On a warm, humid evening, walking down Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis, Ms. Darnella Frazier sensed something was amiss. A policeman knelt on the neck of a man named George Floyd. Fearing for his safety, what could she do to protect him? Whom could she call for help? She might have wielded a weapon in collective self-defense, but she would have inevitably been seen as the aggressor, at her own peril. She might have asked the officer to leave, but that probably seemed impotent. Ms. Frazier’s decision to film the event would not save Mr. Floyd’s life, but it was a powerful action to prevent other people from suffering the same fate. (It also resulted in her being awarded a special Pulitzer Prize.) The United States can learn from Ms. Frazier’s action as it combats injustice in the South China Sea by employing the Information Age’s most potent tool—the camera.
demonstrating the power of images to curb unlawful actions. A similar approach could help the
United States and its friends and allies push back against Chinese hegemony in the South
China Sea. (Credit: Associated Press)
For the past decade, China has had its knee on the neck of the Philippines in the South China Sea. The latest incident involves a wisp of sand called Whitsun Reef, 175 nautical miles from the Philippine island of Palawan. Beijing insists it has ancient cultural connections to this far-off sand pile that outweigh the Philippines’ rights under the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Today, China continues to act on this bewildering claim, occupying the shallows around the reef with supposedly private fishing vessels that have suspiciously strong communication with mainland Chinese authorities—a fleet known colloquially as the “maritime militia.” Through these actions, China appears to be poaching another South China Sea outpost from a weaker nation, to secure control of nearby sea lanes. This development should worry not only the battered, yet still-fighting Philippines, but every nation that depends on the free flow of shipping through the South China Sea.
One could fume about Beijing’s many legal contradictions, but it would lead to no progress. The question that deserves immediate attention is “What can the United States do about it?” As with Ms. Frazier, there is the option of force. The U.S. Navy, after all, carries more firepower with it than she did that day in Minneapolis. But the effect would be the same, shifting the narrative from what is clearly Chinese aggression to a situation in which the United States might be seen as the aggressor, potentially weakening the legitimacy of its presence in the South China Sea or prompting further Chinese aggression.
The Philippines has been down that road before. In 2012, it attempted to disperse aggressive Chinese fishermen at Scarborough Shoal with a warship. The Chinese regime, understanding the escalation, made its aggressive countermove, overwhelming Philippine forces with Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) vessels and forcing a diplomatic deal that it subsequently ignored. Chinese fishermen and maritime militia have effectively occupied Scarborough ever since, despite having no internationally recognized legal claim to it. Washington, for its part, took the diplomatic approach, urging the Chinese to withdraw, but learned that Beijing was unswayed by diplomacy and international arbitration. The United States and the Philippines would be wise to avoid repeating the same strategy.
What if, on the other hand, Washington were to follow Ms. Frazier’s example? Milena Michalski and James Gow, in their book, War, Image and Legitimacy: Viewing Contemporary Conflict (Routledge, 2008), discuss how, increasingly, legitimacy is a key resource in strategic efforts. Furthermore, they suggest that more than any other media, pictures and video are central to generating or destroying legitimacy. While this has long been the case, Ms. Frazier’s actions are a new reminder of the power of a camera in the Information Age. Information strategies have a growing track record in the West Pacific of repelling Beijing’s aggression by threatening its reputation. Japan effectively uses such a strategy to counteract Chinese encroachment in the Senkakus, and the Philippine Coast Guard’s own media-based efforts in spring 2021 potentially won it a respite from Chinese presence at Whitsun.
Following this example, instead of sending a carrier strike group to the Spratlys, the United States might send an unassuming auxiliary ship with a team of legal experts and mass communications specialists — or perhaps even better, a Coast Guard cutter or chartered civilian craft with a Voice of America (VOA) reporter and a live satellite feed.1 The risks are obvious: the ship and its crew would be in danger of attack or capture by China’s maritime militia. But China would assume significant regional and even global reputational risks by taking violent action against an unarmed vessel with the entire world watching. In a world where geopolitical disputes are increasingly decided in the court of public opinion rather than on the battlefield, such a confrontation could be decisive.
