Shoal searching: the South China sea simmers

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The Economist.

Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm Rosie Blore.

And I'm Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

In recent weeks we've been bringing you dispatches from the Middle east where where so many lives have been shattered. Today we meet Dima, a 22 year old student in Gaza.

And settle in for a little story. Once upon a time in Europe there was a big bad wolf conservation problem. Now populations have bounced back and what to do about them? Wolfing down livestock has become a kind of hot button culture war issue. First up though.

On June 17 this year, Chinese coast guards wielding axes and knives clashed with Filipino boats in the South China Sea.

Aaron Connolly is the Economist's Asia Diplomatic Editor.

In footage of the incident released by the Philippines government and shared widely across you can see Chinese coast guards with long sticks with sharp blades on the end trying to puncture the inflatable part of one of the Filipino boats. They're throwing lines or ropes onto the Philippine vessel to get a hold of it so that they can control it. And then you can see Chinese coast guardsmen with long blades pointing them towards the Philippine sailors. At one point they're shouldering the vessel to try and corral it away from the Sierra Madre, which is the Philippine Navy's vessel that is beached on Second Thomas Shoal. The Philippine sailors are pushing back. They're trying to throw the lines off. At some point, a Filipino sailor lost his thumb when the Coast Guard rammed into his boat. You can really sense, just looking at this video, the kind of tension that would have been present on the water. Clearly a really dangerous situation. On August 31st at a different feature in the South Genesee, Sabina Shoal, the flagship of the Philippine Coast Guard, known as the Teresa Maguana, was rammed by a Chinese Coast Guard vessel. No one was injured in this incident, but there is about a 1.5 meter hole in the hull of the Teresa Magbuana. These skirmishes are part of a worrying new pattern of escalation and confrontation emerging in the struggle in the South China Sea.

Erin, we've been talking and I guess worrying about the South China Sea for years. These sound like really dangerous incidents. Is there a possibility that they could immediately inflame into something bigger?

Well, for the moment at least, it seems as though around 2nd Thomas Shoal, where Sierra Madre is, there's been an agreement put in place, a bilateral agreement that was reached between the Philippines and China, where after that June 17th incident, they really stepped back from the brink and decided to negotiate what they call a provisional understanding to allow Sierra Madre to be resupplied. China says it will inspect the vessels, but it seems to be doing this from a distance of several hundred meters. And so there's a real kind of diplomatic accomplishment of the Philippines that they were able to reach this agreement. And so the immediate risk of a flashpoint that could escalate into something bigger seems to have passed. But the longer term risk that there will continue to be skirmishes like these, that remains.

So can you just put this into a bit of context then for us? Just talk about what kind of territory we're really dealing with here?

Yeah, sure. So I think we often talk about the South China Sea dispute, and it's really three sets of disputes. So you have the Paracel Islands in the northwest of the sea, around 130 islands between the coasts of Vietnam and China. And those have been occupied by China since 1975. They have an airport there that has hosted fighter jets, and it really controls that area. And so it's not the kind of flashpoint that the rest of the sea is. Then you have Scarborough Shoal, which is a much larger feature series of coral reefs that are only about 150 nautical miles from Manila Bay. And that proximity to the capital of the Philippines really makes Scarborough Shoal the sea's most strategic feature. But China's controlled that feature since 2012, since the Philippines retreated from it. And then you have the Spratly Islands in the southeast of the sea. And this is the largest group of islands in the South China Sea. And that's really where a lot of the tension that we've seen in recent years has been. It's also where China built seven large military bases from 2013 to 2016 by reclaiming land on top of coral reefs. But it's also now where the greatest pushback is coming, particularly from Vietnam and the Philippines.

And why has China been pushing into this territory? Why have they been building these bases?

One theory is that China is an expansionist power, that Xi Jinping has made the reacquisition of Chinese territories that have been lost in earlier eras a key part of his rule. But I think a more likely reason that we've seen them pressing, particularly around Second Thomas Shoal, where the June 17 incident took place and now around Sabina, is that they're looking for a gap between what the Philippines expects of its senior ally, the United States, and what that ally is willing to provide, particularly when it comes to what are really just rocks and reefs that are uninhabited in the middle of the South China Sea.

