Reuters

U.S. set to push security strategy as

Chinese maneuvers rattle region

FILE PHOTO: Rosneft

Vietnam employee looks on at the Lan Tay gas platform in the South China Sea off the coast of
Vung Tau
By Martin Petty

MANILA (Reuters) - Recent incidents involving Chinese ships in Southeast Asian waters are testing
regional faith in Beijing's sincerity about maritime peace, and aiding a renewed U.S. push to build
alliances with countries unnerved by China's assertiveness.

Chinese maneuvering in energy-rich stretches of the South China Sea, including a standoff in
Vietnam's Exclusive Economic Zone, will figure on Friday when top diplomats of Southeast Asian
bloc ASEAN attend a security gathering with world powers.

Among those is a United States that has laid out an "Indo-Pacific Strategy" challenging Chinese
maritime hegemony and seeking stronger ties with nations pushing back against Beijing.

Vietnam has done just that, demanding earlier this month that China remove a survey ship and
escorts from its waters near an offshore oil block.

Within hours, the U.S. State Department rebuked China for "bullying behavior" and "provocative and
destabilizing activity".

"The U.S. role is undeniable and very important and they need to put more pressure on China," said
Hai Hong Nguyen, a research fellow at Queensland University of Technology in Australia.

"The international community needs to do that too. All the claimants need to internationalize it."

Vietnam's call to rally the international community was a departure from i ts usual cautious
responses to China, which seeks to settle rows bilaterally.
Vietnam also appears to have tacit support from Russia, whose state oil firm Rosneft, is operating
an oil block within what China says is its historic jurisdiction.

Two days after a Chinese coastguard ship was tracked near the oil block on July 16, in what U.S.
thinktank Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) called a "threatening manner", the
Vietnamese arm of Russia's Sputnik state news agency said President Vladimir Putin sent a
personal message of gratitude to Rosneft Vietnam for developing the block.

Russia will be among the 27 countries at Friday's ASEAN Regional Forum meeting in Bangkok.

Also present will be foreign ministers of Japan, the United States, China and Aust ralia, plus those of
the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam, which have recently been impacted by Chinese vessels,
including the coastguard and a fishing militia.

The Philippine foreign minister on Wednesday confirmed a diplomatic protest to China over Chin ese
vessels surrounding the tiny Philippine-held Thitu island.

'GRAY ZONE TACTICS'

The same Chinese Haijing 35111 coast guard ship that showed up near Rosneft's operation off
Vietnam was also tracked near an oil rig on Malaysia's continental shelf during M ay, according to
the AMTI thinktank.

Meanwhile in June, a Chinese fishing boat sank a Filipino vessel, leaving 22 crew stranded near the
Reed Bank, the site of gas deposits inside the Philippine EEZ. China said it was an accident.

On Monday, Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana confirmed that five Chinese warships
passed through Manila's 12-mile territorial sea this month without notifying the government, calling
that "a failure to observe protocol or common courtesy".

According to South China Sea expert Carl Thayer, the recent increase in Chinese assertiveness is
no coincidence, but a response to the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy, and an increase in flyovers by
U.S. bombers and U.S. navy patrols in the South China Sea, through which $3.4 trillion of g oods
pass annually.

Thayer suggested China was actively preventing Southeast Asian neighbors from developing
offshore energy reserves without its participation, and discouraging foreign partnerships.

"China's use of gray zone tactics will inevitably cause regional states to take countermeasures and
push back," he wrote. "This carries the risk that confrontations at sea will escalate."

Defending Beijing's position, China's ambassador to the Philippines, Zhao Jianhua, said on Tuesday
that China was committed to international law and "working very hard" with ASEAN to create a
maritime code of conduct within three years.

"No matter how strong China may become, China will never seek hegemony or never establish
spheres of influence," he said.

China's one key ally is Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who despises the United States, and
whose foreign policy was praised by China's Global Times newspaper last week as "peaceful,
cooperative and restrained".

But Duterte's U.S.-allied defense top brass appear uncomfortable with the position and surveys
show Filipinos vastly favor the United States over China.
According to Manila-based author and analyst Richard Heydarian, Duterte is increasingly isolated in
defending China.

"From the very front lines, Hong Kong and Taiwan all the way to the Philippines, Malaysia,
Indonesia and definitely Vietnam - you're seeing a robust pushback by a lot of smaller countries," he
said.

"Definitely, Washington has that strategic room for maneuver," he said.

(Additional reporting by Khanh Vu in HANOI and Matthew Tostevin in BANGKOK; Editing by

Michael Perry)