U.S. Navy Will Drill With Southeast Asian Navies

By Mike Ives

A United States Navy reconnaissance plane on Okinawa, Japan, after a mission last year over the South China Sea. Some analysts say America’s military posture in the disputed sea has hardened under President Trump.

HONG KONG — Southeast Asian countries tend to be deeply reluctant to collectively challenge China’s growing military and economic prowess in their region.

But this week, they appear to be doing just that — by holding their first joint naval drills with the United States Navy.
The drills, which will take place partly in the South China Sea, a site of geopolitical tension, began on Monday. 

They were not expected to focus on lethal maneuvers, or to take place in contested waters where China operates military bases.
But the maneuvers follow similar exercises held last year by China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations in an undisputed area of the sea, making them a riposte of sorts to Beijing.
During a summer of heightened tensions over territorial claims, plus an escalating trade war between China and the United States, the drills are being closely watched as the latest move in a high-stakes geopolitical chess match between the superpowers and their shared regional allies.
Some analysts see the drills as part of an incremental hardening of America’s military posture in the South China Sea under President Trump, a strategy that has not been accompanied by additional American diplomacy or incentives for its partners.
“The United States is taking a risk both that its partners will be less inclined to work with it because they are nervous about signaling security cooperation when there’s nothing else there, and that China will continue to advance in the places in which we are absent” on diplomatic and economic fronts, said Mira Rapp-Hooper, an expert on Asian security affairs at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

United States Navy sailors monitoring radar and other instruments aboard the guided-missile cruiser U.S.S. Chancellorsville in the South China Sea in 2016.

“So from a basic balance-of-power perspective, we are not holding the line nearly as well as we should be,” she added.
The United States Navy declined to comment on the record ahead of the drills, citing operational sensitivities.
But in a statement late Sunday, the Navy said the drills would include “a sea phase in international waters in Southeast Asia, including the Gulf of Thailand and South China Sea.” 

It said they would focus partly on “search and seizure,” “maritime asset tracking” and “countering maritime threats,” among other subjects.
The statement said the drills would include eight warships, four aircraft and more than 1,000 personnel. 

It said the American military hardware included a littoral combat ship, a guided-missile destroyer, three MH-60 helicopters and a P-8 Poseidon plane.
The Poseidon is a type of reconnaissance aircraft that the United States has used to conduct surveillance flights over the South China Sea, including around disputed reefs that China has filled out and turned into military bases.
The drills were scheduled to begin on Monday at Sattahip, a Thai naval base, after “pre-sail activities in Thailand, Singapore and Brunei,” and to end in Singapore. 

The Navy’s statement did not say when the drills would end.
Many of the drills will take place this week off Ca Mau Province, on the southern tip of Vietnam, said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a Thai political analyst. 

He added that the drills would “reinforce the view that geopolitical tensions are shifting from land to sea.”

An MH-60 helicopter preparing for to take off from the U.S.S. Chancellorsville in the South China Sea in 2016.

The timing is ideal for Vietnam, which is deeply worried about a state-owned Chinese survey ship that has been spotted this summer in what the Vietnamese regard as their own territorial waters. 

Last month, the State Department called the survey ship’s movements an effort by Beijing to “intimidate other claimants out of developing resources in the South China Sea,” including what it said was $2.5 trillion worth of unexploited oil and natural gas.
“Vietnam should be happy” that the drills are taking place given China’s recent “aggression in its waters,” said Luc Anh Tuan, a researcher at the University of New South Wales in Australia.
“Hanoi nevertheless will manage to downplay the significance of the drill because like other ASEAN fellows, it does not want to create an impression of a coalition against China,” added Tuan, who is on educational leave from the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security.

The Vietnamese Foreign Ministry confirmed in an email last week that the drills were happening, but declined to answer other questions.
Beijing’s actions in the sea are hugely sensitive for Hanoi because it is under heavy domestic pressure to be tough on China, its largest trading partner and former colonial occupier. 

But Vietnam is also racing to find new energy sources to power its fast-growing economy.
In a sign of those tensions, there were rare anti-Chinese riots in Vietnam in 2014, after a state-owned Chinese company defiantly towed an oil rig into disputed waters near the Vietnamese coast, prompting a tense maritime standoff. 

