EDITORIAL: Water Cannons, Cyanide and Silence — China Torments Philippine Fishermen with Impunity

Fishermen under the cannons of a superpower

Somewhere in the South China Sea, a few nautical miles from a rock that an international tribunal confirmed belongs to the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines, Philippine fishermen try to earn their living. They fish as their fathers did, as their grandfathers did. And for more than a decade, regularly, coast guards from a superpower of 1.4 billion people fire on them with water cannons. Injure them. Sink their boats. Seize their catches. And sometimes, according to recent accusations, poison the fish with cyanide.

In December 2025, during a documented incident near Sabina Shoal, three fishermen were injured and two boats damaged by water cannons from the Chinese Coast Guard. In April 2026, the Philippines accused China of having used cyanide to poison fish near Second Thomas Shoal. These are not isolated incidents. It is a policy. A systematic, documented, deliberate policy — one that continues because the international community has decided it is not truly scandalous.

Silence as passive complicity

My editorial today is not a report. It is a position. I am convinced that the world's collective silence in the face of what China is doing in the South China Sea constitutes a form of passive complicity. Not because we approve of what is happening. But because our incapacity to name it clearly, to condemn it firmly, and to draw concrete consequences from it tells Beijing it can continue. And Beijing continues.

This is not a complex dossier where wrongs are shared. An international tribunal — the Permanent Court of Arbitration — rendered a clear decision in 2016: China has no sovereign rights over Scarborough Shoal, Second Thomas Shoal, or over most of the reefs it controls in the South China Sea. China ignores this decision. Ten years later. And Philippine fishermen continue to be hosed with water cannons by the coast guards of the power that denies the legitimacy of the tribunal that condemned it.

Before writing this editorial, I asked myself the honest question: would I take the same position if it were a small country harassing Philippine fishermen? The answer is yes. But the fact that it is China — an economic power on which the entire world depends — makes the silence even more revealing. We have collectively decided that certain violations are more tolerable than others depending on the economic power of the perpetrator. That is what revolts me profoundly.

2012: the seizure of Scarborough Shoal

Everything begins in 2012. China seizes effective control of Scarborough Shoal — a coral reef located only 230 kilometers from the Philippine coast, well within Manila's exclusive economic zone. It does so progressively, through a policy known as "gray zone" tactics: fishing boats, then coast guard vessels, then a military presence that solidifies progressively. No spectacular invasion. No direct military engagement. An occupation by attrition and continuous presence.

Since 2012, Philippine fishermen have been systematically driven out of Scarborough Shoal. A reef where they had fished for generations. Studies have documented the economic importance of this single reef: in 2023, during a brief period when access was temporarily restored for Philippine fishermen, they caught 164 tonnes of fish in a single day. This figure says everything about what China has stolen from Philippine coastal communities since 2012: decades of subsistence, generations of fishing income, a natural resource of primary necessity for coastal communities.

The progressive escalation of the intimidation arsenal

The palette of Chinese intimidation tools has widened and hardened over the years. The first documented incidents involved floating barriers blocking access to fishing zones. Then came lasers — military lasers aimed at the eyes of Philippine sailors, causing temporary vision damage. Then water cannons, used repeatedly since 2023, capable of seriously injuring and sinking small vessels. Then knives used to cut ropes and seize equipment from Philippine fishermen.

And now, if the Philippines' April 2026 accusations are substantiated, cyanide. The use of cyanide to kill fish in waters claimed by the Philippines would be an escalation of a different gravity — not only violence against fishermen, but a deliberate destruction of fish stocks in contested waters. A scorched-earth logic applied to the ocean. This is no longer intimidation. If confirmed, it is an environmental crime.

The segmented escalation of a conflict in small steps is one of the most effective coercion strategies precisely because it never crosses the threshold that would trigger a coordinated international response. Floating barriers: no response. Lasers: no response. Water cannons: verbal condemnations. Knives to cut ropes: diplomatic notes. Cyanide: investigations underway. Each step crossed normalizes the next one. China knows this mechanism better than anyone and exploits it with an admirable and simultaneously terrifying strategic patience.