And the ramifications of these tensions go far beyond the South China Sea.

Right.

How are the US and its allies responding? Or how might they respond?

So I think a lot of people, when they hear about this, they fear that this could escalate into some sort of US China conflict, and that this is where potentially World War 3 will begin. Not Taiwan, but the South China Sea. I think that's unlikely. It's clear that neither China nor the United States wants to go to war over some reefs and rocks. What's a much greater risk is that the United States treaty commitments, security guarantees to the Philippines will come under question, that the Philippines will look to the United States to respond if, say, a Philippine sailor loses his life. That June 17th incident could have been much worse, and that the United States will decide that it doesn't want to respond in a military way, and that then the Philippines will begin to question whether the alliance really gives it the benefits that it expects. And other US Treaty allies in the Indo Pacific and elsewhere might begin to ask the same questions to the United States. The Philippines is not the only country that expects the United States to defend outlying islands. Japan has a very similar situation in the Senkaku Islands. And if you those security guarantees begin to lose their credibility. That'll create a lot more instability in the Indo Pacific, even for countries that don't rely on those guarantees.

So what's the answer then? If you've got a situation where the US doesn't want to be pushed to the point where it has to actually help one of its allies, but those countries need to respond in some way.

So one answer is really close coordination between the Philippines and the United States in terms of where their vessels are going, what they're doing, and then also what the expectations are that the Philippines has of the United States so that it doesn't take on risk that is beyond what America is willing to step in to back them up on. And then second is something that the Philippines has pioneered and which should continue, which is this transparency initiative. They call it sharing in real time what China is doing in the South China Sea, publicizing the details of these incidents in video and audio. For many years, countries in the South China Sea suffered in silence. These incidents would happen, and we would find out about them weeks or months later. And now, in real time, we get to see what's happening on the South China Sea because of the efforts of this transparency initiative. And that's led other countries that were previously silent on the South China Sea, particularly European countries and other Indo Pacific countries like Japan and New Zealand, to speak out every time that China takes an action that raises risks in the South China Sea or that violates the Philippines rights under the arbitral tribunal ruling in 2016, which awarded much of the South China Sea to the Philippines. So it's raised the diplomatic costs of these actions in the South China Sea.

In other areas that I'm thinking here, like Xinjiang or on Hong Kong, calling out China hasn't done very much. Is it really going to be effective in the South China Sea?

For many years, it was really just the United States that was backing up the Philippines on these questions. But now we're seeing European countries which have real concerns that these statements might affect their relationship with China, step in and say on this particular issue, they think that this is a concern. And for China, these rocks and reefs may not be as important as Hong Kong or Xinjiang. And so I don't know that they're going to be as determined to override those concerns as they would in those areas of core interests. Even though we've seen a de escalation at Second Thomas Shoal and potentially at Sabina Shoal as well, there's a real risk that there will be another incident in the South China Sea that leads to the Philippines or other American treaty allies, the Indo Pacific, questioning American security commitments. And that could have this broader destabilizing effect on security in the region.

Aaron, thank you so much. Really interesting to talk to you.

Thank you, Rosie.

These days it seems as though there are always bombs falling somewhere. People's deaths can become statistics, but they shouldn't. Today we're bringing you the first part of just one human story.

Before the 7th of October was very simple. We all here in Gaza know each other and can deal with each other.

I've been speaking with dima. She's a 22 year old student.

I used to go to the gym and then to university. I was always thinking about how to improve my skills, go to many courses in different fields. We visit each other, we celebrate in all events. Now we are not able to celebrate.

Before October 7, Dima was living as normal a life as was possible in Gaza.

Anne Hannah is a news editor and has been talking to Dima for several months.

We are people who truly love life and know very well how to be happy. So we had many restaurants and beautiful food. I hope that you try it. We also meet friends and family and eat. We go to the sea. Then I meet my friends, we eat lunch together. Then we start shopping for long hours.

Dima loved going shopping with her friends, hanging out, going to the gym, all sorts really.

So we swim in the morning on vacation, we go horse riding.

Dima's life was comfortable. Then came October 7th. That day, Hamas militants broke through the border into Israel and killed over a thousand people.

Israel's prime minister has warned Gazans to prepare for retaliation and says his country is about to embark on a long and difficult war.

