MANILA – The United States said on Tuesday (October 14) it was prepared to provide military aid to the Philippines if it came under Chinese attack in the hotly contested South China Sea.
The stern and clear statement came shortly after Manila accused China Coast Guard ships of intensifying their harassment in the disputed maritime region by firing water cannons at Philippine Bureau of Fisheries boats over the weekend and deliberately ramming one of the vessels.
The incident occurred just 1.8 nautical miles off Thitu Island, the largest of the nine Philippine-controlled features and the second naturally occurring island in the disputed Spratly Islands chain.
While it is beyond the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, Thitu, known locally as Pag-asa and by China as Zhongye, forms a part of the Kalayaan Island Group of Islands that is part of Palawan island-province, which geographically juts deeply and strategically into the South China Sea.
“The United States condemns China’s October 12 ramming and water cannoning of a Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources vessel close to Thitu Island in the South China Sea,” Department of State deputy spokesman Thomas Pigott said in a statement.
“China’s sweeping territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea and its increasingly coercive actions to advance them at the expense of its neighbors continue to undermine regional stability and fly in the face of its prior commitments to resolve disputes peacefully,” he said.
Washington’s 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty with the Philippines binds the two allies to come to each other’s aid in times of hostility or war. Pigott said that the treaty “extends to armed attacks on Philippine forces, public vessels or aircraft – including those of its coast guard – anywhere in the South China Sea.”
The China Coast Guard, meanwhile, claimed the Philippine vessels had illegally entered Chinese waters near a cluster of sandbars known as Sandy Cay, which lies between Thitu and China’s artificial island base of Subi. It accused Manila of “ignoring repeated stern warnings from the Chinese side and said it “took control measures against the Philippine vessels in accordance with the law and resolutely drove them away.”
Despite China’s ramped-up harassment of Filipino vessels in the sea region, Manila has so far sought to defuse the situation, preferring to deploy diplomatic over military means, including through a name-and-shame strategy aimed at generating international publicity and sympathy in its favor.
At the same time, Filipino officials have often rejected certain calls to overtly invoke the MDT, which could further inflame the situation through greater US involvement and give China a reason to pull out of ongoing dialogues to settle the two sides’ overlapping claims.
China claims nearly all of the mineral and energy-rich region, including up to the territorial shores of its smaller neighbors through its ten-dash line claim.
Thitu is the largest of nine islands, islets and reefs inhabited by Philippine forces and a Filipino fishing community. It rests in the Spratly archipelago, the most fiercely disputed region of the South China Sea, where China has turned seven barren reefs into island bases protected by a missile system.
Three of the artificial islands have runways, including Subi, which lies a mere 20 kilometers (12 miles) from Thitu, which China also claims.
In 2016, an international tribunal at The Hague ruled in favor of Manila’s claims over Beijing’s, a ruling China ignored and has criticized as illegitimate. The US-led international community applauded the UNCLOS-based decision, and the Philippines has received encouragement from its allies who partner with it in joint sails that have put China on notice.
On Monday, the Philippines Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela accused China of deploying a large flotilla to harass a Philippine humanitarian mission near Thitu, an indication of Beijing’s increasing boldness.
He said five CCG vessels, backed by at least 15 Chinese maritime militia vessels, a People’s Liberation Army-Navy ship and a helicopter harassed Philippine Bureau of Fisheries vessels while they were as close as 1.6 miles from Thitu.
The Chinese were in the area apparently to block the Philippine flotilla, which included six fisheries vessels that were water cannoned as they attempted to deliver aid to local fishermen in the area.
Tarriela said the “mission objectives” of the activity were to support the fishermen and ensure their safety because they are routinely subjected to “harassment and bullying activities of the Chinese Coast Guard.”
The Filipino vessels were subjected to water cannons by the CCG, while a Chinese helicopter flew overhead.
“All of these Chinese Coast Guard vessels actually entered the territorial sea of Pag-asa Island,” Tarriela said. One of the Filipino vessels, Datu Pagbuaya, was also damaged by the “intentional ramming” of the CCG, he said.
“All of those incidents happened between 1.6 to 1.8 nautical miles off the coast of Pag-asa Island. That means all of these incidents happened within the territorial sea of Pag-asa,” he said. “Very, very close to Pag-asa.”
Separately, the National Maritime Council, which was created by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr last year to monitor and increase security in the West Philippine Sea, strongly condemned China’s aggression. The proximity of the Chinese ships to Pag-asa “is of grave concern to the Philippines,” it said in a statement on Sunday.
“The Philippines will undertake the appropriate diplomatic action to convey its strong objections to the aggressive and illegal actions of China, and urges it to immediately cease these actions, respect international law, particularly the 1982 UNCLOS and the 2016 Arbitral Award, and avoid further escalation in the region,” the statement said.
“China must be sincere and hold true to its call for dialogue and consultation by demonstrating constructive actions and desisting from all provocative actions,” the council said. “The Philippines is clearly within its rights to conduct routine maritime operations in and around Pag-asa Island, and will continue to do so.”
Jason Gutierrez was head of Philippine news at BenarNews, an online news service affiliated with Radio Free Asia (RFA), a Washington-based news organization that covered many under-reported countries in the region. A veteran foreign correspondent, he has also worked with The New York Times and Agence France-Presse (AFP).
