China and the Philippines on Wednesday offered conflicting accounts of a maritime confrontation near a disputed South China Sea shoal, highlighting ongoing tensions in their longstanding territorial dispute.
The incident follows a diplomatic spat in November after China drew baseline “territorial waters” around the prime fishing patch of the Scarborough Shoal, and submitted nautical charts this week to the United Nations setting out its claim.
China’s Coast Guard said four Philippine ships had attempted to enter its territorial waters around the Scarborough Shoal, which Beijing claims as Huangyan Island.
Philippine ships had “dangerously approached” the coast guard’s “normal law enforcement patrol vessels”, prompting them to “exercise control” over their counterparts, Liu Dejun, a coast guard spokesperson, said in a statement.
But the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) said Chinese navy and coastguard vessels had taken “aggressive actions” against a routine patrol by it and the fisheries bureau.
A Chinese coast guard vessel fired a water cannon and sideswiped a PCG vessel, while Philippine vessels faced “blocking, shadowing, and dangerous manoeuvres” from Chinese navy and coastguard ships, a PCG spokesperson said.
Manila and Beijing have sparred at sea this past year, as Beijing claims almost all of the South China Sea, which has angered neighbouring countries that dispute some boundaries they say cut into their exclusive economic zones.
On Monday, China submitted to the United Nations nautical charts showing its territorial claims to the waters around the Scarborough Shoal.
The submission was “a legitimate activity to defend (China’s) territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests,” as a party to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), it said in a statement.
Jonathan Malaya, a spokesperson for the Philippine National Security Council, said, “It looks like a reinforcement of (China’s) baseless claim over Bajo de Masinloc following their submission of their alleged baselines.”
He was using the Philippine name for the shoal.
The Philippines and other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have spent years negotiating a code of conduct with Beijing for the strategic waterway, with some nations in the bloc insisting that it be based on UNLCOS.
China says it backs a code, but does not recognise a 2016 arbitral ruling that its claim to most of the South China Sea had no basis under UNCLOS.
(With inputs from Reuters)
