# OPEN LETTER: Beijing at Scarborough Shoal — stop playing with fire in the South China Sea

> On June 30, 2026, the Southern Theater Command of the People's Liberation Army officially announced combat-readiness patrols in the waters and airspace

- Author: Maxime Marquette
- Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co)
- Section: Open letter
- Published: 2026-07-01
- Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/lettre-ouverte-pekin-au-scarborough-shoal-cessez-de-jouer-avec-le-feu-en-mer-de-

## Introduction: One provocation too many in already boiling waters

### June 30, 2026: the PLA steps in at Scarborough

On **June 30, 2026**, the **Southern Theater Command of the People's Liberation Army** officially announced **combat-readiness patrols** in the waters and airspace of **Scarborough Shoal** in the **South China Sea**. Simultaneously, the **Chinese Coast Guard** intensified its rounds in this disputed zone, less than **240 kilometers** from the Philippine coastline. This coordinated deployment is not a routine exercise: it is a political message addressed to **Manila**, to **Washington**, and to the rest of the free world.

**Beijing** justifies this show of force by pointing to joint **American-Philippine** patrols conducted in the area the previous weekend. The **Philippines** had exercised their sovereign right by inviting their allies to navigate waters that the **Permanent Court of Arbitration** had recognized as falling within their **exclusive economic zone** in **2016**. **Beijing**, which has never recognized that international ruling, continues to act as if the South China Sea belongs to it in its entirety.

### The floating platform removed: a victory for the international community

In this same context, **Manila** had lodged a **formal diplomatic protest** after a **Chinese floating platform**, installed in late May in the contested zone, had finally been withdrawn under combined international pressure. This **Beijing** retreat — tactical though it was — showed that the international community could still influence the behavior of the **People's Republic of China** when it spoke with one voice.

But the new **PLA** patrols of **June 30, 2026** erase that provisional hope. **Beijing** now accuses the **Philippines** of having invited **external powers** — a coded phrase targeting the **United States** — to destabilize what it calls its **territorial integrity**. This rhetoric is a cynical manipulation: casting the victim as the aggressor.

*I write this without ambiguity: this letter is an act of intellectual resistance. When a military power the size of China mobilizes its armed forces to intimidate a country of 115 million people because it dared to exercise its sovereign rights recognized under international law, the free world cannot look away. The silence of democracies in the face of each new Beijing provocation constitutes, over the long term, a form of complicity.*

## Mr. Xi Jinping, the facts condemn you

### An international ruling your government refuses to hear

Allow me to be direct, **Mr. President**. In **2016**, the **Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague** ruled definitively: China's historical claims over virtually the entire **South China Sea** have no legal basis recognized under the **United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)**. This is not a Western opinion — it is the result of an international legal process to which your government was invited to participate and which it deliberately ignored.

Since that ruling, your government has not only maintained its illegitimate claims but has accelerated the **militarization** of **artificial islands** built on coral reefs, deployed **warships** and **coast guard vessels** to block Philippine fishermen's access to their traditional fishing grounds, and used **water cannons** against civilian vessels. These facts are documented, photographed, and videotaped. They are undeniable.

### The salami strategy and its limits

**Beijing** has for years practiced what geopolitical analysts call the **salami strategy**: slicing neighbors' sovereignty in thin rounds, each slice appearing insufficient to justify a firm response, until the entire sausage has disappeared. The **floating platform** installed in late May is the most recent demonstration: occupy, provoke, wait for the reaction, withdraw if pressure becomes too great, start again further along or later.

But this strategy has structural limits. The **Philippines**, under President **Ferdinand Marcos Jr.**, has hardened its posture since **2022**. The **United States** reaffirmed that the **1951 Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States and the Philippines** applies to attacks against Philippine armed forces in the South China Sea. **Japan**, **Australia**, and several European partners have reinforced their naval presence in the region. **Beijing's** isolation on this file has never been so visible.

