The Philippines has lodged a protest over the presence of the 165-meter-long Chinese coast guard vessel 5901, which was spotted 77 nautical miles off the coast of Zambales province. National Security Council spokesman Jonathan Malaya described the deployment as “alarming” and “clearly meant to intimidate fishermen operating around a contested shoal in the South China Sea”.
Malaya stated, “We were surprised about the increasing aggression being shown by the People’s Republic of China in deploying the monster ship. It is an escalation and provocative,” adding that the presence of the vessel was “illegal” and “unacceptable”.
In response, the Philippine Coast Guard deployed two of its largest vessels to drive away the Chinese vessel. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun defended the coast guard’s “patrol and law enforcement activities” as “reasonable, lawful and beyond reproach”.
Tensions between the Philippines, a US treaty ally, and Beijing have escalated over the past two years due to overlapping claims in the South China Sea. In 2016, an international tribunal ruled that China’s claims to large swathes of the disputed waterway had no basis, a decision Beijing rejects.
China’s expansive claims overlap with the EEZs of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. The disputed waterway is a strategic shipping route, through which about US$3 trillion (S$4.1 trillion) of annual commerce moves.