By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-03-24 13:31:11 | Updated at 2025-03-26 09:43:58
1 day ago
The Philippine defence chief on Monday called China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea as “the biggest fiction and lie” that no Southeast Asian country would accept and said that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s aggressive policies have undermined the international goodwill fostered by his predecessors.
Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro fired off his latest tirade against China’s increasingly assertive actions in the region on the same day that the Philippine coastguard separately reported new incidents involving Chinese forces in the Scarborough Shoal, a hotly disputed fishing atoll in the disputed waterway.
A Chinese military helicopter appeared to have tailed, but didn’t closely approach, a Philippine lightplane undertaking a routine patrol on Monday over Scarborough. Chinese forces have separately installed a new floating barrier to prevent Filipino fishermen from entering a lagoon in the shoal, which lies off the northwestern Philippines, Philippine coastguard Commodore Jay Tarriela told an online news briefing.
There was no immediate comment from Chinese officials, but in the past, they have repeatedly asserted that Beijing has had sovereign control over the Scarborough Shoal and most of the South China Sea since ancient times.
An international arbitration panel invalidated China’s expansive claims in a 2016 ruling based on the 1982 UN Convention of the Law of the Sea, but Beijing refused to participate in the Philippines-initiated arbitration and continues to defy the decision.
In a speech marking the anniversary of the Philippine military’s Western Command on Palawan province, which faces the South China Sea, Teodoro underscored the need for a “stronger national defence posture” and continued security engagement with allied countries to address the threat posed by Chinese aggression in the waterway, a key global trade route.