Three years later, Vietnam suspended a gas-drilling project in the sea by a subsidiary of a Spanish company because the project was said to have irritated Beijing.

The Chancellorsville in the South China Sea in 2016, with a Chinese Navy frigate in the background.

ASEAN countries will be more concerned about China’s reaction to the drills than they were about the American reaction to last year’s drills with China, said Gregory B. Poling, an expert on Southeast Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. 

He said that was especially true for countries, such as Thailand, that had no territorial disputes in the sea with China.
“They don’t want to do it in a way that upsets the apple cart” of trade with China, he said of the Thai authorities. 

The Thai Navy declined to comment.
The United States Navy said in its statement that its joint naval drills with ASEAN were first proposed in 2017 and confirmed last October. 

That is the same month that China held its first joint naval drills with ASEAN, off its southern coast.
In a telephone interview, Kasit Piromya, a former Thai foreign minister, downplayed the risks for ASEAN of holding naval drills with the United States. 

“From Thailand’s point of view, it’s still an open sea,” he said, adding that any such exercises with any outside partner should be neither aggressive nor defensive.
But Beijing’s territorial claims in the sea have no legal basis, he added, echoing the conclusion of an international tribunal that ruled against China three years ago. 

He said a key question now was whether Southeast Asian leaders could summon the “guts” to confront China’s construction of artificial islands and military bases in the sea, even though some of them have been “kowtowing to Chinese pressures and financial generosity.”
“I would urge the ASEAN leaders, the 10 of them, to get together and speak in a black-and-white manner to the Chinese leadership without being blackmailed or bought out by China’s financial offers,” he said.

The Necessary War

SAYING CHINA IS BLOCKING TRILLIONS IN OIL AND GAS, U.S. WILL SEND NAVY FOR ASIA DRILLS
BY TOM O'CONNOR 

The United States has accused China of preventing Southeast Asian countries from accessing trillions of dollars worth of untapped oil and gas reserves in the South China Sea as the Pentagon planned to hold its first exercise with regional powers near the strategic region.
In a press statement, State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said Thursday that the "United States is deeply concerned that China is continuing its interference with Vietnam's longstanding oil and gas activities in Vietnam's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) claim" following recent incursions there by Chinese survey ship Haiyang Dizhi 8 and an armed escort. 

Beijing has laid vast claims to the South China Sea and does not recognize boundaries established there by a number of Southeast Asian nations who are supported by the U.S. 

The most recent incident occurred last week near Vanguard Bank, a Vietnam-administered outpost in the Spratly Islands, and Ortagus attributed the move to China "pressuring Vietnam over its work with a Russian energy firm and other international partners."
"China's actions undermine regional peace and security, impose economic costs on Southeast Asian states by blocking their access to an estimated $2.5 trillion in unexploited hydrocarbon resources, and demonstrate China's disregard for the rights of countries to undertake economic activities in their EEZs, under the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention, which China ratified in 1996," Ortagus said.
Chinese survey vessel Haiyang Dizhi 8 conducts research on behalf of the Guangzhou Marine Geological Survey in this photo shared July 25, 2018. The ship once again entered what Vietnam's exclusive economic zone near Vanguard Bank of South China Sea's Spratly Islands on August 13 of this year.
Washington has signed, but not ratified the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention, though it justified sending warships through Beijing-claimed waters in the South China Sea by citing "freedom of navigation" operations outlined in the deal. 

China has responded by scrambling military ships and aircraft to intercept the U.S. vessels in the resource-rich region.
While China may have backed Vietnam's communist revolutionaries in their victory over U.S. and allied local forces decades ago, Beijing and Hanoi quickly became rivals and engaged in deadly border clashes, including near the Spratly Island, lasting up until the 1990s. 

In 1995, Vietnam and the U.S. normalized their relations, putting pressure on China as the region's geopolitical dynamics shifted.
As the U.S. began to increasingly assert its own presence in the South China Sea, it has sought to push back on China there, exploiting territorial tensions between Beijing and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a 10-nation grouping of which Vietnam was a part. 

Washington sided with Hanoi in 2014 when China moved its Hai Yang Shi You 981 oil rig near the disputed Paracel Islands and sank a Vietnamese fishing vessel amid a standoff there.
Last year, the U.S. sent a historic message to China by sending Nimitz-class supercarrier USS Carl Vinson to dock in Vietnam in March. 

