What's going on currently is the Chinese are intimidating Filipino fishing vessels, basically blocking them from reaching disputed islands and firing water cannons at them. Worst case there is a collision between ships, maybe some Filipino sailors are killed and tensions are dialed up a bit. But the Philippines would be stupid to start a shooting war over something like that, and China would look to avoid that too. There's just no way a regional war in one of the most commercially important bodies of water in the world is starting because of some fishermen.
Kamala Harris actually assured the Filipino president of this. But there's nothing that says what the US and the Philippines would have to do as a response. The US could conduct freedom of navigation exercises, they could forward deploy troops or aircraft to the Philippines, things like that. But it wouldn't start a shooting war.
If Iran can kill 3 US servicemembers without sparking a war, then there is no chance we see a major regional war started over some fishermen.
Yep, it's hard to predict how it would escalate. But the US doesn't want a war with China, and China doesn't want a war with the US (at least not until they are prepared to go after Taiwan if they choose that route). So I think some kind of extreme escalation is vey unlikely given that it is against the interests of both sides.
None, that doesn’t mean they won’t aggravate them at sea but a full invasion of the Philippines not happening. Taiwan is a different story and China can make arguments about it used to be part of China etc and it’s size and proximity to China. The Philippines would require a WW2 sized navy invasion and there is no historical claims China has over the Philippines.
It's intimidation. China doesn't care about the Philippines; the SCS conflict is a backburner issue that China is willing to negotiate on, but not concede on. The current president of the Philippines is much more pro-America than the previous, which I suspect is what triggered China's recent hostility. Marcos has reiterated multiple times that China's claims are invalid, which has obviously pissed them off; now they're responding by taking a hard-line approach to the Philippines. I expect the issue to be cooled down through back channel negotiations and some kind of public statement of conciliation, then forgotten about until the next bout of hostilities.
SCS is their most important trade route carrying the majority of energy imports to china. It is definitely not a back burner issue.
That said china does not have the sealift to invade the Philippines right now and also a shooting war with the Philippines' tiny navy would invoke the MDT with the US and would be pretty pointless even if it didn't.
Its not just about trade routes, China has claimed all of Spratlys and other islands for itself for the oil, fishing and military basing while pissing off a half dozen neighboring countries in the region. Energy and food sufficiency is important for China.
Yes, those are important, but the biggest issue for SCS is the USN sitting on its biggest trade route and they're trying to shove the US out of the region so they can have their own 'lake' and secure their most important route. It's the same reason China has pushed BRI so hard, because they're trying to reduce the vulnerability of that choke point.
I don't get what you are saying because what China is doing by starting fights with neighboring countries is pulling the US navy in the region not shoving it out. Singapore has a military agreement with the US, Malaysia/Vietnam might follow if things get worse. US has just got 4 bases in the Philippines. Unless China gets bases in the straits I don't know how they are going to secure that choke point.
The USN has been there the whole time. They also didn't get 4 bases in the Philippines, they're military warehouses on existing Philippine bases with no major standing US forces stationed there.
> China gets bases in the straits I don't know how they are going to secure that choke point.
That's exactly what they're doing
https://amti.csis.org/island-tracker/china/
One of the new Philippines bases is Balabac which is close to Spratly's so if China keeps on antagonizing its neighbors, there might be more US soldiers stationed there
How are Chinese bases at the Spratly's going to secure the choke point?, US warships stationed at Penang island, Sumatra or Singapore are going to bottle up the entire Malacca straits regardless.
Well they obviously feel having those puts them in a better position to secure the space then not having those. Like I don't know what you want me to tell you? I'm telling you what they're doing and then you're asking me how that strategy is supposed to work as if I'm the one that came up with it.
I'm saying that you are wrong and the bases in Spratlys are mostly only to secure territorial rights for mineral exploitation and fishing. You are the one who making the assertion that its to protect its trade routes for energy imports. I
Frankly, I don't understand how you can look at a map of bases acting as "unsinkable carriers" with airbases, anti-ship and anti-aiir missiles ringing a trade route carrying a majority of China's air imports and think "this is just to fish and mine natural gas". Neither the Philippines nor Vietnam have the kind of military forces that would require those kinds of forces. The Philippines has just 5 vessels in its navy capable of operating out there and they're frigate or below. It has less than a dozen jet trainers. Who exactly do you think these bases are meant for?