Though Dima and her family had a sense that something was happening, they didn't really know what, but it changed everything.

About the 7th of October. We don't understand what happened this day. It changed our life into hell. You know, I didn't see any pretty.

Moment after it in the days that followed that moment, normal life disappeared.

Suddenly we heard that the tank was at the entrance to our village.

Dima found herself in the middle of a war.

After that, the conditions started to get worse and we were forced to suddenly move from our home.

Dima had been living in a village in central Gaza, but her family soon moved to her grandfather's house along with many members of her extended family. There were so many people there when we were speaking. She struggled to find refuge from the children playing around her.

We are hundreds of people in the same house.

Then the Israeli Defense Forces designated the area where her grandfather lived as a red zone, meaning a place they might start bombing. The whole family had to move again.

We were running away with the clothes that we dressed. I changed into a girl who wakes up to help her parents start a fire because we don't have gas. I. I listened to many, many, many pumps from the 7th of October until this moment. Before I called you, they. They pumped near us. A school near us. You can imagine. And how huge was the pumping. I just laying myself on the ground and start to save my body. And you become a child. You become like you're searching about your mom. I hug my mom a lot. I feel like I'm a baby. I really need my mom. I really need my dad around me. I can't fear this pain anymore.

Dima told me that one day her cousins Ahmed and Aymer offered to go and get some clothes from her family home.

The road was too dangerous.

As they returned, they were both killed by Israeli bombs.

They wanted to help us and come back to our home to get some clothes because we don't bring anything. But on their way home, they were bombed while they walking in the street. Ahmad and Amer dead.

But theirs weren't the first deaths. Her uncle had cancer after October 7, he couldn't get treatment and so he died. Dima tells me the shock of it killed her grandmother.

She didn't suffer from any diseases, but her heart cannot bear it.

The conditions were particularly hard on the older members of her family, like Dima's grandfather. She told me he couldn't bear the displacement, pressure and fear he did suddenly.

While he was sleeping.

Dima, her parents and her brother now do everything together. And in just one month they've had to move seven times. But it's hard to find places to go, and sometimes the family has had to make do without.

So we have become homeless. We called over our friends or our families around us, and they are all had the same situation as us. We stay all the night in the streets waiting for a solution or someone to help us. We didn't even have a tent.

Dima's father felt ashamed that he couldn't even buy a tent. The cost had skyrocketed. And on top of that, it's hard to buy anything when the banks are in ruins. As you'd imagine, it's pretty difficult to find an ATM in Gaza these days.

We have a problem from the cash. There come times when we cannot buy basic things because we don't have the money for it.

Most transactions now go Through a middleman. And prices are incredibly high at this moment.

The period of products was too expensive.

Eventually her family did get a tent, but it was unbearable.

So the sun was really directly to us, so the temperature was too hot and we can't bear this pain anymore.

She told me it felt like hell. They moved back into the red zone, back into Dima's grandfather's house. Even though the bombs were still raining down every day.

The fear is in our hearts. And I'm not sure I will survive tomorrow. No one knows what will happen in the coming days, so we can't expect what will happen tomorrow.

Dima has already coped with so much. She is stuck with no sign of an end to this war. But she will reclaim her old life. She hopes she will one day.

Everything we can do it today, we do it. Maybe it's going to be our last day. Maybe it's gonna be not. We don't know. Maybe our area will target it. Maybe it's not. So I really hope this hell will end. I really hope this.

Over the coming weeks, we'll be hearing more from Dima about her life in Gaza.

The wolf, sworn enemy of Peter, the Three Little Pigs and the boy who cried, well, wolf. These allegedly wicked creatures used to loom larger in the public imagination, devouring children, terrorizing neighborhoods and farms. Modernity mostly stalled the dread that was peddled by the Brothers Grimm and others. But in Europe, farmers are once again howling about their ancestral foe.

In Europe, the wolf has gone from folktale villain to culture war scapegoat.

Stanley Pignol writes Charlotte our column on Europe.

Wolves are returning to Europe in an unexpected way. 20, 30 years ago, there were very few of them, just a few isolated packs here and there. There are now over 20,000 of them. And this is causing a row between environmentalists who think this is wonderful and rural types who have to share space with wolves.