A clear verdict that Beijing refuses to accept

On July 12, 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague rendered a historic decision: China has no legal basis for its claims over almost the entire South China Sea. The "nine-dash line" — the maritime boundary claimed by Beijing encompassing approximately 90% of this sea — has no foundation in international law of the sea. The tribunal was explicit: the Philippines have the sovereign right to exploit resources in their exclusive economic zone, including at Scarborough Shoal and Second Thomas Shoal.

China's response was immediate and unambiguous: it refuses to recognize the decision. It called it "null and void." It has never modified its behavior in consequence. Ten years after this decision, the facts on the ground are exactly as if the tribunal had never rendered its verdict. Beijing still controls Scarborough Shoal. Its coast guards still fire water cannons at Philippine fishermen. And the world watches.

What this refusal says about the world order

I want to pause on what China's refusal to apply the 2016 decision concretely means. The international system rests on a fundamental principle: states agree to submit their disputes to third-party resolution mechanisms, and respect their decisions even when those decisions go against them. This is the basis of international law. This is what distinguishes the rules-based international order from the law of the strongest.

When China sovereignly ignores an international decision, it is not merely saying it disagrees. It is saying that the rules do not apply to it. It is saying that its economic and military power grants it the right to ignore the mechanisms that weaker states are required to respect. This is a position that, if normalized, undermines the foundations of the international order — the same order that protects smaller states from the arbitrary will of the more powerful. The Philippines today. Who tomorrow?

I am not a naive idealist about international law. I know that great powers have always found ways to circumvent rules they find inconvenient. The United States has done it. Russia does it. But there is a difference of degree that becomes a difference in kind. To totally, openly ignore — without even arguing on the merits — a decision of an international tribunal mandated by a signed treaty: this is a qualitative break from the norm. And this break deserves to be named clearly.

Transparency as a diplomatic weapon

Facing a power with infinitely superior military means, the Philippines under President Marcos Jr. developed an original and remarkably effective strategy: film everything, publish immediately. Every incident at sea is documented by on-board cameras. Images of water cannons, lasers, and equipment seizures are published without delay on social media and transmitted to international media. The objective: make every Chinese aggression visible, international, indisputable.

This strategy has several effects. It prevents China from denying what is happening — the images are there, documented, time-stamped. It mobilizes international public opinion in favor of the Philippines — it is difficult not to take the side of fishermen on a small boat facing the water cannons of a coast guard vessel of several thousand tonnes. And it creates diplomatic pressure on the Philippines' allies — notably the United States, Japan, and the European Union — to take public positions.

The defensive alliances being built

In January 2026, the Philippines and Japan concluded an enhanced security agreement, accompanied by $6 million in American assistance to equip the Philippine coast guard. This is a modest sum compared to the military budgets of the players involved — but it is symbolically significant. Japan, which has its own territorial disputes with China in the East China Sea, has a direct interest in seeing the Philippines maintain its resistance to Beijing's pressures. A Philippines that yields is a dangerous precedent for Tokyo.

The United States, under the Mutual Defense Treaty with the Philippines, has reaffirmed that this treaty applies to Philippine armed forces, including coast guards, in the South China Sea. This was a formulation that was not explicit before 2023 — it was clarified under pressure from repeated incidents. Concretely: if Philippine personnel were killed in an incident with Chinese forces, the United States would theoretically be obliged to intervene. This deterrence clause is real. But history also says that deterrence has limits when economic interests weigh heavily.

The Philippine transparency strategy is one of the most intelligent responses I have seen from a weaker country facing an aggressive superpower. Don't retreat. Don't escalate militarily. But document, publish, mobilize world opinion. This is intelligent asymmetric resistance. I tip my hat to them. And I think the West should support them far more concretely than it currently does — because what is happening there is a test of our own credibility regarding the rules we claim to defend.