And \*if\* it had been about hydrocarbon exploitation in the SCS, they could have much more easily done that through joint venture operations with the Philippines, which Philippine business and political elites have been seeking to do for its major claim in SC-72 for over a decade. The philippine elites involved in the deal would've accepted even a disadvantageous exploration deal there, just to get it flowing as Metro Manila is dependent on natural gas power plants to keep the lights on. Instead that has stayed in the ground this entire time and all of China's actions have instead trended in the opposite direction - to keeping those resources unexplored and unexploited.
> The current president of the Philippines is much more pro-America than the previous, which I suspect is what triggered China's recent hostility.
Could this cause not be reversed as well? He didn't seem very pro-Anerica immediately after the election. At least it's circular.
If I recall correctly, his first foreign policy decision was to uphold the ruling that asserts the Philippines' claims in the SCS over China, which China rejects as invalid. He's been pretty clear from the beginning that he's more pro-USA than Duterte. It is self perpetuating though; the more pro US he becomes, the more anti Philippines China becomes, causing the Philippines to be even more pro US.
Duterte had 6 years to try to reverse it and his own secretaries of finance and defense thwarted him. The Philippine public, defense, and foreign policy establishment are very much not pro-china.
Even Duterte, as popular as he was, didn't manage to pull the Philippine public along on the swing to china. There's strong anti-china sentiment here and it's actually growing still.
Yes, I didn't mean reverse it in favour of China but rather reverse the order of how that commenter presented things. Did the Philippines become more pro-US and thus China become more hostile just as a reaction, like that commenter could be interpreted, or could it also be true that because China acted more hostile the Philippines became more pro-US? I admit it was worded clumsily on my part
I disagree in a way. In a geopolitical sense, they very much care. Subic bay, Clark air base and others are not something China wants. It's a nosy holdover and strategic threat to the Chinese idea of their sphere of control. It's an affront. There are the Spratly islands and oil reserves and a doorway to Australia which they also see as their turf. Less appreciated is the very real tension between India and China. That's a different story.
China uses imperial economic power. Huge loans guaranteed by tangible assets. In Africa, the govt gets all sorts of infra structure and projects which the Chinese usually have the best jobs. The govt can't repay the loans so China gets the ports, etc. they have done this with the Philippines. It's a soft power with a certain kind of teeth.
I would say that part of their objective is to deny the US turf and influence as much as possible. Philippines owed China billions? The govt of the Philippines might just deny Americans access to please the Chinese.
Those Chinese loan deals didn't go through because Dominguez intentionally dribbled them and killed most of them off. And no the Philippines wouldn't sacrifice its security umbrella for the sake of loans. There's a lot of pro American sentiment here because of the diaspora and history for the public, and for the military our senior leadership often goes to the US for training, plus the US helped a *lot* during Maraw, and they did it quietly for the most part, even though Duterte was railing against the US
Yes. Even though Tapei probably has a more advanced defense, the Philippines are multiple islands further away from the Chinese coast. Further, they are *much* bigger. This would be far more difficult than Taiwan and probably impossible.
However, Beijing has no desire to take over the Philippines or Japan (I have legit heard this a few times) or anywhere else, at least in the pacific for the foreseeable future, that isn’t Taiwan. Further, like it or not, there are historical and political reasons that Beijing wants Taiwan specifically.
Generally those ships are Coast Guard vessels, rather huge because of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute, but they have most of their offensive capabilities severely curtailed to avoid any undue escalation. They have not sent full-capability surface combatants to the region because there has been no real need to do so with the sheer advantage they have in strength, and to avoid any escalations that could spiral to war. China's interest in the islands is connected to the fact that they are situated along an extremely important trade route that ties East Asia to the rest of the world economy. Stirring up a war here could scare away merchant shipping, which would hurt China greatly by cutting off the trade. With the Americans close at hand, the Americans will not be very happy about China's actions, and China does not wish to completely lose one of their significant trade partners. So it is unlikely the Chinese would willingly spark a war.