So tell me first about the resurgence, though. Why are they coming back?

Wolves are native to Europe, right? They've always been around. And unlike in the United States, for example, they were never reintroduced. It's just that we took care of the environment differently. We started protecting wolves in Europe from the 1970s, and also as people moved to cities, that left more space for wolves. It left more space for deer, for boar, for the kind of things that they eat. And wolves have benefited from the retreat of humans in other ways. When borders fell, notably the Iron Curtain that divided Europe until the early 1990et, wolves came back. They migrated from the east to west.

Presumably bad news for deer and the like.

Very bad news for deer and boar that they eat, but that in turn is actually good news for nature in many ways, because deer and boar eat tons of plants and trees and so on, and that has an impact on the landscape. So if you reintroduce wolves, you have all these cascading effects, so you can have a lot more greenery, you can have a lot more biodiversity. And it's an ecosystem that, unlike most ecosystems in Europe now, it's a natural ecosystem. It's managed by nature rather than managed by man. To environmentalists, this all sounds great, you know, returning to the state of nature in Europe, but obviously there are a lot of farmers and wolves are remarkably unfussy about what they eat. They would rather eat deer and boar. But if there are sheep or farm animals or dogs, pets, they will happily munch on them too. So clearly that has caused a huge amount of disquiet in the rural population. Now, wolves actually don't tend to go for people. There have been very few if any instances of them attacking humans, but they do go through something like over 60,000 sheep, goats, cows and horses every year.

But you mentioned that this is somehow, as with so many things, become a culture war issue. How is that?

As with everything in Europe, anything could be turned into a culture war issue here. What it comes down to is the sense from the rural population that they're being ignored by sort of urban living politicians, Eurocrats, a lot of this stuff is decided at EU level, who basically just don't understand the countryside, they don't understand farming, and they're passing green legislation and they're imposing all these costs on rural folk without really understanding them. Predictably, the cause of the wolf control, so the people who want to shoot wolves has been taken up by the hard right in Europe. So alternative for Germany, for example, which is a kind of party that usually focuses its outrage on migrants, has demanded rapid action to control wolves. You've also had various farmers parties that have basically attacked the political mainstream for caring more about wolves than people, as they put it. One of the reasons that this came up, the political agenda in Europe is rather unusual. In September 2022, a wolf was found to have killed the personal pony of Ursula von der Leyen, who's the powerful president of the European Commission, who had this family pony for 30 years. She has since become something of an anti wolf crusader and loaned some of her political muscle, if you will, to take on the wolf. Last month, a majority of the EU's national governments agreed to downgrade the status of wolves. Right now they're strict protected under a 1979 conservation convention, and now they're going to be just protected. Doesn't mean that it's open season on wolves, but it's going to be easier to basically get licenses to control them. And so in time, what we will expect to see is basically kind of more shooting of wolves.

So instead of being managed by nature, it again is becoming more managed by man. What's that mean in terms of the ecosystem?

Well, you'd be returning to the kind of the old ecosystem in which wolves are controlled, and therefore you have more deer, and therefore you have fewer trees and so on. I mean, ecologists are furious about this, right? They say that this is a decision that's basically. It's bad politics, it's bad science. They say that the wolf population in Europe, yes, it has grown a lot, but it's very fragile and it's going to crash if these protections are withdrawn. And they say, you know, there are other ways of dealing with wolves. Put up fences or you can have guard dogs that protect sheep against wolves. And then finally, what you're also seeing is subsidies. So if a farmer has a herd that gets mauled, they're entitled to compensation. I mean, ultimately, what this is about, it's really about the coexistence, if you will, of the continent's top two predators. Humans took over from wolves in a way. And, you know, rural people identify with these efforts to tame the land, you know, to transform the frontier into a settled land which humans can occupy. So for them, it's completely baffling this idea that you would take this foe, that is the wolf, and give it a chance to reassert itself again. For city folk, you know, they don't think of wolves in the same way. They are very keen on this idea of nature being, you know, given its full rights again. And so this is a culture war that I think is going to endure for some time.

Stanley, thanks very much for joining us.

Thank you.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligent. We'll see you back here tomorrow.