A "scientific" installation armed with communication antennas

In June 2026, the Washington Times documented the appearance of a new floating platform by China near Scarborough Shoal. Approximate dimensions: about 300 square feet. Visible equipment: communication antennas. Official justification from Beijing: scientific research. Reality as perceived by the Philippines and their allies: a new step in the creation of permanent control infrastructure over waters that China has no legal right to control.

This platform fits the classic pattern of Chinese gray zone strategy. First a light presence, presented as harmless. Then a permanence that settles in. Then additional installations. We have seen this pattern at large scale with the construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea — coral reefs transformed into full military bases with runways and missile systems. The floating platform of June 2026 may be the beginning of a new cycle of the same process.

The Philippine response: protest, transparency, continuity

The Philippines formally protested against this installation. They published photos and detailed information. The Marcos Jr. government summoned the Chinese ambassador. These measures are real but insufficient on their own. China responded with its habitual formulations: incontestable sovereignty, legitimate activities, unacceptable foreign interference. The same script repeated for ten years.

What is different in 2026 is the international attention brought to these developments. The Philippine transparency strategy has progressively built a global audience for these incidents. Where similar reports five years ago passed unnoticed on the inside pages of newspapers, they now make the front pages of outlets like the Washington Times, the Guardian, Reuters. The normalization of Chinese harassment is being checked, partially, by Philippine persistence in making it visible.

The floating platform concerns me more than the water cannon incidents, paradoxically. Physical incidents are dramatic but localized in time. Permanent infrastructure, by contrast, changes the fait accompli in a durable way. Every fixed installation creates a new starting point for the next claim. In ten years, this platform could be a base. That is exactly what happened with the artificial islands. I look at this and I tell myself: we have seen this film before.

Targeting Minister Teodoro and his family

In June 2026, China crossed an additional line: it imposed a travel ban on Philippine Defense Minister Gilbert Teodoro and his family. This measure is personal, targeted, and designed to send a message of direct intimidation to a government official who had been particularly vocal in denouncing Chinese conduct at sea.

This escalation toward the minister's private person — including family members who exercise no political function — marks a troubling development. We are no longer talking only about harassing anonymous fishermen at sea. We are talking about personally and explicitly targeting political decision-makers and their relatives. This is an attempt to make those who resist pay a sufficiently high personal cost to deter them from continuing to resist.

The deterrent effect on regional decision-makers

The message of this sanction is not only destined for Teodoro. It is destined for all political decision-makers in the region who might be tempted to harden their position against China. If being too vocal about Chinese violations in the South China Sea means having one's passport invalidated for China and Hong Kong, and exposing one's family to the same, some will choose caution over courage. That is precisely the intended effect.

International human rights organizations have condemned this measure. The United States and the European Union have expressed concern. But verbally condemning a travel ban is a symbolic response without practical consequence. If the international community truly wants to discourage this type of personal intimidation tactic, it must respond with reciprocal measures: targeted sanctions on the Chinese officials who make these decisions. Not declarations. Acts.

Targeting a minister's family to punish his legitimate political statements — this is political harassment at the diplomatic level. In a democratic country, this behavior would be qualified as a threat, perhaps as corruption or intimidation of an official. In international relations, it is called "diplomatic pressure." The choice of vocabulary says much about the tolerance we have developed toward behaviors that we would otherwise qualify as criminal in other contexts.

164 tonnes in one day: the symbol of a denied abundance

The figure deserves a pause: during a brief period in 2023 when access to Scarborough Shoal had been temporarily restored for Philippine fishermen, they caught 164 tonnes of fish in a single day. This is not an anecdote. It is the concrete measure of what China has subtracted from Philippine coastal communities since 2012. Multiply this potential by the fishing days lost over twelve years, and you begin to measure the scale of the economic harm.

Philippine fishermen who depend on these zones are not abstract interests in a geopolitical debate. They are concrete families who have seen their principal source of income cut by the decision of a foreign power whose claims have been judged illegal by an international tribunal. The law belongs to them. The resources belong to them. And yet, for twelve years, they cannot access these resources without risking water cannons, lasers, or worse.

