A Philippine diplomat yesterday said that any Chinese move to turn a disputed shoal — where the US Navy recently spotted a suspected Chinese survey ship — into an island would escalate the disputes in the South China Sea and asked Washington to convince Beijing not to take that “very provocative” step.
Philippine Ambassador to Washington Jose Cuisia Jr told a news conference in Manila that a senior US Navy official reported spotting a suspected Chinese survey ship in the Scarborough Shoal, which Taiwan also claims, a few weeks ago and expressed concern about its presence in the disputed offshore area.
The Scarborough Shoal is known in Taiwan and China as Huangyan Island (黃岩島).
China has said it has completed construction work to turn seven reefs into islands in the the South China Sea’s disputed Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島), raising alarm in the region and sparking calls by Asian and Western governments for China to stop taking provocative action that might lead to confrontations. Beijing says it has sovereignty over the Spratlys, which Taiwan also claims and has the right to build there.
The US Navy sighting of the survey ship in Scarborough, a rich fishing area about 230km west of the Philippines, has reinforced suspicions that Beijing is eyeing the vast atoll as its next target in its island-making spree, Cuisia said.
“That I think will be very provocative if they will build on Scarborough Shoal,” Cuisia said, adding that such an action “will further escalate the tensions and the conflict.”
The Philippines is incapable of stopping China from constructing an island in the shoal, where Filipino fishermen have been barred by Chinese coast guard ships, Cuisia said.
“We hope that the US and other countries ... would convince China not to proceed with that,” he said.
Washington does not take sides in the disputes involving Taiwan, China, the Philippines and three other governments, but has declared that ensuring freedom of navigation and overflight in the busy waters is in its national interest.
Cuisia said he was involved in a US Department of State-brokered deal for China and the Philippines to withdraw their ships simultaneously from Scarborough to avoid a potential clash during a tense standoff in 2012.
China reneged on that deal by refusing to withdraw its ships after the Philippines did and now claims there was no such deal, he said.
“We were shortchanged,” Cuisia said.
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