Chinese coast guard vessels initiated a “barbaric and unruly” confrontation with Philippine vessels in a disputed area of the South China Sea, even as U.S. and allied forces conduct major military exercises in the region.
“The recent incident involving China’s provocative actions and blatant disregard of international law towards the Philippines’ coast guard and fishery vessels in Bajo De Masinloc highlights China’s lack of concern for regional peace and stability,” Philippine coast guard Commodore Jay Tarriela wrote Tuesday on social media. “The Philippines’ transparency in bringing these actions to light is a success in showing the world the barbaric and unruly behavior of China, who resort to using force to justify their greed.”
The clash occurred near the Scarborough Shoal, a prized fishing area west of the main Philippine islands that China has claimed as its own sovereign territory, in defiance of an international court that ruled against Beijing in a suit brought by Manila. It is the latest incident in a dispute that has stoked widespread anxiety about a potential escalation that could lead to a direct showdown between China and the United States, which has a defense treaty with the Philippines.
“Their actions reveal their true intentions and expose their pretentious facade of claiming to be a benevolent rising power,” Tarriela said. “It seems that China has forgotten that transparency aims to expose their illegal actions, which they once successfully portrayed as gray zone tactics.”
Tarriela’s team released several videos of the incident, including one that showed a Philippine coast guard vessel inundated from two sides by water cannons from Chinese vessels. They inflicted more damage on a vessel from the Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources.
“That China would go to great lengths to obstruct a Philippine humanitarian mission to assist our fishermen in their fishing grounds is not only shocking but appalling,” the Philippines’s national task force for the area said in a Tuesday statement. “China’s act of obstructing civilian ships carrying only supplies for our fishermen calls into question the sincerity of their call for dialogue and peaceful approaches to de-escalate the situation in the West Philippine Sea.”
The tensions between China and the Philippines have simmered in recent months as Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. has adopted a policy of asserting Manila’s rights in the area after years of his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, adopting a conciliatory posture toward the communist power. Chinese officials, for their part, have declared that they have no respect for a 2016 ruling at The Hague and signaled that Marcos’s government could face more coercive pressure.
“The 2016 arbitration ruling has already had a negative impact that can hardly be fully erased, but it’s very important for China to stop the Philippines from going to a second arbitration,” Dr. Wu Shicun, the founding president of a Chinese Foreign Ministry-affiliated think tank called National Institute for South China Sea Studies, said Saturday, per the South China Morning Post. Chinese officials should “let them know that there’s a price to pay if the Philippines takes the step [of a second arbitration], not merely at sea but also in every aspect of China-Philippines relations.”
The latest confrontation coincides with a major annual U.S.-Philippines military exercise, one enlarged this year by the involvement of Australian and French forces. Those drills come against a backdrop of Philippine efforts to put a spotlight on Chinese aggression, a public relations strategy that China has sought to counter, according to Tarriela, by sowing fear of another major war.
“Just like they are now using photos from Ukraine in the social media, whether on Twitter or on Facebook, that President Bongbong Marcos will lead the Philippines to be the next Ukraine,” Tarriela told ASEAN Wonk, a geopolitics Substack focused on the region, in an interview published Monday. “The second narrative in this misinformation is that it’s the United States who is leading this and kind of directing President Bongbong Marcos to provoke China. And that Beijing will have another reason for another World War III.”
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Philippine military officials, for their part, responded to the latest incident by issuing a public assurance of their willingness to support their civilian colleagues.
“[If] they would be asking us to come in, step in… we would be ready to react accordingly,” AFP spokesperson Francel Margareth Padilla told ANC, a local media outlet. “There was no guidance to mobilize . . .We are following protocols and we are abiding with international laws.”
