China is pushing the Philippines ‘to the wall’ with aggression in the South China Sea, Manila says

Members of the National Task force West Philippine Sea, Roy Trinidad, from left, Philippine Navy spokesperson, Jonathan Malaya, assistant director general of the National Security Council, and Jay Tarriela, Philippines Coast Guard, hold a news conference in Manila, Philippines yesterday

A Philippine security official said yesterday 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.

Yesterday, a large Chinese coast guard ship patrolled hotly disputed Scarborough Shoal and then sailed toward the northwestern coast of the Philippines, coming as close as 77 nautical miles, 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monster ship in Filipino waters … 77 nautical miles from our shoreline, is unacceptable and, therefore, it should be withdrawn immediately by the Chinese government,” Jonathan Malaya, assistant director-general of the National Security Council, said at the news conference alongside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.

Two Philippine coast guard ships, backed by a small surveillance aircraft, repeatedly ordered the 165-meter Chinese coast guard ship to withdraw from the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, a 200-nautical mile 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.

There was no immediate comment from Chinese officials. In the past, they have repeatedly accused the Philippines and other rival claimant states including Vietnam and Malaysia of encroaching on what they say are “undisputed” Chinese territorial waters.

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. JIM GOMEZ & JOEAL CALUPITAN, MANILA, MDT/AP