South China Sea Photo: VCG

The US has substantially expanded its military presence in the Philippines since President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.'s inauguration in June 2022, including increasing the number of sites under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) from five to nine, in an effort to exploit Philippine bases to wear down China during peacetime, a Chinese think tank report released Thursday said.

The report, titled US Military Base Expansion and Force Posture Enhancement in the Philippines, was released by the South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative (SCSPI). It offers a detailed account of US base expansion activities in the Philippines since US forces were first granted access to five Philippine military bases in 2016 under the 2014 EDCA, as well as the four additional sites obtained in February 2023.

Hu Bo, director of SCSPI, told the Global Times on Thursday that the report aims to objectively present how the US has strengthened its military presence and military cooperation in the Philippines, undermined regional stability, and used its ally to expand its military posture in an attempt to contain China and drain China's resources.

At the same time, Hu said that as the overall resources Washington has committed remain limited, such moves are not enough to alter the regional balance of power or pose a genuine military threat to China. However, "The US is willing to exploit these Philippine bases, actively using them to shape the strategic environment, contain China, and drain Chinese resources," Hu said.

According to the report, "The US military is undertaking infrastructure expansions at Philippine bases to enhance its capacity to support joint exercises and training, through various funding assistance projects."

Based on incomplete statistics, as of May 2026, the total contract value for US EDCA base expansion projects had reached approximately $125 million, while the contract value for life support services at all bases in the Philippines stood at about $7.3 million, the report said.

Beyond infrastructure, the report noted that the US has also stepped up its force deployment. In addition to routine rotations, the US has scaled up the deployment of autonomous weapons and unmanned platforms, while live-fire military exercises have increased markedly compared with the period before 2023. Meanwhile, Washington is strengthening a multilateral cooperative combat system centered on the strategic axis of the US, the Philippines, Japan and Australia. 

"The overall characteristics demonstrate a strategic shift northward (facing the Taiwan Straits) and an expansion southward (facing the South China Sea), aiming at strengthening the capability to respond to situations in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Straits," the report said.

However, while the US continues to expand its military footprint on Philippine bases through EDCA and conducts realistic combat exercises involving autonomous weapons and unmanned platforms to enhance bilateral and multilateral interoperability, the report argued that Philippine bases offer limited utility in wartime.

From a broader strategic perspective, the US is returning to the Western Hemisphere, while its posture in the Asia-Pacific is entering a cycle of contraction, Yang Xiao, a research professor at the Institute of Peaceful Development under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Thursday.

This has been reflected in reduced investment and in the renaming of the US Indo-Pacific Command back to the Pacific Command, Yang said, noting that such a trend makes the US more inclined to rely on allies to confront China. Bases that are more likely to face Chinese counterstrikes are also increasingly being left to allies to operate or host, he said.

However, given the Philippines' weak military capabilities, the US still has to invest resources to build up its military presence in the country, while also encouraging allies such as Japan and South Korea to help arm the Philippines, Yang said. Washington is also strengthening asymmetric warfare capabilities, including underwater systems and suicide systems, to create asymmetric pressure, he added.

The SCSPI report also highlighted that the US is working to turn some of its military deployments in the Philippines into a long-term military presence through exercises and other arrangements.

"The US military presence in the Philippines has already gone beyond the traditional scope of alliance cooperation, evolving into a fully functional, rapidly responsive, and tightly coordinated, combat-ready military system integrated with multilateral alliances," the report said.

At present, the US deployment in the Philippines "has effectively become equivalent to maintaining a permanent military presence" in the country, the report said. It noted that weapons systems including the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, the Typhon Weapon System and the Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System have repeatedly appeared in US-Philippine military exercises, with some becoming frequent features of such deployments.

Through rotational deployments and frequent military drills, the US has effectively achieved a quasi-permanent military presence in the Philippines, Yang said. Offensive weapons such as the Typhon Weapon System can be deployed there while avoiding the appearance of being an overt military threat, he noted.

"For China and other stakeholders, it is essential to objectively assess the trajectory of the US-Philippine military alliance development and its impact on their own interests. While taking seriously the wartime threat posed by the US military presence and deployments in the Philippines, greater attention should be paid to the restraints and attrition these arrangements and related activities impose on China during peacetime," the report concluded.