*I want to be honest with my readers: I do not claim to know all the contours of the military strategy playing out in this zone. What I do know is that every time Beijing invokes national sovereignty to justify an escalation, the documented facts tell a different story — that of a state which measures its strength by its capacity for intimidation, not by the legitimacy of its legal titles.*

## To Manila: you are right, hold firm

### Philippine resistance: a model for threatened small states

This open letter also addresses **Manila**. The Philippine government, despite considerable diplomatic and economic pressure from **Beijing**, has maintained a posture of firmness that deserves to be highlighted and encouraged. Lodging a **formal diplomatic protest**, continuing to exercise its rights within its own **exclusive economic zone**, maintaining joint patrols with allies: these are acts of sovereignty, not provocations.

**Scarborough Shoal**, whose Philippine name is **Bajo de Masinloc**, is located only **240 kilometers** from the coast of Luzon. Philippine fishermen have accessed these waters for generations to make a living. Every time a **Chinese Coast Guard** vessel drives them away from these waters, it is an act of intimidation against civilians. This is not a geopolitical abstraction — it is a daily reality for thousands of families.

### The importance of the allied framework

Manila's decision to maintain and deepen its security partnerships — notably with the **United States**, but also with **Japan** and **Australia** — is strategically sound. The **American-Philippine joint patrols** that triggered **Beijing's** reaction were not aimed at provocation: they were aimed at establishing a legal and legitimate presence in a zone that international law recognizes as Philippine. Faced with a state that refuses the rules of the multilateral game, the only viable response is allied cohesion.

Chinese accusations that the **Philippines** is allowing **external powers** to interfere reveal a fundamentally hegemonic conception of the regional order: **Beijing** would prefer its neighbors to manage their disputes directly with it, without witnesses, without allies, without international law — a negotiation between the elephant and the mouse.

*I find it difficult not to feel a form of admiration for the Philippine posture on this file. Resisting Beijing's pressure when you are infinitely smaller, when your exports depend on the Chinese market, when the sea separating you is dotted with military patrols — that is a form of political courage that many Western governments, better equipped militarily, do not always demonstrate.*

## To Washington: the Pacific alliance is your most precious asset

### The 1951 treaty must be believed at its word

Article **IV** of the **Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States and the Philippines** stipulates that both parties will defend each other mutually in the event of an armed attack in the Pacific area. Successive American administrations have confirmed that this guarantee extends to Philippine armed forces and government vessels in the South China Sea. But words must be backed by visible and credible acts to have a real deterrent effect on **Beijing**.

American presence in the **Asia-Pacific** is a common good for the region's democracies. **American military bases** in the Philippines, whose access was expanded through the **EDCA** (**Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement**), constitute a security net for all the regional partners resisting Chinese pressure. Maintaining them, reinforcing them, and demonstrating their operational utility is not one option among others — it is a strategic necessity.

### Trump, China, and allied coherence

The **Trump** administration maintains an ambivalent relationship with its Asian allies — based sometimes on transactions rather than shared values. But even from a purely transactional standpoint, maintaining American credibility in the **Asia-Pacific** is in **Washington's** direct interest. If regional allies doubt American commitment, they seek accommodations with **Beijing** — which is precisely what **Xi Jinping** aims for.

The joint patrols with the **Philippines** that **Beijing** denounced on **June 30, 2026** are exactly the type of concrete engagement the region needs to calibrate deterrence. This is not provocation: it is allied coherence. Coherence is the only language that **Beijing's** strategists truly understand.

*I will say what many hesitate to put into words: Trump is a necessary evil in this precise context. His transactional instinct is problematic for long-term allied solidarity, but his refusal to tolerate weakness in the face of China — when applied — sometimes produces concrete results. The question is whether this logic survives the commercial pressures pushing Washington toward concessions.*

## The global maritime stakes at play at Scarborough

### A third of world trade passes through these waters

The **South China Sea** is not merely a zone of bilateral tensions between **China** and the **Philippines**. Approximately **one-third of global maritime trade** — representing more than **3.5 trillion dollars** in goods annually — transits through these waters. Freedom of navigation in the region is therefore a global good, not a regional concern. When **Beijing** threatens to undermine it, all the world's economies are potentially affected.

The precedent **Beijing** is attempting to establish is particularly dangerous: if a sufficiently powerful state can claim and militarize maritime zones without regard for international tribunal decisions, the multilateral maritime law system built since **1982** with **UNCLOS** collapses. And if **UNCLOS** collapses in the South China Sea, it weakens everywhere else in the world.