In May, the U.S. disinvited China from the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise involving Vietnam and several other ASEAN states over Beijing's increased militarization of the Spratly Islands.
The U.S. also began planning joint drills with ASEAN, but it was China that secured an exercise alongside the regional collective months later in October. 

That same month, then-Defense Secretary James Mattis confirmed that a U.S.-ASEAN exercise was still in the works and on both The Bangkok Post and Nikkei Asian Review reported Thursday that the maneuvers were set to begin early next month in Thailand.

A map created July 30, 2012 details the multinational, overlapping territorial disputes involving Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam in the South China Sea. Many of these countries, especially China, have expanded their presence on contested land masses known as the Spratly Islands and an incident on August 13 of this year took place on the westernmost stretch of reefs.

Tensions in the South China Sea add to an array of issues already putting a major strain on ties between the world's top two economies. 

President Donald Trump and Chinese Xi Jinping are embroiled in a multibillion-dollar trade war of tit-for-tat tariffs with Vietnam finding itself right in the middle of the feuding powerhouses.
Beijing has also repeatedly accused Washington of interfering in its internal affairs, both in the ongoing protests that U.S. officials and politicians have expressed support for in the semi-autonomous city of Hong Kong and in a recent $8 billion arms sale involving F-16V fighters jets to Taiwan, an independent island nation also claimed by Beijing.

Chinese Peril

India plans closer Southeast Asia maritime ties to counter China
By Sanjeev Miglani

A cyclist rides past an ASEAN-India Commemorative Summit billboard the side of the road in New Delhi, India, January 23, 2018. 

NEW DELHI -- India is gathering the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Regional Cooperation (ASEAN) for a summit on Thursday to promote maritime security in a region dominated by China, officials and diplomats said.
India has been pursuing an “Act East” policy of developing political and economic ties with Southeast Asia, but its efforts have been tentative and far trail China, whose trade with ASEAN was more than six times India’s in 2016-17 at $470 million.
China has also expanded its presence in South Asia, building ports and power plants in countries around India’s periphery, such as Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and spurring New Delhi to seek new allies.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has invited the leaders of all ten ASEAN nations to join him in the Republic Day celebrations on Friday in the biggest ever gathering of foreign leaders at the parade that showcases military might and cultural diversity.
The leaders, who include Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, Indonesian President Joko Widodo and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, will hold talks on maritime cooperation and security, the Indian foreign ministry said in a statement.

Both India and the Southeast Asia nations have stressed the need for freedom of navigation and open seas and India already has strong naval ties with countries such as Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, Preeti Saran, secretary in the Indian foreign ministry, said.
“The ongoing activities of ship visits, of coordinated patrols, of exercises that take place bilaterally, are taking place very well,” Saran said. 

“And every time we have defense to defense talks or navy to navy talks, there is a great deal of satisfaction that has been expressed by the ASEAN member countries.”
But several Southeast Asian countries locked in territorial disputes with China have sought even greater Indian engagement in the region, experts say.
“China’s distinctly hegemonic moves in the last few years in the South China Sea and its growing assertiveness have made ASEAN look towards India as a partner for equilibrium,” said Arvind Gupta, former Indian deputy national security adviser who now heads the influential Vivekananda International Foundation in New Delhi with close ties to the ruling government.
But India, which has been building up its navy, is wary of getting entangled in South China Sea disputes and provoking a backlash from China.
One of the plans the Indian and ASEAN leaders will be discussing at the close-door summit on Thursday will be for their navies to exercise near the Malacca Straits between Malaysia and Singapore, one of the busiest routes for international shipping, a navy official said.

Chinese Peril

China Scores Victory at Southeast Asian Leaders' Meeting
By Andreo Calonzo and Ian C Sayson

ASEAN's Ten Dwarfs: Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak, from left to right, Myanmar's State Counsellor and Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi, Thailand's Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha, Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Brunei Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen, Indonesia's President Joko Widodo and Laos Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith join hands as they pose for a 'family photo' at Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders' summit in Manila on April 29, 2017.

