{"id":17705,"date":"2024-04-07T12:46:35","date_gmt":"2024-04-07T12:46:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/07\/wwiii-could-start-over-philippines-dispute-in-south-china-sea-china-not-respecting-treaties-expert-says\/"},"modified":"2024-04-07T12:46:35","modified_gmt":"2024-04-07T12:46:35","slug":"wwiii-could-start-over-philippines-dispute-in-south-china-sea-china-not-respecting-treaties-expert-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/07\/wwiii-could-start-over-philippines-dispute-in-south-china-sea-china-not-respecting-treaties-expert-says\/","title":{"rendered":"WWIII could start over Philippines dispute in South China Sea, China \u2018not respecting\u2019 treaties, expert says"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Beijing warned that World War III could break out in the South China Sea as it increasingly shifts its attention to the Philippines, with territorial disputes driving tensions ever higher.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018Although we have a mutual defense treaty with the Philippines, China is not respecting it,\u2019 Gordon Chang, a China expert and fellow at the Gatestone Institute, told Fox News Digital.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018It was twice last month, on the 5th and the 29th, that the State Department issued written warnings to China that we were prepared to use force to discharge our obligations pursuant to article four of the U.S. Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty,\u2019 Chang explained. \u2018That\u2019s a warning that we are prepared to go to war.\u2019<\/p>\n

First reported by MEMRI\u2019s China Media Studies Project, the state-owned and -operated news outlet China Daily earlier this week published an op-ed titled \u2018Manila must be warned against horrors of war\u2019 by Yang Xiao, deputy director of the Institute of Maritime Strategy Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.<\/p>\n

Yang, a frequently featured expert in a range of China Daily articles, drew connections between the current tensions between China and the Philippines and tensions in Pre-World War I Europe.<\/p>\n

The article notes at the bottom that \u2018the views don\u2019t necessarily reflect those of China Daily,\u2019 but Yang engages in an inflammatory discussion of history and current tensions, referring to the \u2018Sarajevo gunshot\u2019 after warning against Philippine politicians\u2019 \u2018flirtation with the U.S. in the hope of gaining the upper hand in the maritime dispute with China.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018The lessons of World War I should be heeded, especially by small states, because triggering a conflict will serve no country\u2019s interest,\u2019 Yang wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Later in the piece, Yang wrote that American \u2018decision-makers\u2019 should realize that \u2018the U.S.\u2019s military intervention on behalf of the Philippines would also be disastrous for neighboring countries. The South China Sea has been a sea of peace and cooperation.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Only a handful of leaders in the Philippines, ignoring the increasing challenges, such as rising prices, at home, are stirring up the extreme sentiments of the people by feeding them anti-China rhetoric,\u2019 Yang wrote. \u2018What they don\u2019t realize is that once the \u2018Sarajevo gunshot\u2019 is fired in Asia, the innocent people in East and Southeast Asian countries will become the biggest victims of war.\u2019<\/p>\n

China has most recently hassled the Philippines over disputed fishing shoals, with Chinese coast guards trying to chase Filipino fishermen away and leading to tense standoffs between the two.<\/p>\n

Last year saw a series of near-clashes between the two coast guards near the Second Thomas Shoal. The Philippine authorities protested China\u2019s use of a water cannon and military-grade lasers.<\/p>\n

China established a\u00a0claim to the Scarborough Shoal\u00a0in 2012, after which the Philippines formally launched a protest that went before a United Nations-backed tribunal. A 2016 ruling went against China, rejecting Beijing\u2019s claims on \u2018historical grounds,\u2019 but Beijing rejected the arbitration and its outcome.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The U.S., Japan, Australia and the Philippines on Apr. 7 will conduct the first full-scale joint naval exercise between the nations in the disputed territories to demonstrate fleet interoperability and provide a show of strength for China. The nations will then hold a summit in which they are expected to announce plans for joint patrols in the area later this year, according to Politico.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chang argued that this kind of scattershot approach to stirring up tensions with neighboring countries is unsurprising as China \u2018is probing its neighbors, especially Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines, and it shifts its attention, all the time.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018China ramped up pressure on the Philippines and then pressure \u2026 sort of died down in the last couple of days, and now they\u2019re ramping up pressure on Taiwan,\u2019 Chang said. \u2018And while all of this is going on, we\u2019ve now had more than 100 continuous days of Chinese vessels intruding into Japan\u2019s waters in the East China Sea around the senkakus.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018So, really what they\u2019re doing is they are pressuring, and then they\u2019ll let up, and they\u2019ll go someplace else and pressure at that place,\u2019 he explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chang stressed, though, that the Philippines remain \u2018the weakest militarily\u2019 of those three targets, despite the agreement of mutual defense with the United States.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018Biden himself, on October 25th issued a warning from the steps of the White House when the Australian prime minister was visiting him that the United States was prepared to use force, so the Chinese just don\u2019t believe Biden at all,\u2019 Chang argued.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018There are a lot of people out there who say we will be fighting China this year or next year,\u2019 Chang added. \u2018I\u2019m not saying we will, but I\u2019m saying if we will, it\u2019s more likely that the fight starts over the Philippines than it starts over Taiwan or Japan.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018If you look at the situation involving the Philippines, it\u2019s easier to construct an argument or a scenario that we\u2019re going to go to war with [China] over the Philippines \u2026 because you got all the elements in place,\u2019 he concluded. \u2018You\u2019ve got all the elements in place for a great power war that starts in the Philippines.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beijing warned that World War III could break out in the South China Sea as it increasingly shifts its attention to the Philippines, with territorial disputes driving tensions ever higher.\u00a0 \u2018Although we have a mutual defense treaty with the Philippines, China is not respecting it,\u2019 Gordon Chang, a China expert and fellow at the Gatestone <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":17706,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17705","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}