China has been ramping up pressure on its neighbors, the Philippines, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam, attempting to force them to cede their maritime claims in the resource-rich South China Sea.
China uses an arbitrary boundary drawn by Beijing, the so-called “nine-dash line,” to claim the bulk of the sea, while portraying its opponents defending their rights under international law as aggressors.
Tensions are particularly high between China and the Philippines.
Philippines Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said on November 12, his country had become the victim of “Chinese aggression.”
“What we see is an increasing demand by Beijing for us to concede our sovereign rights in the area.”
Frequent reports of Chinese Coast Guard ships ramming Philippines vessels, deploying water cannons and military-grade lasers against them underscore Teodoro’s allegations.
Yet Beijing claims it is the Philippines, not China, who is ratcheting up tensions.
When Reuters asked Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lin Jian about Teodoro’s allegations, Lin replied:
“Every escalation between China and the Philippines — without exception — has been caused by Philippine provocations and violation of China’s sovereignty. Calm will return once the Philippines stops those activities.”
That is false.
In 2016, an international tribunal in The Hague rejected China’s sweeping claims to the South China Sea, ruling they violated the Philippines’ rights to its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and territorial waters.
While signatory to the treaty, China has ignored that ruling and disregarded the Philippines’ rights under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which outlines the territorial waters of China’s neighbors.
On November 8, the Philippines signed measures reinforcing their internationally recognized rights over the country’s maritime zones.
China responded by repeating the false claim that the 2016 Hague ruling “is illegal, null and void,” and accused the United States of “inciting the Philippines to provoke unrest in the South China Sea.”
On November 10, Beijing published geographic coordinates of straight baselines for the Scarborough Shoal, a maritime feature, which lies 220 kilometers east of the Philippines island of Luzon.
Baselines refer to the low water mark along a coast from which a territorial sea is measured. The territorial sea stretches 12 nautical miles from the baseline of a coastal state.
China seized the Scarborough Shoal in 2012 and maintains a blockade there. On November 13, China held air and sea combat drills around the shoal.
China has routinely drawn so-called straight baselines around maritime features in the South China Sea, used to determine the territorial waters of archipelagic states, like the Philippines, who are made up of one or more groups of islands.
Experts say China’s strategy contravenes UNCLOS.
The U.S. Navy has long contended that China, recognized as a coastal, not archipelagic state under UNCLOS, has no legal right “to establish baselines around entire dispersed island groups.”
“With these baselines, China has attempted to claim more internal waters, territorial sea, exclusive economic zone, and continental shelf than it is entitled to under international law,” the U.S. Navy said.
Gunther Handl, a professor of international law at Tulane University, agreed, telling VOA in 2021 that China had no right to “claim offshore islands as an archipelago.”
The Hague Tribunal further found that the Scarborough Shoal, like other hide-tide features in the Spratly Islands, are legally rocks, not islands, and “do not generate entitlements to an exclusive economic zone or continental shelf.”
While the tribunal also found that both China and the Philippines have “traditional fishing rights” at the shoal, and that “China had violated its duty to respect the traditional fishing rights of Philippine fishermen by halting access to the Shoal after May 2012.”
China continues to deny the Philippines those rights.
The Philippines has also accused Chinese fighter jets of endangering the lives of a Philippine Air Force personnel flying near Scarborough Shoal.
China’s aggressive actions extend beyond to other parts of the sea.
In September, a Chinese Coast Guard vessel rammed a Philippines Coast Guard ship with a 60 Minutes crew on board which was traveling to Sabina Shoal.
Sabina Shoal is located 150 kilometers west of the Philippine province of Palawan, well within its EEZ.
China has repeatedly harassed Philippines ships operating near Sabina Shoal, actions which the U.S. and its Western allies called “unsafe, unlawful, and aggressive.”
Beijing, denying the Philippines’ rights under UNCLOS, claims Sabina Shoal and the water around it are Chinese territory.
The Philippines filed 189 diplomatic protests with China from July 1, 2022, to November 12, 2024, citing Beijing’s encroachments on the Philippines sovereignty and other aggression actions.
The Philippines has turned to the U.S., a treaty ally, to shore up its security. That has included the U.S.’s deployment of a mid-range Typhoon missile system to the Philippines in April, which set off alarm bells in Beijing.
On November 14, China called deployment of the missile system “a dangerous move and a serious provocation” that could spark an “arms race in this region.”
