China is pushing the Philippines `to the wall' with aggression in the South China Sea, Manila says

[January 14, 2025]  By JIM GOMEZ and JOEAL CALUPITAN

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A Philippine security official said Tuesday that China is “pushing us to the wall” with growing aggression in the disputed South China Sea and warned that “all options are on the table” for Manila's response, including new international lawsuits.

A large Chinese coast guard ship patrolled hotly disputed Scarborough Shoal in recent days and then sailed toward the northwestern coast of the Philippines on Tuesday, coming as close as 77 nautical miles (143 kilometers), Philippine officials said in a news conference.

"The presence of the monster ship in Filipino waters … 77 nautical miles from our shoreline, is unacceptable and, therefore, it should be withdrawn immediately by the Chinese government,” Jonathan Malaya, assistant director-general of the National Security Council, said at the news conference alongside senior military and coast guard officials.

“You’re pushing us to the wall,” Malaya said of China. “We do not and will not dignify these scare tactics by backing down. We do not waver or cower in the face of intimidation. On the contrary, it strengthens our resolve because we know we are in the right.”

A Chinese official said in Beijing that his country's sovereignty in the South China Sea is well established and its coast guard patrols are lawful and justified.

“We once again urge the Philippines to immediately stop all infringement, provocation and malicious hype,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said at a daily briefing when asked about Malaya's comments.

The Chinese government has repeatedly accused the Philippines and other rival claimant states including Vietnam and Malaysia of encroaching on what it says are “undisputed” Chinese territorial waters.

Two Philippine coast guard ships, backed by a small surveillance aircraft, repeatedly ordered the 165-meter (541-foot) Chinese coast guard ship to withdraw from the Philippines' exclusive economic zone, a 200-nautical mile (370-kilometer) stretch of water, Philippine coast guard Commodore Jay Tarriela said.

“What we’re doing there is, hour-by-hour and day-to-day, (we're) challenging the illegal presence of the Chinese coast guard for the international community to know that we’re not going to allow China to normalize the illegal deployment," Tarriela said.

This image provided by the Philippine Coast Guard shows a Chinese Coast Guard ship 5901 in the seas within the Philippines' Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) on Monday, Jan. 13, 2025. (Philippine Coast Guard via AP)

Under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who took office in mid-2022, the Philippines has aggressively defended its territorial interests in the South China Sea, a key global trading route. That has brought Philippine forces into frequent confrontations with China’s coast guard, navy and suspected militia boats and sparked fears that a bigger armed conflict could draw in the United States, the Philippines’ longtime treaty ally and China’s regional rival.

The lopsided conflict has forced the Philippines to seek security arrangements with other Asian and Western countries, including Japan, with which it signed a key agreement last July which would allow their forces to hold joint combat training. The pact, which must be ratified by lawmakers of both countries before it takes effect, was the first such agreement to be forged by Japan in Asia.

China surrounded Scarborough Shoal with its coast guard and other ships after a tense territorial standoff with the Philippines in 2012. The Philippines responded by bringing its disputes with China to international arbitration in 2013 and largely won three years later when an arbitration panel in The Hague invalidated China’s expansive claims in the busy sea passage under the 1982 United Convention on the Law of the Sea.

China has rejected the 2016 arbitration ruling and continues to openly defy it.

“Will this lead to another case?” Malaya said. “All options are on the table because the closer the monster ship is in Philippine waters, the more it makes tensions high and the more that the Philippine government contemplates things it was not contemplating before.”

China has warned the Philippines from pursuing another legal case in an international forum after the arbitration, preferring bilateral negotiations, which give Beijing an advantage because of its size and clout, a senior Philippine official has said on condition of anonymity because of a lack of authority to discuss such sensitive issues publicly.

The two countries have also been discussing their territorial conflicts under a bilateral consultation mechanism to avoid an escalation of the disputes. The next round of talks will be hosted by China, the official said.

___

Associated Press writer Ken Moritsugu in Beijing contributed to this report.

All contents © copyright 2024 Associated Press. All rights reserved