China and the Philippines Faceoff Near Disputed South China Sea Shoal

TaiwanPlus News

China and the Philippines are accusing each other of aggression after an incident near the disputed Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. China claims the Philippines rammed one of its vessels, while the Philippines says China fired water cannons at boats conducting a humanitarian mission.

Transcript

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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