Virtual Dinner Chat: China-Philippines Relations and U.S. Strategic Calculus

Описание: The Jamestown Foundation is proud to present a private Zoom webinar event on “China-Philippines Relations and the Strategic U.S. Calculus.”

The United States has increasingly turned its attention toward countering Chinese activity in the Indo-Pacific. But under the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines, one of the U.S.’s main strategic partners in the region, has grown closer with China. Duterte has been lured by the prospect of easy Chinese financing—much of it through the Belt and Road Initiative—for local development projects that often serve domestic political ends. But his preference for the authoritarian China has run up against countervailing pressures both within his government and throughout civil society more broadly that are concerned about growing Chinese influence and control.

As the Indo-Pacific becomes a hot spot for strategic competition between China and the U.S., Chinese maritime militias have also continued to test the Philippines’ sovereignty of disputed territories. Notably, Duterte rejected U.S. assistance during the most recent stand off between Chinese fishing vessels and Filipino security forces at Whitsun Reef earlier this year. Even as support has grown to end Manila’s accommodative posture towards Beijing, Duterte has remained slow to improve relations with the United States. Instead, he has walked a fine and at sometimes contradictory line between the two great power states.

The Jamestown Foundation has invited the former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific, Dave Stilwell, along with Professor Renato Cruz de Castro of De La Salle University in Manila and Derek Grossman from the RAND Institute to discuss the strategic implications of the triangular relationship between the U.S., China and the Philippines.