Boiling the Frog: China’s Incrementalist Maritime Expansion

For over three decades, Beijing has deployed an initially slow but now accelerating campaign to degrade Philippine maritime rights and access in the West Philippine Sea. This long-term effort has been characterized by often seemingly benign actions and even conciliatory rhetoric interspersed with escalatory words and deeds designed to test the thresholds of neighbors and allies. Today, China’s rising aggression in the West Philippine Sea and broader South China Sea has pushed the region to the precipice of conflict.

To prevent war in the West Philippine Sea, it is crucial to understand the logic of Beijing’s multifaceted approach to maritime expansion and, on that basis, soberly reflect on its policy implications. China’s strategy leverages time, thresholds and the authoritarian playbook to fuel strategic conditions that not only serve its interests in the short-term but, perhaps most importantly, lay the foundations for the next escalatory phase.

Without a basic understanding of China’s strategic logic, it is all too easy to succumb to its ruses. This is how Beijing “boils the frog” — a metaphor that refers to the idea that if a frog is placed in cool water that is very slowly increased to the boil, the frog will not notice the temperature change and die — to get what it wants and why the truth behind that metaphor holds the key to breaking the cycle of China’s expansionist trap.

China’s Long Voyage of Threshold Creep

The South China Sea is one of the world’s most contested seaways. Bridging the Indian and Pacific Oceans, its waters are strategically important for both geopolitical and economic reasons. To access the South China Sea, ships must pass through the Strait of Malacca to the south, the Palawan and Luzon Straits to the east, and the Taiwan Strait to the north.

Within the South China Sea, the maritime areas to the west of the Philippines archipelago are known as the West Philippine Sea. It is here that China has exploited time by engaging in a decades-long campaign of incrementally escalatory actions that are designed to forge new norm thresholds related to presence, action and rhetoric. What emerges from even a brief consideration of this history is that China has managed to occupy, build and militarize islands; attack Philippines assets; and flaunt international law due to a history of partners and allies succumbing to Beijing’s propaganda and deception.

While the bedrock of China’s long campaign to erode the maritime sovereignty and rights of its neighbors is its erroneous 1947 nine-dash line claim, China’s approach to maritime expansion in Philippines waters specifically is perhaps best captured by Beijing’s activities on Mischief Reef, also known as Panganiban Reef. Mischief Reef is located 130 nautical miles west of the Philippine island province of Palawan. It lies well within the Philippines’ EEZ and is part of the submerged continental shelf of the Philippines. By contrast, Mischief Reef lies well over 700 nautical miles from mainland China.

Starting in 1994, China began building initial structures on stilts in the area despite protests from the Philippine government, claiming the structures provided shelter for fishermen. Mere months later in 1995, the Chinese flag was flying on the reef and several armed Chinese ships were present, effectively evicting the Philippines from the area. While additional structures continued to be built in the intervening period, it was almost two decades later, in 2014, that China began land reclamation — the process of creating new land from water feature beds — inside the rims of Mischief Reef.

In response to this and other related incidents, the Philippines filed a diplomatic protest with the Permanent Court of Arbitration, a leading international body for dispute resolutions. A July 2016 tribunal ruling favored the Philippines and nullified China’s nine-dash line claims, but by this stage Beijing had already passed important presence, occupation and norm establishing thresholds. Military base development was well underway, and on July 13, 2016 — just one day after the international ruling — Chinese state media announced the successful landing of a plane on its newly-built Meiji Airport at Mischief Reef. Later that year, photographs went public showing evidence of anti-aircraft weapons and missile defense system deployments. In 2021, new satellite imagery confirmed additional military installations.

Beijing flatly denied that it had plans to occupy and militarize islands in the West Philippine Sea precisely at the time it was doing exactly that. Partners and allies of the Philippines, including the United States, failed to appropriately pushback. In many ways, China’s gradualist approach to occupying and developing Mischief Reef, ignoring Philippine protests and flaunting international rulings, not only established new thresholds for what it could get away with but confirmed the efficacy of its playbook. This all but ensured that Beijing would conduct similar actions in the future.

Similar dynamics have played out time and again across the West Philippine Sea. In 2021, over 200 Chinese fishing vessels moored at Whitsun Reef, amassing what resembled a maritime militia incursion within the Philippines EEZ. This led Manilla to lodge formal protest. Chinese naval blockades have consistently tried to stop Philippine re-supply missions to its military personnel stationed on the Second Thomas Shoal (Ayungin Shoal) since 2014, gradually escalating to the regular use of water cannons in the last few years, including an incident in March 2024 that came dangerously close to triggering the U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty.