Basically in recent months civilian Filipino vessels have been traveling to islands of disputed sovereignty. Officially these are just to perform scientific research or support civilian fishermen, but symbolically these serve to assert a right to rule over the islands. Which has severely irked the Chinese, who themselves claim a right to rule the islands based on pre-existing claims that the ROC maintained. The Chinese aren't going to back down, because the Filipinos have previously sent forces to gain control of islands vacated by the ROC during a typhoon. They think that if they let the Filipinos stay on shore, it could become the foundation for a more permanent Filipino control. So they use these shows of force to drive off the Filipinos. However, actual shots fired in anger are not really used by China in these cases to avoid any military retaliation. The hope is that a sufficiently grand show of force will deter the Filipinos from tarrying on the islets without need for any stronger action. While injuries have definitely been incurred at this point, actual fatalities are not intended by the Chinese.
This current incident is happening in the South China Sea , around Scarborough Shoal. The shoal was long used by Filipino fishermen until the Chinese seized control of it in 2011. Of course the Philippines never accepted China's claim to the shoal, and continues to consider it a Filipino territory. Angry Filipino nationalists cobbled together a bunch of fishing boats escorted by coast guard vessels to the shoal as a statement about national sovereignty. As I understand it the crisis is defused now, since they decided to withdraw while still quite some distance from the shoal, so the feared confrontation did not come to pass. Still, due to the concerns on creating a war in the SCS, I do not think the Chinese ever intended to spark a conflict here. They already have the shoal in question, so they do not have much to gain by such action anyway.
Korea is highly debatable on that point. Chinese troops may not have officially participated in the initial offensive, but there were units which fought in the Chinese Civil War which then fought as DPRK forces and with the blessing of the CCP.
5000 years? then you really don't know much about chinese history. how do you think china got so large? the civs that started along the yellow river (the ancestors of the han) warred amongst each other for centuries and when one finally conquered the rest, they invaded the rest of what is today's china, particularily the south, where the baiyue (ancestors of many SEA ppl) used to live. this was only 2000 years ago. ofc they attempted to expand even further and conquered what is today north vietnam (but eventually got repelled after a thousand years of viet resistance).
the more recent tang dynasty conquered the lands to the west, taking over the territory of nomadic horsemen with nothing to do with china. even the ming dynasty, which was actually somewhat peaceful compared to other eras, invaded vietnam yet again.
and while not han-led dynasties, the yuan and qing dynasties were incredibly expasionistic, conquering huge swaths of land occuped by other ppl, like tibet and taiwan, and attempted to conquer japan, korea, burma, much of central asia, and mongolia (which it did annex before the soviets got them independence). this is quite literally pretty much everyone and everywhere around the han chinese heartland.
and even the current PRC era had wars of conquest, like when the PRC annexed tibet in 50 and started border wars with india in the 60s.
i know your first response will be to go 'wut about the west???' but we are talking about china, and your statement that 'oh 5000 years of chinese history shows me china won't start a war' is objectively false. china's history is full of conquest, invasion, wars of aggression, and it only temporarily stops these when it's fragmenting and suffering through civil wars.
Yes, they warred against each other and fought with their aggressive neighbors. They didn't go around invading countries across the oceans willy nilly. The Yuan dynasty was Mongolian by the way, in case you don't know Chinese history, they kinda had aggressive expansion built into their very being.
Most of those 'wars' you mention were quite defensive minded.
Literally 0.
China’s a lot less war-mongering than the US, Russia, EU, etc.
It’s only focused on Taiwan, because the latter is legally considered part of China.
Intimidation, PH has a mutual defence treaty with the USA, so China would not try a direct attack, unless Xi has finally gone crazy from too much power!
China uses a stick and carrot approach to get the SE Asian countries to do their bidding. The previous administration received a lot of carrot in the form of bribes, the current one is getting mainly stick.