The impact on coastal communities and food security

Fishing represents an essential economic pillar for several Philippine provinces — notably in the Zambales region, the closest to Scarborough Shoal. Thousands of families depend directly or indirectly on this industry. The access restriction imposed by China since 2012 has forced fishermen to seek alternative zones, often less productive, or to go into debt to buy additional fuel to reach more distant zones.

Food security is also at stake. The Philippines is a country of 115 million inhabitants where fish constitutes a major protein source for modest-income populations. When China subtracts productive fishing zones from the Philippine economy, it does not only affect incomes — it affects the availability and price of a basic food necessity for millions of people. This concrete human dimension is too rarely mentioned in geopolitical analyses that prefer maritime law maps to fishing tables.

Every time I read an article on the South China Sea that does not mention what it concretely means for Philippine fishermen — what these families have lost, what they risk every day — I find that something essential is missing. Geopolitics exists in maps and treaties. Reality exists in empty fishing nets, damaged boats, eyes burned by military lasers. Both levels of analysis are necessary. But it is the second one that gives me the moral measure of the situation.

Allies who condemn but do not sanction

The United States, Japan, Australia, the European Union, and other democracies regularly condemn Chinese actions in the South China Sea. These condemnations are real, public, sometimes firm in their formulations. But they remain almost exclusively verbal. No targeted economic measures have been taken against the Chinese entities responsible for incidents at sea. No personal sanctions have been imposed on the officers of the Chinese Coast Guard who command the harassment operations.

The reason is simple and frankly cynical: economic dependence on China. Bilateral trade between the European Union and China amounts to hundreds of billions of euros. American-Chinese trade, despite Trump's tariffs, remains colossal. Companies that manufacture in China, supply chains that pass through Chinese ports, sovereign debts held by investment funds with participations in China: all of this creates interests that weigh heavily against the rights of Philippine fishermen on a reef in the South China Sea.

ASEAN paralyzed by its internal divisions

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is structurally incapable of acting in a unified way against China on this issue. Members like Cambodia and Laos — whose governments are economically and politically heavily dependent on Beijing — systematically block any formulation of joint communiqués that would explicitly condemn Chinese actions. ASEAN operates by consensus, and consensus is impossible when two of its members are de facto spokespersons for the Chinese position within the organization.

This paralysis of ASEAN essentially leaves the Philippines alone against China in regional mechanisms. Manila has sought and found bilateral support — the United States, Japan, Australia — but the absence of a unified regional voice significantly weakens the Philippine position. China masterfully exploits these divisions: it can always point to the ASEAN members who do not support the Philippines to deny the idea of a regional consensus against its practices.

Cambodia and Laos as blockers within ASEAN — this is exactly the effect sought by massive Chinese investment in these countries. Beijing does not lend billions to its neighbors out of generosity. It buys political postures. Blockades in committee. Dissenting voices in multilateral forums. This is geopolitics through economics, and it is devastatingly effective. The West could take notes — not to copy the method, but to understand what it must compete against.

$3.5 trillion in annual maritime trade

The South China Sea is not a distant regional concern. It is at the heart of the global economy. Approximately $3.5 trillion in goods transit through these waters every year — representing about a third of global maritime trade. Oil exports from the Middle East to Asia. Containers of Asian manufactured products to Europe and America. Raw materials from Australia and South Africa to East Asian factories. All these routes pass through the South China Sea.

If China manages to establish effective navigation control over these waters — not only fishing, but commercial transit — it will possess an economic lever of extraordinary power over all global economies. A China capable of threatening or disrupting maritime traffic in the South China Sea is a China capable of exerting economic pressure on countries that have no border with it and that might think they have nothing to fear from its territorial claims. This is not a theoretical hypothesis. It is the geopolitical logic of what Beijing has been methodically building since 2012.

