00:00The seas are calm around the Scarborough Shoal out in the South China Sea, but the air is filled with fresh tension.
00:09Both the Philippines and China lay claim to this uninhabited shoal.
00:13It's small but rich in fish stocks and sits astride one of the world's key shipping routes.
00:18Beijing seized it in 2012, and now it's looking to cement its control by declaring a nature reserve over the area.
00:24The Philippines is angry. Though sovereignty over the shoal has never been formally settled, an international court did reject China's claims over it, and much of the South China Sea, in 2016.
00:37A spokesperson from the Philippine Foreign Ministry protested the development using her country's preferred name for the shoal, Bajo de Masinloc.
00:45In these disputed waters, even the place names are contested.
00:49The Philippines strongly protests the recent approval by the State Council of China of the establishment of the so-called Wangyan Island National Nature Reserve.
01:03Bajo de Masinloc is a long-standing and integral part of the Philippines over which it has sovereignty and jurisdiction.
01:15But China rejects the 2016 court ruling. It says the new reserve shows it's a good custodian of the shoal, which it refers to as Huangyan Island, and a responsible global power concerned about the environment.
01:27Huangyan Island is a country's land.
01:42The destination is a Salvage Island, and the international security system.
01:43This is a Responsible growth of the nutrition system, and the maintenance system.
01:47China and the Philippines aren't the only claimants, though.
01:50Taiwan, too, considers most of the South China Sea to be its territory.
01:54Taiwan even has yet another name for the shoal,
01:57民主交, or Democracy Shoal.
01:59While holding firm to Taiwan's sovereignty over the shoal,
02:17the Foreign Ministry says Taiwan is willing to work with the Philippines and others
02:21to peacefully resolve disputes.
02:24But the dispute over this shoal is more than a geopolitical tussle.
02:28In the Philippines especially, the waters around it are important fishing grounds.
02:32Those most directly affected, Filipino fishers, are deeply angry at China's nature reserve.
02:37From their point of view, it's not even the South China Sea, but the West Philippine Sea.
02:42And they say China has not been as eco-conscious in the region as it says.
02:48They are hypocrites. The government of China are hypocrites.
02:52How could they declare Scarborough Shoal in the West Philippine Sea
02:56as theirs to build a nature reserve?
02:59They are the ones destroying it in the first place.
03:04A complex web of claims and counterclaims involving seven countries, Taiwan included,
03:09make the South China Sea one of the world's geopolitical hotspots.
03:13And China's new nature preserve is turning the temperature up.
03:16Andy Xue and John Van Triest for Taiwan Plus.
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