### AI waters and submarine cables

The strategic dimension of this zone goes beyond fishing resources or hydrocarbon reserves. Critical **submarine cables** for global digital communications — including financial traffic and data transfers related to **artificial intelligence** — pass through these waters. Control or disruption of this infrastructure would constitute a lever of extraordinary power for whoever dominated the region militarily. This is a strategic reality that democracies cannot afford to ignore.

This is not paranoia: it is a documented assessment that Western intelligence agencies, notably linked to the **Five Eyes**, have brought to the attention of allied governments. The **South China Sea** is a first-order geopolitical nexus, and **Scarborough Shoal** is one of its most contested strategic access points.

*I am not a specialist in international maritime law, and I own that. But I can read maps, court decisions, and publicly available intelligence reports. What I see concerns me deeply: a nuclear power using the mass of its navy to rewrite the rules of the international game — not through legal argumentation, but through physical presence and intimidation.*

## To the international community: silence is not an option

### The European Union must take a clear position

The **European Union** has direct interests in freedom of navigation in the **South China Sea**, but its voice on this file remains too timid. European naval missions in the region — as **Operation Atalanta** did for piracy in the Gulf of Aden — would demonstrate concrete commitment to defending the rules of international law, well beyond diplomatic declarations.

Several **EU** member states, notably **France**, the **United Kingdom** (post-Brexit) and **Germany**, have conducted naval transits through the region in recent years. These concrete acts deserve to be amplified and coordinated. A formal European framework for freedom of navigation in the **Indo-Pacific** would send an unambiguous signal to **Beijing**: the rules are not negotiable.

### The United Nations and the limits of multilateralism

Knowing that **China** is a permanent member of the **United Nations Security Council** — with veto power — the hope for a binding UN resolution on this file is practically nil. Traditional multilateralism has structural limits when one of the permanent members is itself the source of the problem. This is an uncomfortable but necessary reality to acknowledge.

The response must therefore pass through alternative mechanisms: coalitions of democracies like the **Quad** (United States, Japan, Australia, India), **AUKUS**, and enhanced bilateral partnerships. These structures, more agile and less vulnerable to the Chinese veto, constitute the real security architecture of the region for the decades to come.

*I must admit a certain frustration at the slowness of multilateral institutions in responding to documented provocations. International law has value only if credible actors are willing to defend it concretely. Fine resolutions are useless if no one changes their behavior after they are adopted.*

## China on the world stage: credibility versus coercion

### When diplomacy masks military pressure

**Beijing** seeks to present itself simultaneously as a responsible power on the international stage and as a dominant force in its immediate neighborhood. This dual posture creates a structural tension that the rest of the world is beginning to document with precision. On one hand, **China** sits on the **UN Security Council**, signs climate agreements, and champions a multipolar world based on **peaceful coexistence**. On the other, it deploys the **PLA** to **Scarborough Shoal** on **June 30, 2026** to intimidate a neighbor that won its case before international tribunals.

This contradiction is not a diplomatic accident — it is a deliberate strategy. **Beijing** plays on two different registers for different audiences. For the **West**, it presents the face of negotiation and economic partnership. For its neighbors in **Southeast Asia**, it displays military superiority and determination to impose its claims. This dual-language strategy demands from democracies a precise reading — do not be taken in by the first discourse, do not overreact to the second.

### The erosion of regional trust toward Beijing

Surveys regularly published by the **Pew Research Center** and the **Asian Barometer Survey** reveal a consistent trend over several years: distrust of **China** is growing in virtually all democracies in the **Asia-Pacific**. In **Japan**, **South Korea**, **Australia**, the **Philippines**, and **Taiwan**, populations perceive **Beijing** as a greater threat than in the past. This shift in public opinion is directly correlated with the aggressive behaviors documented in the South China Sea.

This decline in trust has concrete strategic consequences: it fuels regional rearmament, consolidates defensive alliances, and politically justifies military spending that would have been difficult to defend ten years ago. By choosing intimidation over cooperation, **Beijing** is itself manufacturing the coalitions that will encircle it tomorrow.