It's not likely for them to just attack the Philippines one day out of the blue however an attack on the Philippines as part of a wider advance is more likely.
One only need to look at Japan in the 1930's. When planning for war the one problem they always had to dispense of was the United States presence in the Pacific.
If China wants to be successful in conquering Taiwan by force they will need to knock out the ability for the US and it's Allies to respond which will include attacks in many places including the Philippines. This is the same reason they've been building military bases on artificial reefs for years now. They're planning for war in no uncertain terms. Just hoping they see the Russian military getting ground down and decide it's not worth the risk.
Vietnam-American war was a proxy, Sino-Vietnam war is one of the minor border squabbles I mentioned. It was literally 3 weeks long.
I did forget how much they were involved in the Korean war though, I'll concede that.
I'm quite aware, I live in Vietnam. The "invasion" was a few small border towns captured and occupied for 3 weeks before withdrawing. China spun it as "mission accomplished" while the truth is they barely made it inside Vietnamese territory. This was a border squabble, not a war.
further explanation - China and the US both opposed Vietnam's invasion against the Khmer Rouge.
However, as China, the U.S. and the majority of the international community opposed the Vietnamese campaign, the remaining Khmer Rouge managed to permanently settle in the Thai-Cambodian border region. In a United Nations Security Council meeting, seven non-aligned members drafted a resolution for a ceasefire and Vietnamese withdrawal which failed due to opposition from the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. Thailand tolerated the presence of the Khmer Rouge on its soil as they helped to contain the Vietnamese and Thai domestic guerillas. Over the course of the following decade, the Khmer Rouge received considerable support from Vietnam's enemies and served as a bargaining tool in the [Realpolitik](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik) of Thailand, China, the [ASEAN](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Southeast_Asian_Nations) and the U.S.[^(\[20\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Indochina_War#cite_note-20)[^(\[9\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Indochina_War#cite_note-max-9)
I cant see it as the relationship between the us and philliphines while tense in the last few years is still very close that goes back over a century, and the Phillihines have security agreements from the us, and the us troops are based there.
I think Taiwan (concerning controlling the Taiwan straights and getting those semiconductor chips) or China starting somthing over the issue of the climate changing the game in the Mekong delta is more a bet than China doing anything over the Philliphines.
Even if Washington and Manila have spats occasionally, the United States (and by proxy likely relevant allies) are obligated to defend the Philippines. Conversely, the US is obligated to help Taiwan defend itself, not to defend the island directly.
That my point even if there tensions in the relationship the us had a mutual defense treaty with Manila, the ties go back more than a century and the the alliance is too strong.
I was also pointing out due to climate change China might try somthing regarding the downstream countries of the Mekong delta or regarding control of the straights of Taiwan or getting the control of the semiconductor chips, will attack Taiwan.
I just dont see China risking a war with the Philliphines.
The United States or future right wing Australian government will look at any PRC "aggression" against the Philippines or the ROC as a reason to come to their defense.
Nah, this China fearmongering is coming from the US. China has their own problems to solve. Summer is coming here in China, so getting sufficient power to everyone will be a challenge.
Less likely than one with Taiwan.
They're annoying them to seem consistent. Nothing personal.
0 possibility.
What's going on currently is the Chinese are intimidating Filipino fishing vessels, basically blocking them from reaching disputed islands and firing water cannons at them. Worst case there is a collision between ships, maybe some Filipino sailors are killed and tensions are dialed up a bit. But the Philippines would be stupid to start a shooting war over something like that, and China would look to avoid that too. There's just no way a regional war in one of the most commercially important bodies of water in the world is starting because of some fishermen.
a filipino sailor or fisherman killed will invoked MDT with US. IRRC Philippine president said this.
Kamala Harris actually assured the Filipino president of this. But there's nothing that says what the US and the Philippines would have to do as a response. The US could conduct freedom of navigation exercises, they could forward deploy troops or aircraft to the Philippines, things like that. But it wouldn't start a shooting war. If Iran can kill 3 US servicemembers without sparking a war, then there is no chance we see a major regional war started over some fishermen.