Freedom of navigation: a principle the West must actively defend

The United States maintains a freedom of navigation (FON operations) policy in the South China Sea — regular passages of American military vessels in areas claimed by China to assert that these waters are international. These operations are important symbolically and legally. But they do not protect Philippine fishermen. They do not apply the 2016 decision. They have not prevented the construction of artificial islands. They are not a complete policy — they are a regular signal that the United States follows closely.

A complete policy would require economic components: targeted sanctions against the Chinese Coast Guard entities involved in documented incidents. Compensation mechanisms for damages suffered by Philippine fishermen. Substantial financial and material support for the Philippines' maritime surveillance capabilities. And a willingness to explicitly link trade relations with China to its respect for international maritime law. None of these elements currently exists fully.

American freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea are somewhat like European condemnation declarations on Philippine fishermen: real, symbolically important, but insufficient on their own. They tell China that we are watching. They do not tell it that there is a cost to what it does. And without a real cost, a rational great power will continue to do what it does. This is the elementary logic of deterrence, which the West seems to have forgotten in its application to Chinese behavior.

Against "both sides are wrong" on this specific issue

I want to be explicit about my editorial position, because I believe it is necessary on this precise issue. In many international conflicts, wrongs are shared, narratives contradictory, truths multiple. In the case of the South China Sea and the actions of the Chinese Coast Guard against Philippine fishermen, this is not the case. The 2016 decision is clear. The documentation of incidents is abundant. The victims are identified. The aggressor is identified.

Practicing false balance on this issue — presenting the Chinese and Philippine positions as equally legitimate — would be a distortion of documented reality. China is not wrong in one opinion among others. It violates an established right recognized by a tribunal it accepted when it signed the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). It harasses civilian fishermen with military means. It creates permanent installations in international waters without legal right to do so. Naming this clearly is not bias. It is factual precision.

What our silence normalizes for tomorrow

Every incident in the South China Sea that passes without substantial international response is a lesson learned by all the actors who are watching. China learns that the method works. Other states that harbor territorial ambitions — in other regions of the world — learn that sufficient economic power protects from any real consequence. And small states that defend legal rights against more powerful neighbors learn that the international community does not have the backbone to support them concretely when it costs something.

This is not abstract. The decisions the international community makes — or does not make — today on the South China Sea shape the risk calculations of all actors in all future conflicts. If Beijing can torment Philippine fishermen with water cannons with impunity, if it can ignore an international decision for ten years without consequence, then every treaty, every tribunal, every international norm becomes a little less binding for everyone. That is the real issue. And that is why I refuse to treat this subject as an ordinary territorial conflict.

I end this editorial with a simple conviction: we cannot afford to treat the South China Sea as a peripheral regional dossier. What is happening there is a real-time test of our commitment to a rules-based international order. Every time a Philippine fisherman is injured by a Chinese water cannon and the world shrugs its shoulders, we fail this test. Not spectacularly. Slowly. Imperceptibly. But systematically.

Targeted sanctions on those responsible for documented incidents

The first concrete measure the West should take is simple: personal targeted sanctions on senior officers of the Chinese Coast Guard who command operations in disputed zones. The model exists — Magnitsky sanctions allow travel bans and asset freezes to be imposed on foreign officials who violate fundamental rights. Officers who order the use of water cannons against civilians, or the use of cyanide to poison fishing zones, clearly fall into this category.

These sanctions would be symbolically powerful and practically measured. They would not affect bilateral trade with China — they would target specific individuals for specific documented acts. They would create a personal cost for decision-makers who choose the most aggressive tactics. And they would send a clear signal that the international community does not accept the normalization of violence against civilians, even dressed up as maritime surveillance operations.

An international compensation fund for victim fishermen

The second measure: create an international compensation fund for Philippine fishermen and those of any other country who have suffered documented damages caused by state forces in violation of international decisions. This fund would not replace China's responsibility — it would make that responsibility economically visible. It would mean that victims are not abandoned to their fate while diplomacy does its work over decades.

