China has deployed coast guard ships and several militia vessels close to a disputed shoal in the South China Sea, the Philippine military said yesterday, a week after a collision between two Chinese vessels in another part of the contested waterway.
In a statement, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) stated that it had “observed an increase in the presence of Chinese vessels in the vicinity of Ayungin Shoal on August 20.” The AFP identified at least five China Coast Guard (CCG) vessels, supported by 11 fast boats and nine Chinese maritime militia vessels, some of which appeared to “have been upgraded with mounted weapons,” and backed up by a helicopter and a surveillance drone.
In its statement, the AFP said that CCG vessels were “seen conducting maneuvers and drills involving the use of water cannons at sea.”
Ayungin Shoal is Manila’s name for Second Thomas Shoal, a disputed feature in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone that has been a recent point of contention between Manila and Beijing.
Speaking to reporters yesterday, AFP spokesperson Col. Xerxes Trinidad said the Chinese vessels were observed during “visual validation” from troops aboard the BRP Sierra Madre, a grounded warship that serves as the Philippines’ outpost on Second Thomas Shoal, as well as “different monitoring systems and assets,” Inquirer.net reported. The Sierra Madre was purposefully grounded in 1999, in order to give the Philippines a foothold on Second Thomas Shoal.
“Our continuous monitoring activity in the West Philippine Sea provides us with a clear picture of the operational environment and awareness of the situation,” Trinidad told reporters, using Manila’s name for its portions of the South China Sea.
The reported Chinese deployment marks a potentially worrisome escalation of the situation in the South China Sea. Second Thomas Shoal was the site of a string of intensifying confrontations between China and the Philippines last year, most of them stemming from the CCG’s attempt to block Manila’s routine resupply of the small detachment of marines stationed aboard the Sierra Madre. This resulted in several incidents in which Philippine supply boats were rammed and shot with high-pressure water cannons, in some cases injuring crewmembers. This largely came to an end when the two sides reached a “provisional arrangement” in July of last year, a few weeks after a major clash in which the CCG blocked a resupply mission to the Sierra Madre, injuring eight Filipino sailors, one seriously.
The fresh Chinese action now threatens to reignite a new string of confrontations over Second Thomas Shoal.
The most obvious explanation for the timing is the serious collision between two Chinese vessels around 10 nautical miles from Scarborough Shoal, a disputed feature in another part of the South China Sea, on August 11. According to the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG)’s account, a CCG vessel collided with a People’s Liberation Army Navy warship after it undertook a “risky maneuver” while pursuing a PCG vessel attempting to deliver supplies to Filipino fishermen based at the shoal. The collision “resulted in substantial damage to the CCG vessel’s forecastle, rendering it unseaworthy,” the PCG said in a statement.
The collision, which was captured on video from the PCG vessel, was highly embarrassing for the Chinese government, which has not officially acknowledged the incident. (Its statement on the incident merely criticized the Philippine vessels for “dangerous maneuvering.”) It is therefore logical to assume that China feels the need to flex its muscles to save face and send the message that it will not back down in seeking to enforce its expansive and controversial maritime claims.
As Collin Koh of Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University wrote this week for Channel News Asia, “Rolling back what it is doing to the Philippines just because of this one collision would send the wrong signal to both domestic and international audiences about Beijing’s resolve to assert its claims in the disputed waters.”
