A maritime state with limited material power can improve its position in a gray zone contest by transforming visibility into a strategic resource. This article examines the Philippines’ Transparency Initiative under the Marcos Jr. administration and argues that Manila has turned visibility into a strategic resource in the South China Sea. Based on thematic coding of 553 English-language news reports on three high-profile incidents at Second Thomas Shoal between February 2023 and June 2024, the article traces four linked processes: evidentiary visualization, narrative attribution, legal framing, and international diffusion. These processes move an encounter from the sea into public argument: a low-visibility incident becomes public evidence; evidence supports claims about responsibility; those claims are attached to legal standards; and legal claims then travel through media, diplomatic, and alliance channels. The initiative does not alter the maritime balance of power in any direct sense. Its value lies in reducing the ambiguity on which gray zone coercion relies, raising reputational costs, supporting domestic legitimation, building a legal-diplomatic record, and connecting Philippine claims to the language of a rules-based international order. The case suggests that small and middle powers are not only targets of gray zone pressure. 

Yijun Liao. Visibility as Strategic Leverage: The Philippines' Transparency Initiative and Gray Zone Competition in the South China Sea. International Journal of Frontiers in Sociology (2026), Vol. 8, Issue 3: 6-12. https://doi.org/10.25236/IJFS.2026.080302.

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