Is China's "Grey Zone" in the South China Sea No Longer Effective?

In the last month, War on the Rocks published a commentary by Greg Poling, arguing that China's "grey zone" tactics in the South China Sea have been facing many limitations since 2021, and are sometimes even counterproductive.

 

Specifically, China has been successful in using the "grey zone" to occupy Scarborough Shoal/Huangyan, expand the scope of operations of coast guard and militia ships, build artificial islands, etc. However, since 2021, China has: (i) not been able to extent its control in the South China Sea; (ii) not been able to hinder the oil and gas exploration or exploitation activities of Indonesia and Malaysia; (iii) unable to prevent the Philippines from supplying the stranded ship in the Second Thomas Shoal, even indirectly pushing the Philippines to overcome its internal barriers to carry out an unprecedented defense modernization process with the US and other US allies; (iv) unable to gather legal support for its claims, while the number of countries recognizing the 2016 South China Sea Ruling has been increasing.

 

The author also predicts that China will find it difficult to adjust its strategy under President Xi Jinping, possibly moving towards a more obvious use of force because of the failure of its "grey zone" strategy. Therefore, the US and the Philippines have the responsibility to strengthen the alliance's reputation through increased defense cooperation.

 

The article has reviewed a number of "clashes" related to Chinese coast guard and “militia” ships in the South China Sea in recent years. However, the article has not considered the following points:

 

- The Philippine-US alliance has not helped the Philippines resolve the "grey zone" challenges completely. Clashes on the ground between the Philippines and China still occur regularly, even increasing in term of frequency and geographical scope in 2025. 

 

- China can expand the so-called "grey zone" tactics to other fronts and domains to bypass certain limits, including in the domains above and under the water surface, not necessarily aiming at controlling the traditional water surface as the author said.

 

- Given the green transition trend, oil and gas activities are also unlikely to be used as a criterion for evaluating the success of resolving the gray zone.

 

- The article implicitly encourages countries to increase defense cooperation with the US, focusing only on military responses to address the “grey zone” issue, while not mentioning non-military ones.