These proposals are not magic solutions. They will not force China to accept the 2016 decision tomorrow morning. But they are concrete, proportionate actions that change the cost-benefit calculation of Chinese aggressiveness at sea. What we are currently doing — verbally condemning, militarily monitoring, and changing nothing economically — does not change this calculation. And if nothing changes in the calculation, nothing will change in the behaviors. This is an obvious truth we seem to resist admitting.

I know my proposals will be judged unrealistic by those who know the constraints of international politics well. Economic dependence on China is real. Supply chains are intertwined. Triggering a trade conflict with Beijing over the rights of Philippine fishermen seems disproportionate. But I wonder if "unrealistic" is sometimes another word for "we lack the political will to pay the price." And if that is the case, let's be honest about that too.

Two contradictory images of the same power

The China we want to see, in the West, is the one of investments, growth, consumer markets, the indispensable trading partner. This is a real image — China is indeed all these things. But the China that also simultaneously exists is the one that builds artificial islands on reefs belonging to other countries, that fires water cannons on civilian fishermen, that imposes personal sanctions on foreign ministers for their legitimate political statements, and that has refused to apply an international tribunal's decisions for ten years.

These two Chinas are not contradictory. They are two facets of the same state. And our collective analytical error — in the West — is to believe that we can treat the economic China and the geopolitical China separately. That we can trade with the first while ignoring the behaviors of the second. Ten years of incidents in the South China Sea should have taught us that these two dimensions are inseparable. The financing China draws from its economic relations with the West also finances its military capabilities and its policy of maritime expansion.

The world we want to leave to our children

I end this editorial with a simple question: in what world do we want our children to live? A world where international tribunal decisions apply to all states, or a world where they apply to those who lack the means to ignore them? A world where civilian fishermen can exercise their legal rights without being doused with water cannons, or a world where force prevails over law as long as it is not confronted with superior force?

These questions are not rhetorical. They identify concrete political choices that democracies must make, now, on the South China Sea issue. We do not need a war. We do not need a total trade embargo. We need the political will to use the available tools — targeted sanctions, concrete support for the Philippines, conditionality in trade relations — to signal to Beijing that asymmetric violence against civilians has a cost. This signal does not exist today. It is time to send it.

I am a columnist, not a political decision-maker. My proposals will not bind any government. But I believe in the function of the column as a space for public clarification — naming what is happening, refusing euphemisms, proposing directions even if imperfect. What China is doing to Philippine fishermen deserves to be named clearly: it is a systematic harassment of civilians, in violation of an international decision, with the goal of appropriating resources that belong to others. Calling it anything else is a service rendered to the aggressor.

What the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea guarantees

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which entered into force in 1994 and has been ratified by more than 160 states, establishes a clear framework for maritime rights. Each coastal state has an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) extending up to 200 nautical miles from its coasts, in which it exercises sovereign rights over the exploitation of natural resources — fishing, oil, gas. These rights are exclusive: no other state can exploit these resources without the consent of the coastal state.

The Philippines ratified UNCLOS in 1984. China ratified UNCLOS in 1996. Both countries are therefore bound by the same treaty. And this treaty clearly states that Scarborough Shoal and Second Thomas Shoal lie within the Philippines' EEZ, not China's EEZ. When the Permanent Court of Arbitration rendered its decision in 2016, it did not invent a new right. It simply applied UNCLOS — a treaty that Beijing freely signed. China is not only violating the tribunal's decision. It is violating the international treaty it itself ratified.

The nine-dash line: a claim without legal basis

The nine-dash line — the maritime boundary that China unilaterally claims in the South China Sea — has no basis in UNCLOS, no basis in customary international law, and no basis in any recognized bilateral treaty. It is based on Chinese historical maps dating from the pre-1949 nationalist period — maps that were never accepted by China's neighbors and were rejected by the international tribunal in 2016.

This claim covers approximately 90% of the South China Sea, encroaching on the EEZs of the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia. If China fully applied this claim, it would deprive these five countries of a substantial part of their legal exclusive economic zones. This is the real project behind the water cannons, the lasers, and the floating barriers. Not simply harassing fishermen. Building a territorial and maritime fait accompli that the world will eventually accept by default.

