The Philippine military has planted its national flag on three contested features in the South China Sea, days after Chinese personnel landed and unfurled their own flag on one of the features.
In a statement, the National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea (NTF-WPS) said that it launched an “interagency maritime operation” yesterday that saw navy, coastguard, and maritime police officers land on Sandy Cay and two neighboring sandbanks in the Spratly Islands.
The mission was aimed at “reinforcing Philippine authorities’ routine and lawful exercise of maritime domain awareness and jurisdiction over the West Philippine Sea,” the NTF-WPS said. During the operation, four rubber boats were deployed to Sandy Cay, known to Manila as Pagasa Cay 2, as well as to two other features: Pagasa Cay 1 and Pagasa Cay 3. (Sandy Cay, sometimes called Sandy Cay Reef, is not to be confused with Sand Cay, a Vietnamese-occupied feature elsewhere in the Spratly Islands.)
The NTF-WPS, which coordinates Manila’s policy toward the South China Sea, also released several photos of the operation, including some showing Filipino personnel holding up the country’s flag on each of the three features. During the operation, the teams had also “observed the illegal presence” of a Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) vessel and seven Chinese maritime militia vessels in the vicinity.
“This operation reflects the unwavering dedication and commitment of the Philippine government to uphold the country’s sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction in the West Philippine Sea,” the statement added.
The operation was seemingly launched in response to Chinese state media reports that the CCG had landed on Sandy Cay, an uninhabited sandbank that sits a few nautical miles from Thitu Island, the largest Philippine-occupied island in the South China Sea.
In a report on Saturday, the state broadcaster CCTV reported that the CCG had “implemented maritime control” over Sandy Cay, which Beijing refers to as Tiexian Reef, at an unspecified date in mid-April. The purpose of the landing was to “exercise sovereignty and jurisdiction” over the sandbank. The personnel also carried out inspections on the reef “to collect video evidence of relevant illegal activities by the Philippines,” and cleared rubbish like plastic bottles, wood sticks and other debris, the report said. The CCTV report was accompanied by footage showing Chinese personnel holding up their own national flag on a small patch of white sand, describing this as a “vow of sovereignty.”
The tit-for-tat moves over this pinprick of sand represent the latest point of tension between Manila and Beijing in the South China Sea. Over the past three years, the two nations have engaged in numerous stand-offs over disputed shoals and islands, some of which have escalated into confrontations that have seen Philippine vessels rammed and doused with high-pressure water cannons. It also comes a week after the Philippines and the United States launched their annual Balikatan joint military drills, which this year will include an integrated air and missile defense simulation for the first time.
The current status of Sandy Cay remains unclear. Late yesterday, CCG spokesperson Liu Dejun said in a statement that it had “dealt with” a situation involving six personnel from the Philippines who had “illegally boarded” the feature, despite “warnings and dissuasion” from the Chinese side. Liu said coast guard personnel then “boarded the reef and investigated and dealt with it in accordance with the law,” urging Manila “to immediately stop its infringement.”
The statement did not provide further details on the encounter or the identities of the six Filipinos, but it seems to refer to the interagency operation carried out earlier in the day.
In any event, the Philippines today denied that Sandy Cay had fallen under Chinese control. Rear Adm. Roy Vincent Trinidad, the Philippine Navy spokesperson for the West Philippine Sea, told a local media outlet that CCG and maritime militia vessels remained in the vicinity of the sandbank, but that this was not unusual, given that China has in recent years maintained a more or less constant presence close to nearby Thitu Island.
The events of the past few days are not the only recent scuffles to have taken place over Sandy Cay. Euan Graham of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute noted that “for almost a decade, the Philippines and China have engaged in a low-intensity but persistent tussle over Sandy Cay.” The most recent was in January, when a CCG vessel blocked a Philippine scientific mission to the reef. The Philippine side accused the Chinese ship of “aggressive maneuvers” and “harassment,” while the CCG responded that it was merely dealing with “trespassing.”
Graham wrote that while the reef has little military value, China’s “bloodless annexation” may be motivated by an awareness on the part of Chinese policymakers that “whoever possessed the feature could potentially lay jurisdictional claim to Subi Reef, a naturally submerged feature at high tide, over which China has built a large-scale base on reclaimed land, including an airstrip and port.”
It remains uncertain whether the Philippine authorities were aware of the claimed Chinese landing on the reef in mid-April, and if so, why they waited until yesterday to launch their own operation in response. It may be that they wished to avoid publicizing the landing, perhaps out of a belief that it amounted to little more than a PR stunt. The Financial Times cited an unnamed Philippine maritime official as saying that the Chinese personnel left after unfurling their flag, raising questions about what the Chinese “seizure” of the reef will amount to in practice. However, once it was publicized by the Chinese media, the Philippine government had political as well as strategic interests in mounting a quick response, complete with their own flag photo-ops to counter China’s earlier unfurling.
While it is unclear whether China has physically occupied Sandy Cay, or intends to do so, the prospect that its assertion of sovereignty could lead to an increase in Chinese assertiveness close to Thitu Island, which is vital to the Philippines’ ability to maintain its hold over the eight other features that it occupies in the Spratly Islands, is worrying for Manila. It is also a reminder that in the increasingly tense battle for advantage in the South China Sea, even the tiniest specks of dry land are assuming an outsized strategic importance.