Foreign Minister Penny Wong has publicly put the full weight of Australia’s strategic messaging, funding and capabilities behind strengthening the Philippines and defending international rules. In an era in which international rules have been declared dead, this week’s intervention at the foreign ministers’ meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Manila on Tuesday should be viewed as part of Canberra’s Southeast Asian strategy, complementary to the Pacific Step-Up.
That strategy is aimed at deterring China where we can while making the region more resilient where we must, given the inevitability of Beijing continuing to be aggressive.
As is its wont, Beijing tried intimidation before Manila hosted one of the most important annual regional gatherings. The day before the meeting, China Coast Guard boats aggressively approached and rammed a Philippine Navy rubber boat in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. Worse, Chinese personnel then attacked Filipino navy personnel with wooden batons.
This latest act of aggression saw Wong attend the Philippine Coast Guard headquarters on the sidelines of the ASEAN meeting and specifically call out China’s actions as ‘destabilising and dangerous conduct’ in breach of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Wong also said Australia would provide the Philippine Coast Guard with ‘cutting-edge’ American drone technology.
Several partners joined Wong in her condemnation, all supporting regional stability in the Indo-Pacific. The US ambassador to the Philippines provided a statement condemning China’s dangerous and escalatory actions, the EU Delegation in Manila expressed its deep concerns, while the British ambassador opposed escalatory action in the South China Sea and urged respect for international law.
Wong also met with her Chinese counterpart, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, raising concerns about the absence of safe and professional military conduct and the importance of transparency. These direct messages encompassed the latest hostility against the Philippines and an increasingly troubling series of aggressive acts by China throughout the region, including this month’s test of a nuclear-capable submarine-launched missile that landed in the Pacific. It is clear that despite the effort made by Australia and other nations to stabilise relations with China, Beijing is not reciprocating.
Australia, along with other nations, Japan in particular, has begun making it clear that stabilisation cannot be one-way and that it does not mean strategic silence. For Australia and Japan, it is not the pursuit of unnecessary confrontation but the objective to constrain China and empower the region.
Beijing would prefer that the South China Sea is seen as just a local maritime dispute in which it would outgun and outlast all smaller claimants. Australia is working to ensure there’s a global effort to use existing laws and rules to protect smaller nations from larger predators. It is a testing ground for whether regional powers, such as Australia and Japan, can help the US uphold international law in the Indo-Pacific without competition escalating into military conflict.
This is why encounters between the China Coast Guard (CCG) and Philippine vessels are more than bilateral incidents. It is a regional test of whether coercion can gradually alter accepted norms.
Wong’s description of China’s behaviour as dangerous and destabilising reflects the growing importance of public attribution as a tool for countering hybrid threats.
Grey-zone tactics depend on ambiguity, uncertainty and competing narratives. Publicly identifying coercive behaviour reduces an adversary’s ability to exploit uncertainty, imposes reputational costs and encourages coordinated responses from partners. Attribution therefore serves not only legal or diplomatic purposes but strategic ones.
This month marked the 10th anniversary of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruling under UNCLOS, which found in favour of the Philippines and against China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea. This has ensured the world can point to an international ruling, not mere opinion, that China’s nine-dash line is a fiction.
In early July, 14 nations (including the Five Eyes and Japan, the Baltics, Germany and Italy) issued a joint statement reaffirming the decision ‘that there is no legal basis for China’s expansive maritime claims’. The EU issued a separate statement that provided positive support for international rules, even if with weaker wording than the 14-nation statement. Unfortunately, neither South Korea nor any member of ASEAN took part in it.
ASEAN member states other than the Philippines are reluctant to frame regional security in a way that risks direct criticism of China. Their preference is to hedge, preserving strategic autonomy while maintaining constructive relations with both major powers. This is because Southeast Asian countries are geographically closer and economically intertwined with China, so hedging is an insurance-seeking behaviour to mitigate the constant threat of diplomatic and economic coercion from Beijing. While some public support for the Philippines and international rules would be useful, it also reveals why Australia and Japan (and other democracies) need to do the heavy lifting of constraining Beijing’s worst impulses and supporting the region’s smaller nations. In this way, respective roles are at least well known and can still involve coordination.
Despite ASEAN’s shortcomings, it maintains strategic value through its carefully crafted communiques and ASEAN-led meetings that provide space for partners to coordinate positions and build consensus around real and emerging security challenges. Wong’s bilateral discussions with Wang Yi on the margins of the ASEAN Regional Forum meeting demonstrate how ASEAN-centred diplomacy continues to facilitate direct engagement even amid strategic competition and crisis.
For Canberra, Australia’s stronger language indicates neither a departure from its policy of ASEAN centrality nor a desire for confrontation with Beijing. It is recognition that publicly calling out coercive behaviour is a necessary part of preserving international rules, making the region more resilient to coercion, preventing China’s aggression from transitioning into conflict and being better prepared should conflict eventuate.