The potential benefits of an information-based approach are promising. Given further coverage, the South China Sea issue would grow from what is mainly a discussion among those who follow China and Southeast Asia into the mainstream, coalescing awareness and support from people around the world. “Naming and shaming” China, as Wendy He Qingli has suggested, has only been sporadically effective. However, this may not be because China does not respond to shame, but because U.S.’s efforts on that front have been too half-hearted, succumbing to Beijing’s forceful and persistent counter-narratives. Redoubling the strategic communication effort would whittle away two things on which the Chinese regime depends to propel its aggressive foreign policy: economic success and nationalism.
On the economic front, video imagery of China’s aggressive tactics could become a valuable tool for compelling a change in behavior. Popular opinion is not worth much in China’s autocratic political environment, but in the global market where it sells its goods, popular opinion has considerable weight. In fact, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has already used this to its own advantage, inflaming Chinese popular outrage to bring the National Basketball Association to heel during the 2020 Hong Kong protests and even today, attempting to cow Nike and H&M amid the furor over the Xinjiang genocide. Similarly, exposing China’s aggression to the world would complicate its insinuation into foreign infrastructure through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and, by threatening its bottom line at home, dampen aggressive Chinese behavior toward its neighbors.
Such an effort could also stem militant Chinese nationalism, especially relative to the use or threat of force. Beijing’s overarching narrative that it is a defensive, Confucian, beneficent neighbor, would suffer amid such glaring counterevidence. Its euphemistic “dream” to right the wrongs of the “Century of Humiliation” would lose its luster when it becomes obvious it entails imposing the same humiliation on its neighbors.
Admittedly, even if video evidence of Beijing’s malfeasance could make it past the Great Firewall, it would still face an uphill battle against the Communist Party’s well-oiled propaganda machine. But a negligible effect on the nationalism front would still be an improvement from the alternatives. Many of the U.S. Navy’s operations in the South China Sea noticeably affect Chinese nationalism, but in a way that is counterproductive, inflaming passions and providing momentum to Chinese aggression. With this in mind, the United States must use finesse to counteract the regime’s aggression, while not insulting the pride of China’s citizenry. In this vein, there is nothing innately anti-Chinese about a video feed. And the antidote to a propaganda machine is a fearless reporter armed with the cold, hard truth.
Furthermore, South China Sea disputes are regularly clouded in confusion. Reefs have multiple names and are misidentified. Even scholars are not always sure which features are occupied by which country. How can disputes be resolved if the basic facts are not understood? An expanded information campaign would help clear up these misconceptions, enable civilian leaders’ accurate decision-making, and perhaps help prevent the next Scarborough Shoal or Whitsun Reef action before it starts. Major Brian Kerg, U.S. Marine Corps, was right in his recent Proceedings article when he advocated increased “naval intelligence for maritime COIN.” The benefits of such intelligence would be amplified if it could be released to the public, for all to see.
An information-centric approach is not a panacea for Chinese aggression in the South China Sea. All other instruments of power must contribute to the response to gray-zone aggression, particularly the legal instrument, since these tensions are all rooted in legal disputes. But as the United States and its regional friends and allies stand up to Chinese hegemony, they should keep in mind there is one thing the Chinese regime is not designed to handle: truth. Inside and out of its borders, the Chinese Communist Party’s strategy, rooted in its “Three Warfares” concept, depends on obscuring the truth and replacing it with something different. An effective response requires rescuing the truth from China’s gray-zone shadows and thrusting it into the light of day.
1. Approaching the reef closely enough for this surveillance would likely be permissible under international law. As James Kraska has noted, “Since neither China nor any other claimant has taken . . . action under international or domestic law to establish baselines” around features such as Whitsun, they cannot yet generate territorial seas.