China won approval from Southeast Asian leaders on Saturday at a meeting where U.S. allies in Asia have previously criticized Beijing over its actions in disputed maritime territory.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which has enjoyed an upswing in relations with China for some time, ended a summit in Manila with a statement noting “the improving cooperation between Asean and China” in the South China Sea.
The leaders also welcomed “progress to complete a framework of the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea” by the middle of this year, and recognized “the long-term benefits” of peace, stability and sustainable development in the region.
The leaders’ avoided mention of sensitive issues such as land reclamation or militarization, or last year’s ruling by an international court that rejected China’s claims to more than 80 percent of the South China Sea in a case brought by the Philippines under the administration of former president Benigno Aquino.
China’s efforts to assert its dominance over the South China Sea, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes that carries more than $5 trillion in annual trade, have in the past angered Southeast Asian nations with competing claims such as Vietnam and the Philippines. 

The waterway has become a flash-point in a broader tussle for regional influence between China and the U.S. in Asia.
Speaking after the meeting, Philippines President and current Asean chairman Rodrigo Duterte said China’s recent actions in the South China Sea were not discussed at the leaders’ meeting on Saturday, describing any talks on the issue as “useless.”
“The biggest victor in diplomacy in this summit is China,” Lauro Baja, former Philippine foreign affairs undersecretary, said on Saturday. 

“Asean seems to feel and act under the shadows of China.”
“China is engaging Asean in a very successful diplomatic position,” Baja said. 

“Asean considers what China feels, what China thinks and how China will act in its decisions.”
Before the summit, Duterte told reporters that arguments between the Philippines and China over disputed maritime territory were not an issue for Asean. 

A Philippine delegation is due to travel to China in May to discuss issues related to the South China Sea.
“Closer relations with China has lent itself to a more cohesive Asean and promises to prevent war and escalated conflict in our part of the world,” Wilfrido Villacorta, a former Philippine Ambassador to Asean and also a former Deputy Secretary-General of Asean, said in an email Saturday.
“President Duterte’s inclusive foreign policy has significantly transformed the security architecture and balance of power in Southeast Asia.”

Trump Call
After wrapping up the Asean summit, Duterte spoke with Donald Trump to pass on Asean concerns on regional security, including the threat posed by North Korea, according to a readout of the call provided by the White House.
“Trump enjoyed the conversation and said that he is looking forward to visiting the Philippines in November to participate in the East Asia Summit and the U.S.-ASEAN Summit,” according to the White House statement.
Trump also acknowledged that “the Philippine government is fighting very hard to rid its country of drugs” and invited Duterte to visit the White House to discuss the importance of the U.S.-Philippines alliance, which is “now heading in a very positive direction.”
Since being sworn into office last June, Duterte has launched a brutal crackdown on drug pushers that has claimed thousands of lives and attracted condemnation from the around the world.

Trade, Integration
At the summit, Asean leaders also instructed ministers to redouble efforts toward bringing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership with Asean dialog partners, including Japan, China, India and Australia, into force as soon as possible.
With a combined gross domestic product of $2.55 trillion in 2016 and robust year-on-year real GDP growth rate of 4.7 percent that is expected to accelerate to 4.8 percent this year, Asean leaders also committed to continue efforts to further integrate the region’s economies.
Asean leaders also welcomed progress on a roll-on, roll-off shipping network between Davao in the Philippines and Indonesia, and stressed the need for cooperation against piracy and other crimes at sea.

Judgement Call
On Asean’s decision not to raise last year’s international court ruling on the South China Sea, former undersecretary Baja said it was “a judgement call” by Duterte.
“Most of us were expecting that, as chair of the Asean, we could have been more expressive and assertive in pushing for Philippine advocacies. The arbitral ruling is one of them,” Baja said.
Albert del Rosario, who was Philippines Foreign Secretary under Duterte’s predecessor Benigno Aquino from 2011 to 2016, also criticized the decision.
“Our government, in its desire to quickly accommodate our aggressive northern neighbor, may have left itself negotiating a perilous road with little or no room to rely on brake power and a chance to shift gears if necessary,” Rosario said in a text message Saturday.

