Hit three times on Saturday, August 31 by a Chinese coast guard ship, the Teresa MagbanuaThe largest ship in the Philippine Coast Guard fleet, the ship sustained damage, including a hole in the top of its hull. The incident took place in the Spratly archipelago near Sabina Bank, a group of reefs with a lagoon located 70 nautical miles (130 kilometers) from Palawan, the large island in the western Philippines. Sabina is now the new gateway between Beijing and Manila in the South China Sea.
The reasons for the dispute are not new: the Philippines considers itself within its rights to patrol these waters, since the Sabina Bank forms, according to the law of the sea, part of its exclusive economic zone (within 200 miles of the coast), as confirmed by the Hague Court of Arbitration in 2016, then invited by the Philippines to rule on its disputes with China. China, which rejected this decision, claims “territorial sea”the famous “ten-point line” which would cover the entire South China Sea, without regard to the Philippines’ rights to any exclusive economic zone.
But Beijing is no longer content with harassing the Philippine coast guard via loudspeakers, ordering them to abandon the so-called “Chinese territorial waters” : “This is the first time that “Teresa-Magbanua” has been directly attacked. And this reflects a significant escalation.” estimates maritime security expert Raymond Powell, leader of Stanford University’s SeaLight research project on South China Sea tensions. According to Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela’s account of the Aug. 31 collision, the Philippine ship was surrounded during the incident by five Chinese maritime militia vessels, three coast guard ships (including the one it collided with bow and then stern), and two Chinese navy tugboats — a detail that raises questions about Beijing’s intentions.
aged shipwreck
China accused the Philippine ship of having “It deliberately rammed the Chinese vessel 5205 in an unprofessional and dangerous manner, causing a collision for which the Philippines bears full responsibility”According to Chinese coast guard spokesman Liu Dejun, however, the videos, including those broadcast by the Chinese newspaper Global times, show the opposite. In the pages of this ultranationalist mouthpiece of the Communist Party, Chinese experts accuse the Philippines of “illegally occupying the Sabina Bank by anchoring their ship there”and want “repeat the movement” Second Thomas Bank, another reef about sixty kilometers from Sabina Bank where the Philippine Navy ran aground twenty-five years ago, in 1999, an old warship, the BRP Sierra Madre, to serve as a floating garrison against the Chinese advance.
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