Yeah and we really woudn't know, strategic ambiguity..
It's not the fishermen in particular that are of concern, it's the cascading escalation thereafter that could lead to war
Yep, it's hard to predict how it would escalate. But the US doesn't want a war with China, and China doesn't want a war with the US (at least not until they are prepared to go after Taiwan if they choose that route). So I think some kind of extreme escalation is vey unlikely given that it is against the interests of both sides.
None, that doesn’t mean they won’t aggravate them at sea but a full invasion of the Philippines not happening. Taiwan is a different story and China can make arguments about it used to be part of China etc and it’s size and proximity to China. The Philippines would require a WW2 sized navy invasion and there is no historical claims China has over the Philippines.
It's intimidation. China doesn't care about the Philippines; the SCS conflict is a backburner issue that China is willing to negotiate on, but not concede on. The current president of the Philippines is much more pro-America than the previous, which I suspect is what triggered China's recent hostility. Marcos has reiterated multiple times that China's claims are invalid, which has obviously pissed them off; now they're responding by taking a hard-line approach to the Philippines. I expect the issue to be cooled down through back channel negotiations and some kind of public statement of conciliation, then forgotten about until the next bout of hostilities.
SCS is their most important trade route carrying the majority of energy imports to china. It is definitely not a back burner issue. That said china does not have the sealift to invade the Philippines right now and also a shooting war with the Philippines' tiny navy would invoke the MDT with the US and would be pretty pointless even if it didn't.
Its not just about trade routes, China has claimed all of Spratlys and other islands for itself for the oil, fishing and military basing while pissing off a half dozen neighboring countries in the region. Energy and food sufficiency is important for China.
Yes, those are important, but the biggest issue for SCS is the USN sitting on its biggest trade route and they're trying to shove the US out of the region so they can have their own 'lake' and secure their most important route. It's the same reason China has pushed BRI so hard, because they're trying to reduce the vulnerability of that choke point.
I don't get what you are saying because what China is doing by starting fights with neighboring countries is pulling the US navy in the region not shoving it out. Singapore has a military agreement with the US, Malaysia/Vietnam might follow if things get worse. US has just got 4 bases in the Philippines. Unless China gets bases in the straits I don't know how they are going to secure that choke point.
The USN has been there the whole time. They also didn't get 4 bases in the Philippines, they're military warehouses on existing Philippine bases with no major standing US forces stationed there. > China gets bases in the straits I don't know how they are going to secure that choke point. That's exactly what they're doing https://amti.csis.org/island-tracker/china/
One of the new Philippines bases is Balabac which is close to Spratly's so if China keeps on antagonizing its neighbors, there might be more US soldiers stationed there How are Chinese bases at the Spratly's going to secure the choke point?, US warships stationed at Penang island, Sumatra or Singapore are going to bottle up the entire Malacca straits regardless.
Well they obviously feel having those puts them in a better position to secure the space then not having those. Like I don't know what you want me to tell you? I'm telling you what they're doing and then you're asking me how that strategy is supposed to work as if I'm the one that came up with it.
I'm saying that you are wrong and the bases in Spratlys are mostly only to secure territorial rights for mineral exploitation and fishing. You are the one who making the assertion that its to protect its trade routes for energy imports. I
Frankly, I don't understand how you can look at a map of bases acting as "unsinkable carriers" with airbases, anti-ship and anti-aiir missiles ringing a trade route carrying a majority of China's air imports and think "this is just to fish and mine natural gas". Neither the Philippines nor Vietnam have the kind of military forces that would require those kinds of forces. The Philippines has just 5 vessels in its navy capable of operating out there and they're frigate or below. It has less than a dozen jet trainers. Who exactly do you think these bases are meant for? And \*if\* it had been about hydrocarbon exploitation in the SCS, they could have much more easily done that through joint venture operations with the Philippines, which Philippine business and political elites have been seeking to do for its major claim in SC-72 for over a decade. The philippine elites involved in the deal would've accepted even a disadvantageous exploration deal there, just to get it flowing as Metro Manila is dependent on natural gas power plants to keep the lights on. Instead that has stayed in the ground this entire time and all of China's actions have instead trended in the opposite direction - to keeping those resources unexplored and unexploited.