Tsai is world’s 8th-greatest leader: ‘Fortune’

‘BOLD MOVE’:The magazine cited Tsai Ing-wen’s phone call to US president Donald Trump, economic reforms and the wooing of tourists from Southeast Asia
Taipei Times

President Tsai Ing-wen 蔡英文 was listed eighth in a list of the world’s 50 greatest leaders in Fortune magazine’s latest annual ranking.
The list was released on Thursday, the New York-based business magazine’s fourth annual ranking of world leaders.
The section introducing the Taiwanese president said that Tsai captured headlines in December last year when she telephoned US president Donald Trump, the first known call between Taiwanese and US leaders since 1979.
That year, Washington withdrew diplomatic recognition from Taipei in favor of Beijing.
“It was a bold move for Taiwan’s first female president, who is steering a cautious path between the US and China,” Fortune said.
Describing Tsai as sympathetic to independence, the magazine said that when Beijing tried to punish Taiwan after her election victory in January last year by restricting the number of Chinese visiting the nation, she wooed tourists from Southeast Asia and sparked a tourism boom.
Tsai has also pushed economic reforms, including shortening the workweek to five days from six, it added.
The list covers government, philanthropy, business and the arts, and focuses on “men and women who are transforming the world and inspiring others to do the same,” Fortune said.
Other leaders on the list include German Chancellor Angela Merkel, ranked 10th, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, at 31st, and Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, 45th.
Heading the list are Theo Epstein, president of baseball operations for the Chicago Cubs, last year’s World Series champions; Jack Ma 馬雲, executive chairman of China-based e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd 阿里巴巴; and Pope Francis.
In April last year, Time magazine listed Tsai among the 100 most influential people in the world that year.
In June of the same year, she was ranked the 17th-most powerful woman in the world by US magazine Forbes.

China's Thaad Backlash May See South Korea Invest More in Asean

Southeast Asia is already winning more FDI from South Korea
By Brett Miller and Hooyeon Kim

A truck carrying components needed to set up the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system arrive at the Osan base, South Korea. 

While economists pencil in smallish cuts to South Korean GDP this year and a big hit to the travel sector, the most enduring impact of China’s clampdown on outbound tourism could be an acceleration of efforts by Seoul to reduce dependence on its giant neighbor.
Analysis by Natixis Asia emphasizes that South Korea is likely to keep winding back risk exposure to China, particularly when it comes to foreign direct investment.
Southeast Asia, with expanding consumer markets and competitive wages, appears well positioned to benefit.

"They will increasingly seek to diversify risks by moving into markets that offer fast growth and cheap labour costs," Trinh Nguyen, senior economist for emerging Asia at Natixis in Hong Kong, said in a note to clients.
Nguyen also highlighted tourism’s relatively small place within the overall economy relative to sectors like manufacturing, and the continuing demand from China’s factories for components from South Korea.
"Korean tech firms still retain technological edge that supports decent demand for their products abroad," she said.

Economists at Nomura International said the decision to ban package tours to South Korea could shave 0.2 percentage point from GDP, assuming the number of Chinese tourists drops by 40 percent over the next 12 months. 

This would be in keeping with the decline in mainland travelers to Taiwan during another diplomatic spat, according to Nomura.
While South Korean exports of consumer goods could be vulnerable, intermediary products that fill China’s manufacturing supply chain are less exposed, according to a note from Nomura economists Young Sun Kwon and Minoru Nogimori.
Nomura forecasts South Korean GDP growth of 2 percent this year. 

The median of estimates compiled by Bloomberg is for expansion of 2.5 percent, slightly lower than 2016.
The curbs on tourism come on top of a host of non-tariff barriers South Korean companies face in China.

"There are many ways for China to torment Korea," said Song Yeong-kwan, a fellow at the Korea Development Institute in Seoul, who said the flareup has come at very bad time, given impeachment proceedings against Park Geun-hye, who's been suspended from power. 

"The situation inside Korea is pretty bad -- we don’t have a control tower."

I am a poor lonesome cowboy

US "allies" in Southeast Asia are defecting to China

By Richard Javad Heydarian

"We will be signing many new agreements and understandings that will elevate the relationship between our two nations to even greater heights," declared Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak shortly before his visit to Beijing. 

