Photography, taken on March 21, 2024 and received from the Philippine Coast Guard showing the Philippine scientists who inspect the Sandy Cay reef, near Thitu, controlled by the Philippines. Photo source: Handout / AFP / Profimedia
The Chinese coast guard has landed on an island played with Philippines in the South China Sea to “exercise the sovereignty” of Beijing, a state television station, while Manila and Washington on Saturday, carry out important joint military exercises, France Presse reports.
China claims almost all the islands and reefs of the South China Sea. Beijing challenges the decision of an international arbitration court according to which its claims have no legal basis.
Several nations (especially Philippines and Vietnam) have rival claims on several islands of this vast maritime area and oppose it.
The Chinese coast guard “instituted a maritime control” in mid -April on the island of Tiexian, also known as the English Sandy Cay, CCTV state television said on Saturday.
This small island is part of the Spratleys archipelago. It is a few kilometers from Thitu Island, the largest island controlled by the Philippines in the archipelago.
Movement risks triggering a crisis in the region
It is located only a few kilometers from the most important Filipino Military Base in the South China Sea, and the movement risks triggering a new regional crisis, the Financial Times comments.
Chinese maritime police landed on Tiexian to “exercise the sovereignty and jurisdiction” of Beijing, as well as to perform an “inspection”, according to CCTV.
The television station has published images of four coastal policemen posing with a Chinese flag on the white surface of the island.
According to the British Financial Times, which cites an anonymous Philippine official, the Chinese coast guard left the flag.
It is for the first time in recent years when Beijing officially puts the flag on an previously unoccupied territory, signaling a new phase in maritime disputes.
There are no signs to indicate that China occupies Tiexian permanently or has built a structure there. The Philippine authorities have not yet officially reacted to this initiative.
US-philipine military exercises
The Chinese action coincides with carrying out the Balika military exercise between the US and the Philippines, focused on defense of the coasts and the capture of islands. Although Sandy Cay measures only 200 square meters, the island control has a major strategic value, generating its own maritime area that overlaps with Thitu, the key outpost of the Philippines.
Beijing denounced the common maneuvers, considering that they “undermine the regional stability” and accused Manila of “collaboration with countries outside the region”.
The Philippine coast guard operates a monitoring base on Thitu from the end of 2023, but Manila now modernizes a landing track and other infrastructures on the island. The construction is part of the efforts to make reefs in the Sea of South China more inhabitable and to counteract China's increasingly aggressive activity.
Lyle Morris, a former expert of the Pentagon in China, who is now working at Asia Society Policy Institute, said Sandy Cay has been a source of tension for many years between China and Philippines.
Morris believes that the Chinese action did not represent a US test, saying that it was more a “tactical movement” that targeted the Philippines.
“This puts more pressure on the Philippines to answer in some way,” Morris added. “If China would ever physically occupy the area, the Philippines would probably feel obliged to respond. What kind of response is unclear.”
