Countering China’s Go Board at Sea

Jan 20, 2026 - 11:00 Updated: Jan 20, 2026 - 10:47

Commentary

The Filipino sailor standing watch on the rusted BRP Sierra Madre, a World War II-era landing ship grounded on Second Thomas Shoal, doesn’t think in strategy papers. He thinks about staying upright when a China Coast Guard ship swings a high-pressure water cannon toward his bridge.

Over the past two years, Chinese coast guard and militia vessels have repeatedly blasted Philippine ships with water cannons and executed dangerous blocking maneuvers around Second Thomas Shoal and other features, injuring sailors and badly damaging hulls.

In one high-profile case in March 2024, Philippine officials reported four sailors injured and two vessels damaged during a resupply mission to the Sierra Madre—one of several clashes that Manila has warned could spiral. Each close call brushes up against the U.S.–Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty, which both governments now explicitly say would be triggered by an armed attack on Philippine armed forces or public vessels.

Hundreds of miles north, Japanese radar operators in Okinawa watch a similar pattern. The Chinese regime’s ships regularly enter and linger in the waters around the Senkaku Islands, which Japan administers and China also claims. Japan’s Defense of Japan 2025 digest warns that “the international community is now facing its greatest trial since the end of World War II,” and that Japan is in “the most severe and complex security environment of the post-war era.”

From Washington, these can look like separate flare-ups. Read three documents back-to-back—the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission’s (USCC) 2025 Annual Report to Congress, Japan’s Defense of Japan 2025, and the Philippines’ National Security Policy 2023–2028—and a different picture comes into focus: one long, contested Go board running from Japan’s southwestern islands through Taiwan and the Philippines to the Pacific Islands. Same board, same opponent, three very different strategies.

Washington’s View–Fuseki and Moyo: Shaping the Whole Board

In Go, “fuseki” is the opening: both players spread stones across the whole board before any serious local fight. A “moyo” is a loose framework or sphere of influence—potential territory that can become solid if you shore it up later.

Washington is thinking in those terms. The USCC’s 2025 report devotes entire chapters to “China Shock 2.0” and to Beijing’s “weaponization of supply chains,” warning that Chinese state-backed overcapacity and export flooding are distorting markets and creating leverage over critical sectors.

The report also highlights China’s “reckless maneuvers” against Philippine vessels in the South China Sea, including an August 2025 incident that “came alarmingly close” to killing a Filipino mariner and potentially triggering the Mutual Defense Treaty.

Seen from that altitude, the so-called first island chain—the arc of Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and the Pacific Islands—is one part of a global “fuseki.” Port projects and political inroads in Pacific Island countries, tighter security and economic links with Southeast Asian states, airfields and missile sites within range of Taiwan, and normalized coast guard “patrols” around Japanese and Philippine waters all look like stones placed to build a large moyo of influence along that arc.

U.S. behavior and counter-behavior follow that logic. The USCC presses for more robust economic statecraft and industrial policy, while U.S. officials expand access to Philippine basing under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, deepen the force posture in Japan, and discuss protecting undersea cables and ports along the first island chain more openly. Washington is trying to place enough stones—military, economic, and technological—fast enough to keep Beijing from quietly closing off the board.

Tokyo’s View–Sente and Thickness: Holding the Initiative at the Rim

In Go, “sente” means you have the initiative: you are playing moves your opponent has to answer. “Thickness” is a strong, well-connected position that’s hard to attack and radiates influence.

Japan’s strategy reads like a struggle to keep both. The Defense of Japan 2025 digest and Japan’s updated National Security Strategy describe the Chinese regime’s rapid military buildup and increasingly assertive operations as “an unprecedented and the greatest strategic challenge” to Japan and regional order, and say the country must “squarely face” a security environment more severe and complex than at any time since World War II. The white paper singles out Beijing’s attempts to “unilaterally change the status quo” around the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands through regular incursions and coercive patrols.

Every time a Chinese Coast Guard ship lingers inside the 12-mile limit or a helicopter loiters near Japanese airspace, it’s not just a legal irritant. It’s a live test of who actually has “sente” at the edge of Japan’s home waters.

