BEIJING -- President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, one of America's closest allies in Asia, has said he wants to reduce U.S. military influence in his country and build closer ties with China.
But he has stopped short of offering to do what China would like most: scrapping an accord that gives the United States access to five military bases in the Philippines.
How far he is willing to go will be tested this week when he arrives in China today for talks that are likely to produce signals of whether he wants to become a close friend of Beijing.
"If China succeeds in peeling the Philippines away from the United States, it will be a major win in Beijing's long-term campaign to weaken U.S. alliances in the region," said Andrew Shearer, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "It will feed fears that the right mix of intimidation and inducements could influence other partners to distance themselves from Washington."
Duterte has expressed doubts about whether the United States would come to the aid of the Philippines in a military showdown, and on the eve of his departure for Beijing he said he would be looking to buy Chinese weapons in his fight against terrorism.
The stepped-up U.S. access to the Philippines, negotiated by the Pentagon under the previous Philippine government of Benigno Aquino, was considered a mainstay of President Barack Obama's administration's "pivot" to Asia strategy, which China has blasted as a containment policy and which it would like to unravel.
The visit comes as Thailand, another U.S. ally in Southeast Asia, has increasingly turned toward China, raising the prospect that Washington faces frayed ties with two of its long-standing partners in the region.
"China will be very watchful about how far Duterte wants to go," said Zhu Feng, executive director of the Collaborative Innovation Center of South China Sea Studies at Nanjing University. "His pledge to distance from the United States, of course it's very positive for China."
In particular, Zhu said, China would like the Philippines to stop U.S. use of an air base at Palawan, an island about 100 miles from the disputed Spratly Islands, where China has built three military bases.
The Palawan base significantly enhances the ability of U.S. forces to project power into the disputed South China Sea, and anything that jeopardized that access would complicate U.S. military planning.
As China probes Duterte for strategic concessions, the new leader has his own shopping list for economic help from Beijing. In an interview with the state-run Chinese news agency Xinhua, released Monday, he criticized the United States for being stingy, saying "only China can help us."
He has said he wants the Chinese to construct a railway in his home province, Mindanao, and from the capital, Manila, to Mindanao. A Chinese businessman has financed a drug rehabilitation center scheduled to open next month, a project that Duterte praised as a symbol of Chinese friendship.
A large contingent of Philippine businessmen accompanying Duterte is expecting the Chinese to lift bans on more than two dozen fruits, imposed by Beijing four years ago in retaliation against the former government for its stance on the South China Sea.
Duterte will be accorded a full state visit, and he is scheduled to meet with the Chinese leader, President Xi Jinping, on Thursday at the Great Hall of the People. He is also expected to meet with Zhang Dejiang, the chairman of the standing committee of the National People's Congress, and to visit the Great Wall and perhaps the Palace Museum in central Beijing, Chinese officials said.
One of the toughest parts of the discussion between Duterte and the Chinese leadership is likely to be over Scarborough Shoal, a disputed reef in the South China Sea that China seized from the Philippines in 2012.
In reaction to that takeover, the Philippines initiated a case before an international tribunal in The Hague. In July, the tribunal ruled overwhelmingly in favor of the Philippines, declaring China's fishing and reclamation activities around the disputed reef to be illegal.
China has denounced the decision and vowed to ignore it. In contrast, the tribunal ruling seems to be one issue on which Duterte is consistent: He has said the Philippines will abide by it.
Information for this article was contributed by Yufan Huang of The New York Times.
A Section on 10/18/2016