The Chinese ships settled in like unwanted guests who wouldn\u2019t leave.<\/p>\n
As the days passed, more appeared. They were simply fishing boats, China said, though they did not appear to be fishing. Dozens even lashed themselves together in neat rows, seeking shelter, it was claimed, from storms that never came.<\/p>\n
Not long ago, China asserted its claims on the South China Sea by building and fortifying artificial islands in waters also claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia. Its strategy now is to reinforce those outposts by swarming the disputed waters with vessels, effectively defying the other countries to expel them.<\/p>\n
The goal is to accomplish by overwhelming presence what it has been unable to do through diplomacy or international law. And to an extent, it appears to be working.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeijing pretty clearly thinks that if it uses enough coercion and pressure over a long enough period of time, it will squeeze the Southeast Asians out,\u201d said Greg Poling, the director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, which tracks developments in the South China Sea. \u201cIt\u2019s insidious.\u201d<\/p>\n
China\u2019s actions reflect the country\u2019s growing confidence under its leader, Xi Jinping. They could test the Biden administration, as well as Beijing\u2019s neighbors in the South China Sea, who are increasingly dependent on China\u2019s strong economy and supply of Covid-19 vaccines.<\/p>\n
The latest incident has unfolded in recent weeks around Whitsun Reef, a boomerang-shaped feature that emerges above water only at low tide. At one point in March, 220 Chinese ships were reported to be anchored around the reef, prompting protests from Vietnam and the Philippines, which both have claims there, and from the United States.<\/p>\n
The Philippine defense secretary, Delfin Lorenzana, called their presence \u201ca clear provocation.\u201d Vietnam\u2019s foreign ministry accused China of violating the country\u2019s sovereignty and demanded that the ships leave.<\/p>\n
By this past week, some had left but many remained, according to satellite photographs taken by Maxar Technologies, a company based in Colorado. Others moved to another reef only a few miles away, while a new swarm of 45 Chinese ships was spotted 100 miles northeast at another island controlled by the Philippines, Thitu, according to the satellite photos and Philippine officials.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Chinese ambassador has a lot of explaining to do,\u201d Mr. Lorenzana said in a statement on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The buildup has inflamed tensions in a region that, along with Taiwan, threatens to become another flashpoint in the intensifying confrontation between China and the United States.<\/p>\n
Although the United States has not taken a position on disputes in the South China Sea, it has criticized China\u2019s aggressive tactics there, including the militarization of its bases. For years, the United States has sent Navy warships on routine patrols to challenge China\u2019s asserted right to restrict any military activity there \u2014 three times just since President Biden took office in January.<\/p>\n
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken expressed support for the Philippines over the presence of the Chinese vessels. \u201cWe will always stand by our allies and stand up for the rules-based international order,\u201d he wrote on Twitter.<\/p>\n
The buildup has highlighted the further erosion of the Philippines\u2019 control of the disputed waters, which could become a problem for the country\u2019s president, Rodrigo Duterte.<\/p>\n
The country\u2019s defense department dispatched two aircraft and one ship to Whitsun Reef to document the buildup but did not otherwise intervene. It is not known whether Vietnamese forces responded.<\/p>\n
Critics say China\u2019s disregard for the Philippine claims reflects the failure of Mr. Duterte\u2019s efforts to cozy up to the Communist Party leadership in Beijing.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople need to hear from the commander in chief himself, a coward to China but a bully to his own people,\u201d said Mr. Duterte\u2019s staunchest political opponent, Senator Leila de Lima. Mr. Duterte has not publicly addressed the matter, though his spokesman suggested that quiet efforts to defuse the situation were underway.<\/p>\n
China has brushed off the protests. A spokeswoman for the foreign ministry, Hua Chunying, said that Chinese fishermen \u201chave been fishing in the waters near the reef all along.\u201d Officials in the Philippines and experts said there was no evidence of that.<\/p>\n
Whitsun Reef is part of an atoll known as Union Banks, about 175 nautical miles from Palawan, a Philippine island. The Philippines, China and Vietnam each claim that the atoll lies within their country\u2019s exclusive economic zones, but only China and Vietnam have established a regular physical presence there, giving each a secure, if not legal, advantage in asserting control.<\/p>\n
Vietnam has occupied four islets in the atoll since the 1970s, while China has built two outposts on previously submerged reefs as part of its program, underway since 2014, to dredge up seven artificial islands. Two of the outposts \u2014 Grierson Reef, occupied by Vietnam, and Hughes Reef, occupied by China \u2014 are less than three nautical miles apart.<\/p>\n
An international tribunal convened under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea ruled in 2016 that China\u2019s expansive claim to almost all of the South China Sea had no legal basis, though it stopped short of dividing the territory among its various claimants. China has based its claims on a \u201cnine-dash line\u201d drawn on maps before the establishment of the People\u2019s Republic of China<\/a> in 1949. (The New York Times)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After building artificial islands, China is using large fleets of ostensibly civilian boats to press other countries\u2019 vessels out of disputed waters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17476,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1,5,80],"tags":[240],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maremont.me\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17475"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maremont.me\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maremont.me\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maremont.me\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maremont.me\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maremont.me\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maremont.me\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maremont.me\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maremont.me\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maremont.me\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}