The Philippines yesterday slammed an “irresponsible” Chinese state media report claiming a disputed reef in the South China Sea was under Beijing’s control, saying the “status quo” was unchanged.
Tiexian Reef (鐵線礁), also known as Sandy Cay Reef, lies near Thitu Island, or Pagasa, where the Philippines stations troops and maintains a coast guard monitoring base.
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV on Saturday said that the China Coast Guard had “implemented maritime control” over Tiexian Reef in the middle of this month.
Photo: National Task Force West Philippine Sea via AP
The Philippines and China have been engaged in months of confrontations over the South China Sea, which Beijing claims nearly in its entirety, despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis.
“There is no truth whatsoever to the claim of the China Coast Guard that the [reef] has been seized,” Philippine National Security Council spokesman Jonathan Malaya told a news conference yesterday.
“It’s in the interest of the People’s Republic of China to use the information space to intimidate and harass,” he said, calling the report a “made-up” story that had been “irresponsible” to disseminate.
CCTV on Saturday published a photograph of four China Coast Guard officials posing with a national flag on the reef’s white surface, in what the broadcaster described as a “vow of sovereignty.”
The Philippine Coast Guard yesterday released its own photograph showing Filipino sailors holding the nation’s flag over the same disputed reef during an early morning mission the day before.
There do not appear to be any signs that China has permanently occupied or built a structure on the reef, which is a group of small sandbanks in the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島).
Beijing and Manila have blamed each other for causing what they describe as the ecological degradation of several disputed landforms in the South China Sea.
The US and Philippine militaries are conducting joint exercises that Beijing has said constitute a threat to regional stability.
Chinese warships have been spotted in Philippine waters since those bilateral “Balikatan” exercises began last week, with the aircraft carrier the Shandong reportedly sailing within 2.23 nautical miles (4.1km) of northern Babuyan Island.
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