China Bypasses Philippines in Its Proposed ‘Maritime Silk Road’

Manila’s Legal Challenge to China’s Territorial Claims Is a Service to Southeast Asia, Official Says

BEIJING—The Philippines has paid a high price for launching a legal challenge to China over its sweeping claims to the South China Sea: Two-way trade, travel and investment are all languishing.

Now, it risks missing out on a planned Chinese infrastructure spending bonanza designed to boost trade and bring jobs to the region.

China is dangling the prospect of tens of billions of dollars of investment in ports strung out along its proposed “21st-Century Maritime Silk Road,” a trade route snaking through Southeast Asia all the way to Venice by way of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Official Chinese maps, however, show the route conspicuously bypassing the Philippines.

“Of course, we feel we’re alone,” Laura Del Rosario, an undersecretary at the Philippine Foreign Ministry, said Monday.

The Philippines has infuriated China by asking a United Nations arbitration panel in The Hague to rule on the legality of China’s “nine-dash line” that marks its claim to almost the entire South China Sea. The line loops down like a lolling cow’s tongue from the Chinese coast all the way to Indonesia. Along the way, it cuts through the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone as mandated under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

No other country has joined the legal action, even though Chinese territorial claims in the area also conflict with those of Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei. For a while, the Philippines hoped Vietnam might come on board, but that prospect is now looking more remote as China and Vietnam patch up relations.

Yet, Ms. Del Rosario says the Philippines is doing all its Southeast Asian neighbors a favor by pushing to make the legal status of the claims clearer.

“If clarity is achieved, all of them will benefit. In a way, we’re also doing a service,” she said in an interview on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Beijing. A ruling could come next year, when the Philippines will host the 21-member APEC gathering.

China has so far declined to take part in the legal proceedings. It is convinced that the U.S., a close ally of the Philippines, is pulling the strings, trying to win a legal victory that will undermine China in the region, according to international relations experts.

Lately, says Ms. Del Rosario, Beijing’s “rhetoric has quieted down.”

She said she is also encouraged by an agreement between China and Japan to sidestep their territorial spat over a set of islands in the East China Sea and work toward improving relations. That agreement paved the way for a meeting Monday between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

“China is trying to show it can be magnanimous in a way,” she says.

Manila, she insists, is focused on “what China wants to do as a regional power and how can we be part of that.”

Evidently, the Philippines won’t be part of the Maritime Silk Road, even though Manila is one of the great entrepôts of Asia, with a storied history at least equal to ports like Singapore, Jakarta and Colombo that are all shown as stops on the Chinese map.

China hasn’t explicitly said the trade route excludes the Philippines.

On the positive side, says Ms. Del Rosario, relations with China can’t get much worse. “There’s no way to go but up,” she says. - © Provided by ANDREW BROWNE I THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Write to Andrew Browne at andrew.browne@wsj.com