*I sometimes wonder whether Beijing's strategists genuinely believe their neighbors will eventually accept this de facto hegemony, or whether they know resistance will strengthen but are paying the diplomatic cost in the hope that the window for military action closes before coalitions become operational. Both hypotheses are equally troubling.*

## What history teaches us about maritime aggressors

### The precedents that should worry us

The history of maritime conflicts teaches a simple but painful lesson: powers that seek to dominate strategic waters only back down when faced with credible and coordinated resistance. The precedent of the **South China Sea** presents troubling analogies with other forms of gradual territorial expansion that the Western world tolerated for too long before reacting.

The construction of **militarized artificial islands** on reefs in the **South China Sea** — documented since **2014** — continued without the international community managing to stop it. These **islands** now host **military airstrips**, **radar installations**, and **missile systems**. What was presented as civilian infrastructure proved to be a permanent military establishment.

### Beijing's rhetoric and its internal contradictions

**Beijing** systematically presents its claims as defensive — a response to foreign interference, protection of its **historical sovereignty**. But this rhetoric runs into a fundamental contradiction: China's neighbors that draw closer to Western alliances do so precisely in reaction to Chinese pressure, not the reverse. It is **Beijing's** escalation that creates defensive alliances, not defensive alliances that provoke **Beijing**.

This logic of causal inversion — blaming the victim for its own aggression — echoes other forms of rhetoric we have learned to recognize in other geopolitical contexts. The factual truth remains accessible to anyone who consults the decisions of international courts, satellite imagery, and the testimonies of Philippine fishermen expelled from their fishing zones.

*I sometimes wonder whether the West truly grasps the scale of what is at stake in the South China Sea. Not in newsrooms or universities — those circles understand it well — but in the public opinion that ultimately determines political decisions. The normalization of each new Chinese provocation, the fatigue of geopolitical news cycles, the daily media noise: all of this works in Beijing's favor.*

## Conclusion: the rules must apply to everyone

### A letter that calls for action, not merely outrage

This open letter is not a call to war. It is a call for consistency. The rules of international maritime law that the West invokes to defend freedom of navigation cannot apply only when convenient. They must be defended with the same energy in the **South China Sea**, at **Scarborough**, in the **Yellow Sea**, and in the **Taiwan Strait** as in any other maritime space in the world.

The allied democracies — the **United States**, the **European Union**, **Japan**, **Australia**, **Canada**, the **United Kingdom**, and their Indo-Pacific partners — all have a stake in keeping the rules of the maritime game valid. Weakness in the face of **Beijing's** provocations does not lead to peace: it invites the next slice of the salami.

### History will judge the choices we make today

**June 30, 2026** may remain a minor event in the archives of world diplomacy — one more patrol in a zone that sees dozens every year. Or it could mark the point at which the international community decided to no longer tolerate repeated provocations, closed ranks, and responded with the clarity the situation demands. We still have a choice.

The **Philippines** is doing its part. **Washington** sends signals, sometimes contradictory. **Europe** is slowly waking up. And all the while, the **PLA** makes its rounds **240 kilometers** from the coast of **Luzon**. Time is not neutral in this file — every inaction by the international community is a silent concession to **Beijing**.

*I write this letter with the conviction that words still have value in democracies — that informing the public, naming provocations, and recalling the rules of the international game is not a futile act. I write it also with the humility of someone who knows that between analysis and action, there is a world that neither columnists nor journalists can cross alone.*

**By Maxime Marquette, columnist**

## Columnist's transparency note

### 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.

## Sources

### Primary sources

- [Reuters — China conducts patrols around Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea — June 30, 2026](https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-conducts-patrols-around-scarborough-shoal-disputed-south-china-sea-2026-06-30/)

- [South China Morning Post — South China Sea file — 2026](https://www.scmp.com/topics/south-china-sea)

- [People's Daily (EN) — Official Chinese position on maritime sovereignty — June 25, 2026](https://en.people.cn/n3/2026/0625/c90000-20471028.html)

### Secondary sources

- [Global Times — Coverage of Chinese maritime affairs — June 2026](https://www.globaltimes.cn/china/index.html)

- [Hutchin Song — Fault Lines Daily Summary — June 28, 2026](https://hutchinsong.substack.com/p/fault-lines-daily-summary-june-28)

- [Video documentation — South China Sea patrols — 2026](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MX6oOQKj3g)

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Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/lettre-ouverte-pekin-au-scarborough-shoal-cessez-de-jouer-avec-le-feu-en-mer-de-