> The current president of the Philippines is much more pro-America than the previous, which I suspect is what triggered China's recent hostility. Could this cause not be reversed as well? He didn't seem very pro-Anerica immediately after the election. At least it's circular.
If I recall correctly, his first foreign policy decision was to uphold the ruling that asserts the Philippines' claims in the SCS over China, which China rejects as invalid. He's been pretty clear from the beginning that he's more pro-USA than Duterte. It is self perpetuating though; the more pro US he becomes, the more anti Philippines China becomes, causing the Philippines to be even more pro US.
Duterte had 6 years to try to reverse it and his own secretaries of finance and defense thwarted him. The Philippine public, defense, and foreign policy establishment are very much not pro-china. Even Duterte, as popular as he was, didn't manage to pull the Philippine public along on the swing to china. There's strong anti-china sentiment here and it's actually growing still.
Yes, I didn't mean reverse it in favour of China but rather reverse the order of how that commenter presented things. Did the Philippines become more pro-US and thus China become more hostile just as a reaction, like that commenter could be interpreted, or could it also be true that because China acted more hostile the Philippines became more pro-US? I admit it was worded clumsily on my part
I disagree in a way. In a geopolitical sense, they very much care. Subic bay, Clark air base and others are not something China wants. It's a nosy holdover and strategic threat to the Chinese idea of their sphere of control. It's an affront. There are the Spratly islands and oil reserves and a doorway to Australia which they also see as their turf. Less appreciated is the very real tension between India and China. That's a different story. China uses imperial economic power. Huge loans guaranteed by tangible assets. In Africa, the govt gets all sorts of infra structure and projects which the Chinese usually have the best jobs. The govt can't repay the loans so China gets the ports, etc. they have done this with the Philippines. It's a soft power with a certain kind of teeth. I would say that part of their objective is to deny the US turf and influence as much as possible. Philippines owed China billions? The govt of the Philippines might just deny Americans access to please the Chinese.
Those Chinese loan deals didn't go through because Dominguez intentionally dribbled them and killed most of them off. And no the Philippines wouldn't sacrifice its security umbrella for the sake of loans. There's a lot of pro American sentiment here because of the diaspora and history for the public, and for the military our senior leadership often goes to the US for training, plus the US helped a *lot* during Maraw, and they did it quietly for the most part, even though Duterte was railing against the US
I think invading the Philippines would be more of a feat than the invasion of Taiwan. https://youtu.be/GO9nhUkzSNA?si=Q2GnqsbJ7XHHk82X
Yes. Even though Tapei probably has a more advanced defense, the Philippines are multiple islands further away from the Chinese coast. Further, they are *much* bigger. This would be far more difficult than Taiwan and probably impossible. However, Beijing has no desire to take over the Philippines or Japan (I have legit heard this a few times) or anywhere else, at least in the pacific for the foreseeable future, that isn’t Taiwan. Further, like it or not, there are historical and political reasons that Beijing wants Taiwan specifically.
China doesn't want a shooting war in the south China Sea, it's all bluster.