The 6th Air Wing of Japan Air Self-Defense Force's F-15 fighters hold a joint military drill with the U.S. B-52 bomber over the Sea of Japan, in this handout picture taken by Japan Air Self-Defense Force on Dec. 10, 2025, and released by the Joint Staff Office of the Defense Ministry of Japan on Dec. 11, 2025. Joint Staff Office of the Defense Ministry of Japan/Handout via Reuters

Tokyo’s answer has been to accelerate defense spending toward 2 percent of GDP, acquire long-range counterstrike missiles, and harden bases on the Ryukyu/Nansei Islands—an effort to build serious “thickness” along its maritime rim.

Japanese planners increasingly talk about Taiwan, the Senkaku Islands, and the southwest islands in the same breath: if Taiwan were blockaded or attacked, the room Japan needs to defend its own outlying territory would shrivel fast. For Tokyo, the first island chain is not an abstract arc on a Pentagon slide; it’s the edge of home.

Manila’s View–Sabaki in a Ko Fight: Keeping Weak Stones Alive

“Sabaki” is Go shorthand for handling a weak group lightly and creatively, so it can survive in hostile territory. A “ko” fight is a repeated capture-recapture battle that never fully settles; each side pauses to look elsewhere on the board for threats large enough to keep it going.

The Philippines is doing both. Under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Manila adopted a publicly released National Security Policy 2023–2028 (NSP) that defines national security broadly and identifies the West Philippine Sea (its term for the part of the South China Sea within its exclusive economic zone) as a central concern.

Executive Order No. 37 formally approved the NSP in August 2023, tying it to a vision of a “free, united, secure, peaceful, resilient and prosperous” archipelagic nation. The NSP outlines building a “minimum credible defense posture” and shifting more internal security duties to the police so the armed forces can focus on external defense.

But the document and subsequent analysis also lean heavily on lawfare and public diplomacy: grounding Philippine claims in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the 2016 arbitral award, and using regular public release of video and imagery of Chinese actions at sea to build international support.

On Manila’s Go board, the stones are fragile: a grounded, slowly rusting ship on a shallow reef; a still-modernizing navy; an overworked but determined coast guard. Law, cameras, and alliances function as “sabaki”—the light, flexible handling that enables the smaller democratic country to survive in the shadow of a large, belligerent aggressor.

The repeated clashes at Second Thomas Shoal and Scarborough Shoal now look less like isolated crises and more like a long “ko” fight. Chinese ships push with water cannons, block runs, and engage in risky maneuvers; Philippine crews resupply, maneuver, and document; Washington restates its treaty commitments. Nothing is resolved, but each round raises the odds that one more “routine” mission ends with a serious casualty.

3 Playbooks, 1 Encirclement Strategy

Put these perspectives side by side, and the “three playbooks” problem becomes obvious. Washington is in whole-board “fuseki” mode, trying to prevent a hostile “moyo” from forming along the first island chain. Tokyo is focused on keeping “sente” and building “thickness” at the edge of home. Manila is improvising “sabaki” to keep weak groups alive in a grinding “ko” fight it cannot afford to lose.

Beijing’s behavior, by contrast, looks like classic Go encirclement. The USCC report’s sections on Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands lay out how China blends economic leverage, infrastructure projects, political coercion, and maritime pressure to blunt U.S. access and fragment allied responses—stones placed methodically along the arc.

What Needs to Happen Next

For Washington, the next step is the unglamorous work of alignment. The United States, Japan, and the Philippines need a clearer, shared understanding of when their treaty commitments apply and how they intend to respond to the kinds of “near-miss” incidents they already face—questions that have already surfaced after injuries to Filipino sailors at Second Thomas Shoal. Clarity on these issues ensures responses aren’t improvised in the heat of the next collision or injury.

They also need to treat the information front as part of security, not an afterthought: faster, joint release of verified footage and data when dangerous incidents occur; more direct communication with the public in the region; and support for independent media and maritime domain awareness so that what happens at Second Thomas Shoal or the Senkakus is documented in real time, not argued over weeks later.

Finally, U.S. support can’t stop at missiles and submarines. For allies on the front line, coast guard cutters, repair yards, radar, undersea cables, and resilient ports matter just as much—and are far more visible to the people whose support will determine whether these partnerships endure.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.