The nine-dash line is one of the clearest examples I know of a legal claim built on emptiness. It has no basis in modern international law. It is defended with persistence because abandoning it would be an admission of political weakness unbearable for Xi Jinping's regime. And meanwhile, Philippine fishermen fishing in their legal EEZ are doused with water cannons by the coast guards of the country that claims these waters belong to it. The law says no. Force says something else.

How Beijing divides ASEAN from within

China's ASEAN division strategy operates primarily through massive investments in economically most vulnerable member countries. Cambodia has received billions of dollars in Chinese infrastructure investments — roads, ports, government buildings — since the 2000s. These investments have created a structural economic dependence that translates directly into pro-Chinese political positions in regional forums.

Laos is even more dependent: debt to China represents a significant portion of its total external debt. The construction of the Laos-China railway, Chinese credit-financed, has further deepened this dependence. The result is predictable: when ASEAN must vote on statements regarding the South China Sea, Cambodia and Laos block any formulation that could embarrass Beijing. An organization of ten members paralyzed by two of them — this is the effectiveness of diplomacy by checkbook.

What the West should learn from the Chinese strategy

I do not advocate that the West copy the Chinese method — buying political positions through loans with implicit political conditionalities. But I advocate that the West understand what it is fighting against. China uses economic investment as a geopolitical instrument, deliberately, systematically, over the long term. This strategy is documented. It is visible. It produces concrete results — such as ASEAN's paralysis on the South China Sea question.

The Western response to this strategy requires a much more proactive economic engagement in ASEAN countries. The American Build Back Better World initiative, the European Global Gateway partnership, Japanese investments in Southeast Asia — these instruments exist, but they are not deployed with the coherence and strategic persistence of China. If the West wants to preserve ASEAN's unity against Chinese pressure, it must offer attractive investment alternatives. Not out of idealism. Out of properly understood strategic interest.

I find it both fascinating and troubling that China's strategy of dividing ASEAN through investment is so well documented and so little countered. We know the mechanism. We see the results. And we do not respond with the strategic urgency the situation demands. Perhaps because China's strategy plays on the long term and democracies struggle to plan beyond the next electoral cycle. This is one of the most dangerous asymmetries between authoritarian and democratic systems in current geopolitical competition.

One last water cannon before the world wakes up

A Philippine fisherman somewhere in the South China Sea casts his nets tonight. He knows that Chinese coast guards are patrolling a few miles away. He knows that if he gets too close to Scarborough Shoal, the water cannons may greet him again. He fishes anyway, because his family needs to eat. He resists with his means — a net, a boat, a camera to document what happens to him.

This ordinary resistance, this persistence of daily life in the face of the arbitrary will of a superpower, is one of the most authentic forms of courage I know. These fishermen are not asking the West to fight for them. They are asking that the right a tribunal recognized in their favor be respected. That the international community have the courage to back with acts what it affirms with words. This is a reasonable request. And so far, the collective response is not equal to it.

My final conviction on this issue

I leave this editorial with a conviction I fully assume: Chinese violence in the South China Sea against Philippine fishermen is one of the clearest and best-documented examples of what a power can do when it calculates that the rules do not apply to it. The international response to this situation is a test of our real — not rhetorical — commitment to a rules-based order. So far, we are failing this test. It is not too late to pass it. But every day that passes without a concrete response makes this test a little harder to pass.

If this editorial changes something — a conversation, an attention, a question asked of an elected official — then it will have been worth writing. The column does not make policy. But it can nourish the collective consciousness that ends up changing it. And in a case like this one, where the normalization of disaster happens slowly, every voice that refuses to resign itself counts.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. I claim analytical clarity, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between verified facts and interpretive analysis. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under Sources, never here.

Primary source families used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

Secondary source families: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under Sources.

Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a critical, contextual synthesis based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.