00:00The China Coast Guard fires water cannons at Philippine boats Tuesday near the contested
00:10Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, claimed by Taiwan as well as China and the Philippines.
00:15Beijing and Manila have accused each other of aggression, with China saying a Philippine
00:20vessel rammed one of its boats, and the Philippines saying the boats China damaged were on a
00:25humanitarian mission to help fishers in the area.
00:28The conflict over the Shoal goes back decades, but it's heated up in the last week as China
00:33moves to turn it into a nature reserve.
00:35Some outside China doubt Beijing's ecological motives, seeing the move instead as an attempt
00:40to cement China's People's Liberation Army control over the South China Sea, a vital global
00:46trade route rich in fish and other resources.
00:50And immediately I heard, based on the report I read, the People's Liberation Army's
00:54maybe immediately announce a live fire exercise on what's supposed to be a nature reserve.
01:02In China's view, the presence of Philippine boats near the Shoal, which it calls Huangyan Island,
01:06was a provocation.
01:08It's effectively controlled the Shoal since 2012.
01:10Huangyan Dao shi chung huo de guo yu lingtu.
01:15But from the Philippine perspective, China has no right to the Shoal, though its rightful ownership
01:28has never been formally determined, an international court rejected China's claims to it in 2016.
01:47Any control measures instituted by the PLA Navy, the Chinese Coast Guard, or the maritime militia
01:55within our EEZ are all illegal.
01:59Whatever information they bring out to the information domain, it is all part of the shaping operations
02:05to justify again their illegal presence and their coercive and aggressive actions.
02:10But, court ruling or not, China isn't backing down on its claim to the roughly 150 square
02:17kilometers of rocks and reefs that make up the Shoal, leaving the area a flashpoint in
02:22a sea riddled with claims and counterclaims, a geopolitical conundrum.
02:28Klein Wang and John Van Trieste for Taiwan Plus.
02:31It's a looking strong situation.
02:32It's just a kind of thing.
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