All the while, China’s rhetoric has consistently contradicted its actions. In the wake of its own militarization activities, Beijing calls on others to “maintain peace and stability, not pursue militarization.” While its Coast Guard water cannons fishermen, Beijing calls for “objective” and “calm” conduct and presents even more expansive and unlawful maritime maps to justify its actions.

A clear picture emerges of China’s incremental sequencing of expansionist activities and the response from the Philippines and its allies. Beijing gradually and unrelentingly tests the limits of international rule of law in the West Philippine Sea even despite rulings favoring the Philippines. It exploits opportunities for mediation and international hesitation and weakness to advance its position. While preaching pacificism, it occupies and militarizes new positions as it reaches toward the boundaries of its nine- (now 10) dash line.

Beijing leverages the need to work with China on other pressing international issues to push even further. Incremental occupation to change the status quo permeates every aspect of its influence effort, and the Philippines is hardly unique. China’s expansionist territorial claims and gradual militarization affect Vietnam, Japan, Taiwan and other East and Southeast Asian countries at sea, just as they do India and other South and Central Asian countries on land.

Advantage Lost but Momentum Stalled

Beijing is engaged in a long campaign of incremental actions that are designed to establish new norm thresholds that it then reinforces with escalatory actions and rhetoric. Unfortunately, this has resulted in China gaining the strategic advantage in the West Philippine Sea, including by creating dozens of new maritime outposts and thousands of new acres of land through reclamation activities. Nevertheless, thanks in large part to the efforts of Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos’ administration — particularly its transparency campaign that has been synchronized with finely tuned communications activities and a tightening of ties with the United States, Japan and other likeminded nations — that momentum has stalled. The efficacy of the Philippines approach is best evidenced by the dramatic escalation of Beijing’s actions and counternarrative dominant rhetoric.

A top priority in the Indo-Pacific region must be the prevention of war in the West Philippine Sea and allies and partners should do more to support the Philippines. Constant concessions to China, succumbing to its gaslighting rhetoric and blaming the victims of its aggression for not de-escalating are precisely the ways in which the world will sleepwalk past the thresholds within which peaceful resolutions to China’s expansionism are possible. Regaining strategic momentum in the West Philippine Sea will require the Philippines’ allies and partners to first appreciate the basic logic of Beijing’s strategy and cohere efforts around four core policy principles.

1. Orange and Red Lines

The “boiling the frog” metaphor is based on a falsehood. Frogs will simply jump out of the pot when the water begins to reach an unacceptable temperature. In this sense, it is the perfect metaphor for how to respond to China’s incrementalism: get out of the game. Passivity, concessions and self-soothing narratives about Beijing’s intent, or worse still, placing the onus on the victim of Chinese aggression to de-escalate, increases the probability of the continued erosion of a nation’s sovereignty and international law in the short-term as well as the probability of conflict in the medium- to long-term. Only the drawing, clear communication, and enforcement of orange lines (which don’t trigger the defense treaty with the U.S. but establish consequences for certain actions) and red lines can counter Chinese aggression and prevent war.

2. Multilateralism

Beijing demands for bilateral dispute resolution is how it seeks to isolate smaller nations and bully them into submission. It is essential that a latticework of allies and partners are built and mobilized around shared values and agreed courses of action and rhetoric. For example, establishing orange and red lines must be drawn and coordinated in close collaboration with allies and partners. Coordinated condemnation of China’s aggressive and illegal actions — which has markedly increased among like-minded nations in recent months — must be matched by actions. Otherwise, words of outrage will simmer, fade and gradually yield space for China to cross the next threshold.

3. The Semantic Challenge

Strategic communications will be a crucial mechanism for shaping how China and its supporters and the Philippines and its allies and partners — and even the people of the region — perceive the dynamics in the West Philippine Sea. One aspect of the “influence competition” is particularly important: the semantic challenge. Words matter and it is vital that the Philippines insists that its partners, allies and the media use appropriate language so as not to succumb to Beijing’s propaganda. For example, when referring to Philippines’ waters the term “West Philippine Sea” and not South China Sea should be used. Similarly, unlawful Chinese incursive actions in the West Philippine Sea should be called out precisely while vague language, such as “gray zone” should not be used.

4. Proactive and Assertive

China’s incremental approach to maritime expansion is designed to create new norms and thresholds to change the status quo. In doing so, Beijing seeks to flip the strategic decision-making environment to its favor. Maintaining peace and preventing war in the Indo-Pacific will require more than just deterrence but a proactive approach to reverse the strategic momentum that has been lost to China in the West Philippine Sea. Concessions to China may feellike conflict prevention in the short-term, but arguably increases the probability of conflict in the medium- to long-term. History shows that without decisive and coordinated efforts to prevent and counter China’s slow-boil strategy, thresholds will be crossed that make conflict very difficult to avoid.