Coercive Diplomacy by Target: How China Differentiates Its South China Sea Discourse

Over the same dispute and in the same period, China has pressed the Philippines hardest while remaining conciliatory toward Vietnam. This difference is not incidental but strategic. This study shows that China runs several distinct forms of coercive diplomacy at once, applying a different one to each rival in the South China Sea, and that toward one rival the form even shifts as that country’s government changes. Reading 7,005 English-language Global Times articles (2013–2025) against George’s (1991) four-part typology of coercive diplomacy, the study diagnoses the operative form in each case by a close reading of representative texts, with a conflict-cooperation index (CCI) and structural topic modeling (STM) as supplementary measures. Three patterns emerge. Toward the Philippines, most strikingly, the form is replaced at each change of government: incremental tightening (gradual turning of the screw) under Aquino III, restraint (non-deployment) under Duterte, and an implicit threat backed by action (tacit ultimatum) under Marcos Jr., three strategies across three successive administrations, each coinciding with a change of government. Toward Vietnam, coercion is held in reserve throughout, managed instead through party-to-party channels (sustained nondeployment). Toward the United States, a steady, incremental tightening of pressure (gradual turning of the screw) runs across four administrations yet changes no U.S. behavior. These patterns recast coercive diplomacy as something a state manages routinely across many targets at once, with direct relevance to reading China’s coercive discourse toward South Korea.