The Philippines yesterday accused the China Coast Guard of attempting to block a Philippine government vessel delivering supplies to fishers, the second such alleged incident near a disputed reef in two weeks.
The BRP Datu Sanday was supplying fuel to fishers near the Scarborough Shoal — known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) in China and Taiwan, which also lay claim to it — when it was harassed by a China Coast Guard vessel and three other Chinese ships on Thursday, the Philippine Coast Guard said.
Three of the four Chinese vessels came within 100m of Datu Sanday’s bow, it said in an incident report that also listed shadowing, vessel transponder jamming and other “dangerous maneuvers.”
Photo: AFP / Handout / Philippine Coast Guard
“Despite these maneuvers, the skipper of BRP Datu Sanday exhibited excellent seamanship skills and managed to evade the blocking attempts,” Philippine Coast Guard Commodore Jay Tarriela said.
A week earlier, the Philippine Coast Guard said the BRP Datu Tamblot had a similar encounter in the area.
Scarborough Shoal — a triangular chain of reefs and rocks — has been a flash point between the countries since China seized it from the Philippines in 2012.
Since then, Beijing has deployed patrol boats that Manila says harass Philippine vessels and prevent Filipino fishers from accessing a fish-rich lagoon there.
On social media, China’s state-run Global Times on Saturday said that the China Coast Guard had repelled the Datu Sanday “when the vessel illegally intruded into waters adjacent to China’s Huangyan Island.”
Scarborough Shoal lies 240km west of the Philippines’ main island of Luzon and nearly 900km from the nearest major Chinese land mass of Hainan.
China claims almost the entire South China Sea and has ignored an international tribunal ruling that its assertions have no legal basis.
Tense standoffs between China and the Philippines around disputed reefs last year resulted in collisions and Chinese ships blasting water cannons at Philippine boats.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
A registered sex offender from the US who went missing after entering Taiwan has been found and would be deported in light of the risk he poses to the public, the National Immigration Agency (NIA) said yesterday. The agency launched a search for Levi Forrest Wallace, 43, after it was informed by the American Institute of Taiwan (AIT) that he had entered Taiwan on Oct. 2 on a tourist visa. He was not on the US government’s wanted list. Wallace was sentenced to 90 days in jail with a two-year probation in 2001 after he was convicted of sexual delinquency of