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A Chinese coast guard vessel blocked two Philippine government vessels for hours a short distance off the coast of the Southeast Asian country, in a further escalation of tension between the two nations in the disputed South China Sea.
Saturday night’s operation took place just 35 nautical miles off the coast of the Philippines, and comes as Beijing rejects high-profile moves by Washington this week to strengthen Manila, its ally, against China.
The Chinese Coast Guard vessel encountered a Philippine maritime research vessel and a Philippine Coast Guard escort vessel, according to satellite imagery and vessel tracking data collected by SeaLight, an open-source research initiative that tracks the Chinese maritime activity in the area.
Tracking data showed that the ships met on the border of the Nine-Dash Line, by which Beijing marks its extensive but vague claim to most of the South China Sea.
The two Philippine ships stopped for more than eight hours after the Chinese coast guard vessel blocked their path, and only resumed their journey northwest early Sunday morning.
“This is truly unprecedented: They intercepted them just as they crossed the nine-dash line,” said Ray Powell, director of SeaLight.
Neither the Philippines nor China have commented on the incident.
Powell said China’s move was likely a reaction to last week’s first US-Japan-Philippines summit in Washington, when Joe Biden, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida expressed concern about the ” China’s dangerous and aggressive behavior in the south”. China Sea”.
In recent weeks, the United States has stepped up warnings to China about its coercive activity in the South China Sea and particularly around the Second Thomas Shoal, a reef called the Ren’ai Jiao by China and claimed by both Beijing and Manila. The Philippines maintains control over the reef thanks to a rusting warship that ran aground there in 1999.
Washington has reiterated several times that the U.S.-Philippines mutual defense treaty “extends to armed attacks against Philippine Armed Forces, public vessels, or aircraft – including Coast Guard aircraft – anywhere in the South China Sea.”
National security advisers from the United States and the Philippines joined talks between their defense and foreign ministers for the first time on Friday, in the latest sign of expanding security cooperation.
Beijing reacted furiously. He summoned diplomats from the United States and Japan and accused both countries of engaging in a policy of blockade and interfering in his internal affairs.
China’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday accused Marcos of reneging on the bilateral agreement on the Second Thomas Shoal issue. “[T]The Philippines has abandoned the current administration’s understanding with China on the Ren’ai Jiao issue,” a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said.
The stranded Philippine ships had earlier left port on Saturday to carry out a hydrographic survey of an area about 80 nautical miles north of Scarborough Shoal, another small piece of land disputed between Beijing and Manila. China wrested control of the bank from the Philippines in 2012.
Both cays are within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, giving Manila the exclusive right to survey and exploit resources under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. A 2016 arbitral tribunal ruling said China’s extensive claims in the South China Sea, including the two shoals and surrounding waters, violated UNCLOS.
In March, Chinese coast guard vessels fired water cannons at a Philippine vessel headed for Second Thomas Shoal in two separate incidents, wounding Philippine soldiers and damaging Manila’s vessels. Marcos in response said the Philippines will implement countermeasures against China, although he did not provide any details.
Beijing has used similar blockade and intimidation tactics against oil exploration and reconnaissance vessels from Vietnam and Malaysia, which also have overlapping claims to the South China Sea.
Additional reporting by A. Anantha Lakshmi in Jakarta