling for compliance. The G-7 as a group, along with several of its individual members, have done the same, emphasizing the importance of abiding by a rules-based international order.

This year, as China intensified its harassment of Philippine vessels, ramming our ships, blinding our aircraft with flares and using military-grade water cannons and laser pointers to shoo away Filipinos, several G-7 members plus Australia have also issued statements of condemnation.

When Japanese Ambassador Endo Kazuya condemned in a social media post the China Coast Guard’s harassment last month of a vessel of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, the Chinese embassy reacted with a strongly worded diplomatic note.

There was a time when the ambassadors in Manila of China, Japan and South Korea held regular lunches or dinners, promoting friendly ties and peaceful coexistence among their countries. But this was before Xi Jinping began picking fights with China’s friends.

So far, I haven’t heard of the Chinese embassy protesting the statements of Germany’s top diplomat in Manila about the South China Sea.

The goodwill visit of the German warships comes on the heels of port calls in Manila or visits in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of naval vessels of Australia, Canada, France, India, Italy and Mexico (navy training ships), Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom.

Their governments have made it clear that the visits are meant to emphasize freedom of navigation and the importance of adherence to a rules-based international order.

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As I have previously written, China prospered by embracing many of the aspects of that international order. But now it’s going rogue on compliance with UNCLOS, which it has ratified, and the international arbitration based on this convention.

Perhaps Beijing thinks it will get a free pass on its defiance of UNCLOS, in the same way that the world has largely looked the other way with regard to its human rights record.

The global track record in upholding universal human rights, however, is far more complicated than a single country wanting to greedily grab the entire South China Sea and all other bodies of water around it.

Beijing under Xi Jinping has also spooked those whose trade, investments and people-to-people engagement allowed China to become the world’s second largest economy in less than half a century.

Today, several of these major partners are actively decoupling from the Chinese economy, to reduce their vulnerability to Beijing’s economic coercion or blackmail.

“One thing is crystal clear: the legal issues underlying the disputes in the EEZ of the Philippines have been finally resolved,” Ambassador Pfaffernoschke wrote, citing the arbitral ruling based on UNCLOS. The ruling, he wrote, “is legally binding on the parties. Germany stands with the Philippines.”

We look forward to seeing what “standing with the Philippines” might entail.