Athena Tong
Athena Tong analyzes China’s actions in the Western Pacific as strategic, consistent, and systemic. The objective is to compress the operational and political space of states Beijing treats as challengers and to entrench new “normalities incrementally.” Tong frames this pattern as the practical application of the PLA’s “Three Warfares,” amplified through FIMI, where narrative dominance, psychological pressure, and legal framing reinforce one another.
In the Philippines (Scarborough Shoal/Second Thomas Shoal), she shows how maritime incidents—collisions, blockades, water-cannon attacks—are first shaped through information operations to secure interpretive advantage and cast China as a rule- and environment-protecting actor. Presence and calibrated escalation then impose immediate pressure on decision-making and rules of engagement. This is coupled with legal framing that shifts the reference point: environmental and development claims are used to support asserted jurisdiction and to push sovereignty and self-determination principles into the background.
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