‘We are a battlefield now’: in Southeast Asia, tensions between the United States and China erupt on social media

(Reuters) – Tensions between the United States and China over the South China Sea have erupted into a war of words on social media, in what analysts see as a change in US strategy amid a growing superpower rivalry in Southeast Asia.

After Washington hardened its position last week by explicitly rejecting Chinese maritime claims in the South China Sea, US embassies in the region produced an unprecedented wave of opinions and statements criticizing Beijing’s actions.

China’s response was fiery, accusing Washington of “smearing China with false words to deceive the public” in the region.

“Now we are a battleground,” Renato de Castro, an analyst at the Albert Del Rosario Institute for Strategic and International Relations in the Philippines, told Reuters by telephone. “It will be a long game.”

A week ago, United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called Beijing’s claim of approximately 90% of the potentially energy-rich South China Sea “completely illegal” and accused Beijing of seeking an “empire maritime”.

The US embassies in Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Cambodia followed with comments on Facebook and in editorials in local media saying that Beijing’s actions were in line with the sovereignty of others.

The U.S. ambassador to Thailand accused Chinese dams of withholding water from the region’s Mekong River during a drought last year.

The embassy in Yangon drew parallels between the South China Sea and the ways it said China was interfering in Myanmar, citing investments it said could lead to debt traps, the trafficking of women to China as brides, and the entry of drugs to the country.

In a quick counterattack, the Chinese ambassador to Thailand accused Washington of “trying to sow discord between China and other coastal countries.”

In a Facebook post that twice referred to the United States as “dirty”, the Chinese embassy in Myanmar said its overseas agencies were doing “disgusting things” to contain China and showed a “selfish, hypocritical, despicable face and ugly”.

The remarks drew thousands of regional comments on social media, with many attacking China while questioning the motives of both countries.

“Thank you United States for doing what the law requires,” said Chelley Ocampo in the Facebook post of the United States Embassy in the Philippines.

After someone wrote on the page of the US embassy in Malaysia, “Imperial Yankee go home !!!!!!”, US diplomats replied, “Are you saying you agree with bullying tactics from the PRC in the SCS? ”

‘CLARIFICATIONS AND REBUTTANCES’

Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said at a press conference in Beijing that it was “the United States who first published comments attacking and condemning China” and its diplomats issued clarifications and rebuttals in response.

The US State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the apparently coordinated social media offensive.

The war of words marks a strident new tactic for US diplomacy in the region, analysts said.

The US statements aimed to link the South China Sea to local concerns “to represent Beijing as an unequivocal threat to the sovereignty of Southeast Asian nations,” said Sebastian Strangio, author of an upcoming book on the regional influence of China.

Meanwhile, China’s response was consistent with “pugnacious ‘Wolf-Warrior’ diplomacy” since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, he said, referring to increasingly nationalistic Chinese rhetoric.

Tensions have become more apparent in the South China Sea recently, with U.S. and Chinese navies conducting simultaneous exercises on a waterway that China claims over its smaller rivals, including the Philippines and Vietnam, based on history.

China “could not afford to allow the United States to make appreciable gains by changing regional opinion,” said Collin Koh Swee Lean, a researcher at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

“At least some of the governments in Southeast Asia … can secretly, if not publicly, host Pompeo’s latest statement, and therefore possibly embolden to resist their movements in the disputed waters.”