US wins expanded access to Philippine bases amid China row

Bloomberg

The US secured access to more Philippine military bases, clearing the way for a greater American presence in the Asia-Pacific region as tensions with China over Taiwan and the South China Sea persist.
The announcement Thursday of a plan to designate four new locations in “strategic areas” where the US will have expanded access didn’t mention China. Instead, it said the new sites — to be identified later — “will allow more rapid support for humanitarian and climate-related disasters in the Philippines, and respond to other shared challenges.”
But a key shared challenge the two allies have is China, given Beijing’s increasingly assertive claims to a wide swath of the South China Sea, including islands and reefs Manila sees as its own. Chinese ships have regularly been seen trailing Philippine fishing vessels, often intercepting them and forcing them to divert from contested areas long seen as within the country’s exclusive economic zone, or EEZ.
“It is a really big deal,” US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said Thursday at a news conference alongside Philippine Defense Secretary Carlito Galvez. “This is an opportunity to increase our effectiveness and interoperability. It is not about permanent basing.”
The accord will bring the total number of military sites the US can access to nine, including five existing ones, under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement signed in 2014. The pact allows the US to rotate its troops for prolonged stays as well as build and operate facilities on those bases in the Southeast Asian country.