‘No creative analogy or play of words will mask the real issue, which is China’s refusal to abide by international law,’ the Philippines said.
After a series of confrontational incidents in the South China Sea, the Philippines’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) on March 10, rejected the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) accusation that the U.S. ally was merely a chess piece and that other parties were choreographing its territorial disputes with China.
CCP Foreign Minister Wang Yi alleged on March 7 that the “screenplay written by external forces” and covered by Western media is designed to make Beijing look bad.
The MFA’s
statement dismissed Wang’s allegation as a “play of words,” insisting that Philippine actions were driven solely by national interest.
The MFA called on China to “recognize that the Philippines is an independent and sovereign state whose actions and decisions are driven entirely by national interest and the interests and well-being of the Filipino people.”
“No creative analogy or play of words will mask the real issue, which is China’s refusal to abide by international law,” the statement continued.
The international law includes the 1982 U.N. Convention on the
Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which designates coastal waters up to 200 miles from the Philippines’s coastline as part of its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). This includes the western waters known locally as the West Philippine Sea. The 2016 Hague
Arbitral Award reaffirmed this designation, ruling against the CCP’s territorial claims in the region.
The MFA also said that China’s actions in the area, which is also part of the wider area called the South China Sea, were “illegal, coercive, aggressive, and deceptive.”
The Disputed Body of Water
The disputed body of water originally falls within the CCP’s so-called “Nine-dash line” demarcation, later expanded to include self-ruled democratic Taiwan to became the “10-dash line” in 2023. This imaginary cordon encompasses 2.2 million square miles of sea area and 90 percent of the South China Sea, including the Spratly and Paracel Islands along with the Scarborough Shoal, and extending as far south as Brunei.
China, like the Philippines, is a signatory to UNCLOS, per a
brief by the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission in July 2016. But that has not stopped the CCP from snubbing the
Arbitral Award. Instead, it leans on a 1947 map released by China’s then-Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalist government, as
noted by the January 2013 publication, “The Nine-Dash Line in the South China Sea: History, Status, and Implications,” in the American Journal of International Law.
The Nine-Dash Line was initially an 11-dash line drawn by the Republic of China (ROC) in 1947. Mao Zedong embraced this during his rule from 1949, per the 2015 Stanford
publication “China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed.” But Mao removed two of the lines by the end of his rule in 1976 in a moment of communist camaraderie, effectively allowing Vietnam to claim ownership of the Gulf of Tonkin,
according to a 2021 essay published in the National Defense University Press’s Joint Force Quarterly.
The CCP has tried to enforce the remaining nine dashes by terraforming coral reefs in the Spratly Islands and creating close to 3,000 acres of surface area between 2013 and 2015, according to a second Economic Security Review Commission
review in December 2016.
The report cited concerns about ecological damage due to these activities and the likelihood of clashes between Chinese fishing vessels and those from “other claimant countries.”
Less than a decade later, these fears have been realized—not through clashes between fishing boats but coast guard vessels.
China’s Attempts at Dominance
On Aug. 26, 2024, Philippine Coast Guard Commodore Jay Tarriela posted video footage on X depicting Chinese vessels with a caption saying that China’s Naval fleet had deployed “a total of forty (40) vessels including six (6) Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) vessels, three (3) People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) warships,” to prohibit the thoroughfare of a Philippine vessel on a mission resupply one of its own coast guard vessels patrolling the Escoda Shoal in the South China Sea, or West Philippine Sea.
Days later, the commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific forces, Samuel Paparo,
told journalists in Manila that the United States was open to escorting Philippine ships through the troubled waters.
This escalation followed
accounts of a Chinese vessel ramming a Philippine Coast Guard ship resulting in a 49-foot break in its hull, and another of Chinese vessels spraying another with water cannons.
The
clash occurred despite Chinese authorities agreeing that they would not interfere with Philippine resupply runs to a ship it grounded deliberately on Second Thomas Shoal—a decision made after a clash of the same nature resulted in crews of opposing sides fighting each other with weapons.
On Aug. 31, then-State Department spokesman Matthew Miller reacted to another incident of a Chinese ship ramming a Philippine vessel.
In a now
archived statement, Miller explained that the “China Coast Guard vessel deliberately collided three times with a Philippine Coast Guard vessel exercising its freedom of navigation in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, causing damage to the vessel and jeopardizing the safety of the crew onboard.”
The Global Times, a Chinese state-owned
newspaper, reported on Chinese experts claiming that the Philippines was “not concerned about the safety of its ships, aircraft, and personnel at Xianbin Jiao (Sabina Shoal); it only cares about whether its actions in [South] China Sea can win the ‘support’ of certain external countries.”
A Rallying of Sentiments
In light of these incidents, President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. met virtually in early January.
The meeting focussed on the necessity of a trilateral partnership between the three countries and followed a defense pact between Japan and the Philippines that allowed the two country’s vessels access to transit each other’s territorial waters.
The pact followed months after a Chinese aircraft entered Japan’s territory for the first time.
The Philippines Senate Deputy Minority Leader, Risa Hontiveros, weighed in on China’s activities in the region,
saying that “China is NOT starting the year right.”
“Instead of keeping the peace in the region, [it] has chosen to create more disturbance,” Hontiveros said.
Another incident occurred on Feb. 19 in which a Chinese naval helicopter buzzed a Philippine patrol aircraft.
The incident drew condemnation from the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, MaryKay L. Carlson.
“We condemn the dangerous maneuvers by a PLA Navy helicopter that endangered pilots and passengers on a Philippine air mission. We call on China to refrain from coercive actions and settle its disputes peacefully in accordance with international law,” Carlson
said on X.
