China maintains rifts with many countries, including the Philippines.
Reporting for The European Conservative (“China, Philippines Harden Stand in Grounded Warship Spat,” August 10, 2023), Tristan Vanheuckelom not quite accurately states that the flareup of an old territorial dispute “is threatening to create a rift between China and the U.S.-backed Philippines.” “Widen” or “exacerbate” would be a better word; the rift is already there.
The Philippines uses the World War II-era warship Sierra Madre to stake a claim to territory in the South China Sea claimed by both the Philippines and China, and the ship has been in its current location for a quarter century. The disputed territory guarded by the Sierra Madre is much closer to the Philippines than to China.
China says that the Philippines agreed to lug the ship away. The latter says that no, we didn’t, and even if you can show that we did, the ship stays.
On Monday, August 7th, China accused the Philippines of reneging on an “explicit” promise to tow the ship, which the latter had deliberately grounded in 1999 in a bid to mark its territory.
Earlier, Jonathan Malaya, National Security Council assistant director general for the Philippines, had challenged China to produce evidence of such a promise.
“If China is talking about a legally enforceable agreement, a commitment that’s legally binding, then we challenge them to produce that agreement signed by a duly authorized representative of the Philippines saying that we promise to abandon or to tow away BRP Sierra Madre,” Malaya said.
China has used water cannons to try to prevent the Sierra Madre from being resupplied. It did so in November 2021 and in early August 2023.
In an August 9, 2023 Twitter message, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos asserted, in text and in video, that he was unaware “of any agreement that the Philippines should remove from its own territory its own ship, the BRP Sierra Madre, from the Ayungin Shoal. And let me go further, if there does exist such an agreement, I rescind that agreement as of now.”