Moving a step further, the Southeast Asian leader praised how China has "created benefits not just for the people of our two nations but also for regional stability and harmony".
Days later, Najib warned the West against "lectur[ing] countries they once exploited on how to conduct their own internal affairs today".
Najib's statements were particularly significant, because they came shortly after the Philippines' controversial leader, Rodrigo Duterte, visited Beijing, where he uttered a similar mixture of praises for his hosts and derision for the West, specifically the United States.
Both the Philippines and Malaysia have also signed defence agreements with China.
Manila is exploring a 25-year military deal, which allows it to purchase Chinese weapons on favourable terms, while Kuala Lumpur has bought patrol naval vessels from Beijing.
This is a dramatic turn of events, since not only are the Philippines and Malaysia considered as staunch strategic partners of the West, but they have also been caught in bitter territorial disputes with China, which has rapidly expanded its footprint across the South China Sea.
Put together, Najib's and Duterte's back-to-back visits to Beijing have provoked panic in western capitals, with observers causally warning about a wave of defections among traditional western partners now pivoting to China.
There are fears that the United States' regional allies are falling like a domino to an ascending strategic rival, China, which has offered billions of dollars in economic incentives and (supposedly) shunned criticising domestic policies of neighbouring states.
A more careful analysis, however, reveals that what we are instead witnessing is an ephemeral strategic recalibration among US allies, who seek to maximise their own room for manoeuvre.

Show me the money
Several factors explain the Philippines' and Malaysia's strategic flirtation with China. 

The most obvious one is, of course, commercial considerations. 

Throughout the past decade, China has emerged as the top-trading partner of almost all regional states, with the exception of the Philippines ( PDF ).
But the Asian juggernaut lagged behind traditional powers such as Japan and the US in terms of direct investments. 

In recent years, however, China has been rapidly closing the gap , offering large-scale investments across its near abroad.

By successfully setting up the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and relishing the dramatic expansion of state-affiliated telecommunication companies like Huawei and ZTE, Beijing is in a strong position to become the key source of infrastructure development across Asia.
Rising labour costs at home also mean that Chinese manufacturers are in search of cheaper alternatives in Southeast Asia. 

During their visit to China, Duterte and Najib secured tens of billions of dollars in investment pledges and business deals.
China is expected to help build a $15bn high-speed rail project linking Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. It could also play a critical role in revamping the infrastructure landscape in Mindanao, Duterte's home island, which has been racked by insurgency and massive poverty in recent decades.

Seeking compromise
There were also realpolitik considerations. 

Uncertain about the US' commitment to the region, both Manila and Kuala Lumpur have sought direct engagement rather than confrontation with the Asian powerhouse over the South China Sea disputes.
Duterte has barely mentioned the Philippines' landmark arbitration case against China in either international forums or during his recent state visit to China. 

A negotiated compromise like joint development agreements in contested waters seems to be the preference of both the Philippines and Malaysia.

Xi Jinping, right, gestures to Rodrigo Duterte during a review of the guard of honour during a welcome ceremony.

A more important but less discussed factor is the US' criticism of Duterte's war on drugs and Najib's potential problem with judicial authorities over a massive corruption scandal . 

Both leaders are trying to deter further American criticism by dangling the "China card".
This way, they hope to expand their room for manoeuvre and avoid any legal and political showdown with Washington.
Their tirades against Western interference and imperialism as well as praise for China, which has kept quite on their domestic politics, should precisely be understood in this context.

Shifting sands
The Philippines' and Malaysia's tilt to China isn't necessarily an indication of failure in the US' pivot to Asia strategy. 

If anything, recent developments may represent a temporary coup de grace after a series of strategic setbacks for China.
In recent years, China has painfully watched former allies such as Myanmar and Communist sisters like Vietnam rebuild ties with the West, particularly the US.
In fact, Hanoi is considering buying advanced weaponry from and conducting more regular joint exercises with the US, which has regained potential access to Cam Ranh Bay for the first time since the end of Cold War.
In fact, even staunch Chinese allies such as Laos have begun to reconsider their lopsided relationship with China in favour of better ties with the West.
Meanwhile, after an initial spark, China's relations with South Korea have rapidly soured in recent years. 

Even relations with North Korea, an erstwhile ally, is in the doldrums .
To Beijing's consternation, Taiwan is now under the rule of a pro-Independence party, which is doubling down on defence cooperation with the US, Japan and other Western partners.
In short, strategic alignments in Asia seem to be more fluid than unidirectional. 

Much will also depend on the result of the US election and the policies of the new incoming administration.
For now, China can at least relish revived relations with bitter rivals in the South China Sea.