The rusting Philippine ship forcing Joe Biden and his Asia allies to focus on China

A rusting vessel stranded on a reef in the South China Sea will be among the geopolitical flashpoints under scrutiny when Joe Biden holds historic summits with his Japanese and Philippine counterparts this week in Washington.

The common theme will be China and its growing assertiveness in the region — and the US president is sending a clear message to Beijing that Washington is bolstering its alliances in the Indo-Pacific.

At the first meeting, with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Wednesday, the two leaders will announce a plan to implement the most significant upgrade to the alliance since the nations signed a mutual defence treaty in 1960. The next day, they will meet President Ferdinand Marcos Jr for the first US-Japan-Philippines trilateral summit.

The meetings come amid the allies’ mounting alarm at China’s actions in the region, from military activity around Taiwan to incursions in waters near the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea that are administered by Japan but claimed by China, which calls them the Diaoyu.

A source of deepening concern is the Second Thomas Shoal, a reef in the Spratly Islands inside the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

Chinese coastguard ships have used water cannons and other aggressive measures to stop the Philippines from supplying marines stationed on the Sierra Madre, a rusting ship that has been lodged on the reef for 25 years.

Manila ran the vessel aground in 1999 to bolster its claim to the contested reef and routinely sends boats to resupply the marines. China accuses the Philippines of bringing construction materials to reinforce the ship.

China claims sovereignty over most of the South China Sea and is taking aggressive action towards the Philippines at the shoal. It accuses Manila of reneging on what it says was a deal years ago to remove the ship from the reef.

Some US experts believe Beijing wants to remove the Sierra Madre and build a military outpost — as it has done elsewhere in the South China Sea — to provide a strategic foothold close to American forces deployed in the Philippines for any war over Taiwan involving the US and China.

Admiral John Aquilino, head of US Indo-Pacific Command, said on Tuesday that he was “very, very concerned” about “dangerous and illegal” Chinese actions around the reef.

The US and its allies — Japan, Australia and the Philippines — on Sunday held their first joint military exercises inside the Philippines’ EEZ, in an effort to boost deterrence against China, Aquilino told the Lowy Institute think-tank in Sydney.

US officials recently told the Financial Times that Biden would use appearances at the summits to warn China that the mutual defence treaty between the US and the Philippines extended to the Sierra Madre.

China accuses Washington of interfering in a bilateral issue, but the US counters that it has a duty to help an ally. Beijing is also angry at Marcos, who has taken a tougher stance than his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte.

“Manila needs to build up its relations with the US and its allies because, as a small country, it alone cannot match China,” said Jay Batongbacal, a South China Sea expert at the University of the Philippines.

Marcos is taking a tougher stance because China has become more aggressive in the area despite efforts by Duterte to build closer ties with Beijing.

“The current Marcos administration has realised the futility of submission to China’s demands and decided to take a different track,” Batongbacal said.

After the water cannon incidents, Marcos said he would implement a “countermeasure package” against China to counter its “open, unabating, and illegal, coercive, aggressive and dangerous attacks”.

“We seek no conflict with any nation . . . but we will not be cowed into silence, submission or subservience,” Marcos added.

The tensions over the Second Thomas Shoal are just the latest example of how Chinese actions in the region and US-China frictions are drawing in other countries in Asia.

Rahm Emanuel, US ambassador to Japan, said the battle was between two visions. China asserts that Washington is meddling in its “backyard”, while the US says it has long been a Pacific power and will continue to work even more closely with its partners to ensure regional peace and stability.

“Countries in the region are betting long on America and even more so as China is in endless conflict and confrontation with multiple countries all at once,” Emanuel said.

Tokyo’s reaction to China’s threat has been a historic strategic shift that has brought it even closer to Washington. For example, it plans to double defence spending over five years and has pledged to buy 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles from the US, giving it the capability to hit targets in China.

Biden and Kishida will announce this week that the US plans to restructure its command in Japan to facilitate smoother planning and co-ordination for military contingencies — particularly a conflict with China over Taiwan.

“Former prime minister [Shinzo] Abe’s idea was to move the Japanese national security structure into the 21st century and they are doing that — in response to their growing concern with aggressive Chinese behaviour,” said Michael Mullen, a former chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff.

Richard Armitage, a former US deputy secretary of state, said Japan was the most important ally, particularly because it helped the US overcome the “tyranny of distance” presented by the great expanse of the Pacific.

“Former ambassador Mike Mansfield used to say that Japan was our greatest partner ‘bar none’. That was true 40 years ago and is true in spades now,” said Armitage. “Without our defence relationship with Japan we could not protect our interests in the Indo-Pacific region.”

To overcome the “tyranny of distance”, the US is shifting from a hub and spoke network with allies to a “latticed” security architecture. On top of bolstering bilateral alliances, it is creating “mini-lateral” groups of the kind that the US, Japan and Philippines will strengthen on Thursday.

“The trilateral is hugely important. We have a rich and sometimes troubled history with the Philippines, so it is a significant step forward in that regard,” said Mullen. “We also sometimes understate the significance of all these countries working with Japan given the history. That in itself is historic.”

Speaking last week, Kishida said he wanted to build a “multi-layered network” with allies and partners. “With the Japan-US alliance as the central pillar, it is important for the peace and stability in the region for Japan to co-operate with the Philippines and other like-minded countries.”

Asked about the summits, the Chinese embassy in the US said: “We oppose cobbling together exclusive groupings and stoking bloc confrontation.”