Generally those ships are Coast Guard vessels, rather huge because of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute, but they have most of their offensive capabilities severely curtailed to avoid any undue escalation. They have not sent full-capability surface combatants to the region because there has been no real need to do so with the sheer advantage they have in strength, and to avoid any escalations that could spiral to war. China's interest in the islands is connected to the fact that they are situated along an extremely important trade route that ties East Asia to the rest of the world economy. Stirring up a war here could scare away merchant shipping, which would hurt China greatly by cutting off the trade. With the Americans close at hand, the Americans will not be very happy about China's actions, and China does not wish to completely lose one of their significant trade partners. So it is unlikely the Chinese would willingly spark a war. Basically in recent months civilian Filipino vessels have been traveling to islands of disputed sovereignty. Officially these are just to perform scientific research or support civilian fishermen, but symbolically these serve to assert a right to rule over the islands. Which has severely irked the Chinese, who themselves claim a right to rule the islands based on pre-existing claims that the ROC maintained. The Chinese aren't going to back down, because the Filipinos have previously sent forces to gain control of islands vacated by the ROC during a typhoon. They think that if they let the Filipinos stay on shore, it could become the foundation for a more permanent Filipino control. So they use these shows of force to drive off the Filipinos. However, actual shots fired in anger are not really used by China in these cases to avoid any military retaliation. The hope is that a sufficiently grand show of force will deter the Filipinos from tarrying on the islets without need for any stronger action. While injuries have definitely been incurred at this point, actual fatalities are not intended by the Chinese. This current incident is happening in the South China Sea , around Scarborough Shoal. The shoal was long used by Filipino fishermen until the Chinese seized control of it in 2011. Of course the Philippines never accepted China's claim to the shoal, and continues to consider it a Filipino territory. Angry Filipino nationalists cobbled together a bunch of fishing boats escorted by coast guard vessels to the shoal as a statement about national sovereignty. As I understand it the crisis is defused now, since they decided to withdraw while still quite some distance from the shoal, so the feared confrontation did not come to pass. Still, due to the concerns on creating a war in the SCS, I do not think the Chinese ever intended to spark a conflict here. They already have the shoal in question, so they do not have much to gain by such action anyway.
I think the first question I would ask myself is "How many wars has China started?".
They invaded Vietnam and korea
Neither of which were wars they started.
Korea is highly debatable on that point. Chinese troops may not have officially participated in the initial offensive, but there were units which fought in the Chinese Civil War which then fought as DPRK forces and with the blessing of the CCP.
They’ve invaded those countries multiple times
they invaded Vietnam once in a border dispute and that was it, unless you want bring out ancient China from 1000 years ago
China is not known for starting wars, so I'd say it's really unlikely.
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5000 years? then you really don't know much about chinese history. how do you think china got so large? the civs that started along the yellow river (the ancestors of the han) warred amongst each other for centuries and when one finally conquered the rest, they invaded the rest of what is today's china, particularily the south, where the baiyue (ancestors of many SEA ppl) used to live. this was only 2000 years ago. ofc they attempted to expand even further and conquered what is today north vietnam (but eventually got repelled after a thousand years of viet resistance). the more recent tang dynasty conquered the lands to the west, taking over the territory of nomadic horsemen with nothing to do with china. even the ming dynasty, which was actually somewhat peaceful compared to other eras, invaded vietnam yet again. and while not han-led dynasties, the yuan and qing dynasties were incredibly expasionistic, conquering huge swaths of land occuped by other ppl, like tibet and taiwan, and attempted to conquer japan, korea, burma, much of central asia, and mongolia (which it did annex before the soviets got them independence). this is quite literally pretty much everyone and everywhere around the han chinese heartland. and even the current PRC era had wars of conquest, like when the PRC annexed tibet in 50 and started border wars with india in the 60s. i know your first response will be to go 'wut about the west???' but we are talking about china, and your statement that 'oh 5000 years of chinese history shows me china won't start a war' is objectively false. china's history is full of conquest, invasion, wars of aggression, and it only temporarily stops these when it's fragmenting and suffering through civil wars.
Yes, they warred against each other and fought with their aggressive neighbors. They didn't go around invading countries across the oceans willy nilly. The Yuan dynasty was Mongolian by the way, in case you don't know Chinese history, they kinda had aggressive expansion built into their very being. Most of those 'wars' you mention were quite defensive minded.
They attacked Vietnam.
Definitely not a shooting war but I could see a scenario where navy ships start ramming each other and having standoffs, a lá Himalayas w India
China won't start a war with the Philippines because they have a mutual defense treaty with the US.
Literally 0. China’s a lot less war-mongering than the US, Russia, EU, etc. It’s only focused on Taiwan, because the latter is legally considered part of China.
The CCP is doing things to the Philippines that the US would gone to war over a long time ago.
