MANILA - Another United States
nuclear-powered attack submarine has docked at
Subic, Philippines, a signal to China that its
provocations in the South China Sea will be
challenged by more frequent demonstrations of
American naval might.
The arrival of the
USS Louisville comes just weeks after
another US attack submarine, the USS North
Carolina, made a port call at the same
Philippine naval base. The high-profile dockings
have been billed as part of the US's plan to host
more rotating American naval forces in the
Asia-Pacific region.
Though officials in
Manila and Washington have described the visits as
routine and a normal part of their strategic ties,
they also coincide with the still unresolved
standoff between China and the
Philippines over a shoal
in the hotly contested and potentially resource
rich Spratly Islands.
The high seas
showdown, which began on April 10 and recently
ended without armed exchange, had posed
significant risks to destabilizing regional peace
and stability. At one point, China had deployed 33
non-military vessels in a lopsided face-off with
two Philippine maritime ships.
In what
Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario
portrayed on Monday as a "breakthrough" in
diplomatic talks, China pulled out its remaining
20 boats from the shoal to reciprocate the
Philippine gesture of withdrawing its own vessels.
The Philippines refers to the shoal as
Scarborough, or Bajo de Masinloc, while China
calls it Huangyan Island. "There are no longer
boats from either the Philippines or China inside
the shoal's lagoon," del Rosario said.
While both countries cited typhoons as the
reason for removing their naval assets, it's still
possible they will redeploy them as soon as the
weather improves given their continued
intransigence in staking conflicting claims to the
maritime territory.
Indeed, new tensions
are already percolating. A day after del Rosario's
conciliatory statement, a foreign ship identified
initially by Manila officials as being registered
in Hong Kong reportedly rammed a Philippine
fishing boat near the shoal off the waters of
Pangasinan province, north of Manila.
The
incident sank a boat with eight Filipino fishermen
on board, killing one and seriously injuring
another. Survivors were rescued by passing
Philippine vessels.
While the Philippine
Coast Guard (PCG) is now probing the incident, it
is suspected that the culprit was the Hong
Kong-registered, 195-meter bulk carrier commercial
ship MV Peach Mountain, which was returning
to China from Indonesia while passing through
Philippine-claimed waters.
"But this is
just a suspect," PCG commandant Edmund Tan said.
"We are still investigating and coordinating with
our counterparts in the Hong Kong Maritime Rescue
Coordinating Center and the Port State Control in
Tokyo and Singapore."
In a show of
restraint, Philippine President Benigno Aquino
said his government was not about to accuse China
of the sinking of the Philippine fishing boat
without any basis. "We're gathering all necessary
evidence, and we are not accusing anybody at this
point in time," he told reporters.
Like
Aquino, the Chinese Embassy in Manila was also in
the dark about the details of the reported
"hit-and-run" maritime incident. In a statement,
Zhang Hue, the embassy spokesperson, said "such
media reports remain to be verified."
"Upon seeing the stories, the Chinese
Embassy immediately checked with the relevant
authorities in China and was told that until now
there have been no reports of vessel collision,
accident or SOS requests," he said.
Verbal salvos Foreign reports,
however, quoted earlier Rear Admiral Yin Zhuo,
director of China's People's Liberation Army
Navy's (PLAN) Information Expert Committee, as
ordering their ships to target "Filipino vessels
that hang around" Scarborough shoal "and don't
leave".
He was apparently reacting to
Aquino's earlier statement that he would order the
Philippine maritime ships back to the shoal if
China would not pull out its vessels from the
hotly contested territory.
The ranking
Chinese military official said that Chinese naval
troops should board and search Philippine
government ships and private fishing vessels,
similar to what Filipino Marines did to Chinese
ships that strayed into the Philippine-claimed
part of the Spratly Islands.
Yin also
complained that the "Philippines has not yet
returned 24 Chinese fishing boats it is holding",
referring to vessels intercepted in Philippine
territory by the Philippine Navy last October.
While imploring that Chinese troops "must
try to maintain restraint, not force, not hurt
people" when going after Philippine ships found in
waters near the shoal, he said China's Navy would
not hesitate to use deadly force against its
enemies.
"Our Navy has the absolute
ability and the absolute confidence to use arms to
defend our country's sovereignty, territorial
integrity and maritime rights," Yin said. "We're
just waiting for the order."
Strained
China-Philippine relations have recently been
exacerbated by warmongering by both sides, raising
the temperature of a situation that still
threatens to ignite a shooting war and plunge the
maritime region into military conflict.
The latest maritime incident, accidental
or not, may be viewed as isolated and unrelated to
the Spratlys controversy. But there are hawkish
officials in Manila and Beijing who espouse
diametrically contrasting positions and have
undermined the spirit of friendship and harmony
Aquino and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao,
worked to forge last year. The latest salvo came
from Tang Rui, spokesperson of China's Office of
the Commissioner of the Minister of Foreign
Affairs in Hong Kong.
In a letter on
Wednesday to the Wall Street Journal, he wrote
"China acquired sovereignty over Huangyan Island
through discovery of and presence on the island
before anyone else. Hundreds of years of
jurisdiction has consolidated China's sovereignty
over the island... On the contrary, the Philippine
claim over the island has never been recognized by
any other country."
The US, meanwhile, is
closely watching how Manila and Beijing react to
the latest ship-bumping incident. Washington has
appealed continuously for a peaceful and
diplomatic solution to the maritime conflict,
which in part has driven a realignment of its
strategic forces from the Middle East to Asia.
The US may be perceived as biased towards
the Philippines due to their existing mutual
defense treaty, seen in the recent dockings of its
nuclear-powered submarines. However, if tensions
break out into full-blown hostilities, it's still
not clear that the US would be willing to
sacrifice relations with Beijing to protect its
smaller, historical ally.
Al
Labita is a Manila-based journalist.
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