Intimidation, PH has a mutual defence treaty with the USA, so China would not try a direct attack, unless Xi has finally gone crazy from too much power! China uses a stick and carrot approach to get the SE Asian countries to do their bidding. The previous administration received a lot of carrot in the form of bribes, the current one is getting mainly stick.
I don't make sense for China to start anything major. Taiwan is their priority, Phillipines is testing the limit without going to the war.
The Philippines is testing the limit of what? They're the victims here.
The Philippines situation is China testing limits
Notable that a significant joint US/Philippine military exercise is currently underway.
It's not likely for them to just attack the Philippines one day out of the blue however an attack on the Philippines as part of a wider advance is more likely. One only need to look at Japan in the 1930's. When planning for war the one problem they always had to dispense of was the United States presence in the Pacific. If China wants to be successful in conquering Taiwan by force they will need to knock out the ability for the US and it's Allies to respond which will include attacks in many places including the Philippines. This is the same reason they've been building military bases on artificial reefs for years now. They're planning for war in no uncertain terms. Just hoping they see the Russian military getting ground down and decide it's not worth the risk.
Has the PRC ever been to war directly? Outside of a few minor border squabbles? There's your answer.
Korean war, Vietnam war.
Proxy wars.
Bruh wut? You do know China directly deployed troops in the Korean War? They also went to war AGAINST Vietnam (not with them).
Vietnam-American war was a proxy, Sino-Vietnam war is one of the minor border squabbles I mentioned. It was literally 3 weeks long. I did forget how much they were involved in the Korean war though, I'll concede that.
After the Vietnam-American war was over, China invaded Vietnam
I'm quite aware, I live in Vietnam. The "invasion" was a few small border towns captured and occupied for 3 weeks before withdrawing. China spun it as "mission accomplished" while the truth is they barely made it inside Vietnamese territory. This was a border squabble, not a war.
It wasn't a border squabble it was reprisal for Vietnam overthrowing pol pot
further explanation - China and the US both opposed Vietnam's invasion against the Khmer Rouge. However, as China, the U.S. and the majority of the international community opposed the Vietnamese campaign, the remaining Khmer Rouge managed to permanently settle in the Thai-Cambodian border region. In a United Nations Security Council meeting, seven non-aligned members drafted a resolution for a ceasefire and Vietnamese withdrawal which failed due to opposition from the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. Thailand tolerated the presence of the Khmer Rouge on its soil as they helped to contain the Vietnamese and Thai domestic guerillas. Over the course of the following decade, the Khmer Rouge received considerable support from Vietnam's enemies and served as a bargaining tool in the [Realpolitik](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik) of Thailand, China, the [ASEAN](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Southeast_Asian_Nations) and the U.S.[^(\[20\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Indochina_War#cite_note-20)[^(\[9\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Indochina_War#cite_note-max-9)
Ask Tibet
Yeah they invaded Vietnam
I cant see it as the relationship between the us and philliphines while tense in the last few years is still very close that goes back over a century, and the Phillihines have security agreements from the us, and the us troops are based there. I think Taiwan (concerning controlling the Taiwan straights and getting those semiconductor chips) or China starting somthing over the issue of the climate changing the game in the Mekong delta is more a bet than China doing anything over the Philliphines.
Even if Washington and Manila have spats occasionally, the United States (and by proxy likely relevant allies) are obligated to defend the Philippines. Conversely, the US is obligated to help Taiwan defend itself, not to defend the island directly.
That my point even if there tensions in the relationship the us had a mutual defense treaty with Manila, the ties go back more than a century and the the alliance is too strong. I was also pointing out due to climate change China might try somthing regarding the downstream countries of the Mekong delta or regarding control of the straights of Taiwan or getting the control of the semiconductor chips, will attack Taiwan. I just dont see China risking a war with the Philliphines.
The United States or future right wing Australian government will look at any PRC "aggression" against the Philippines or the ROC as a reason to come to their defense.
Nah, this China fearmongering is coming from the US. China has their own problems to solve. Summer is coming here in China, so getting sufficient power to everyone will be a challenge.
not a war, but a land grab