- A Chinese patrol boat snatched an item that had been picked up by a Philippine ship in the disputed Spratly archipelago.
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| Philippine and US troops land on the island of Luzon during military exercises in October. |
Naval incident between China and the Philippines coinciding with the visit of US Vice President Kamala Harris to Manila
The Philippine Armed Forces on Monday reported an incident between Chinese and Philippine coast guard vessels near a disputed archipelago in the South China Sea. The incident coincides with the official visit of US Vice President Kamala Harris to the Philippines.
The incident took place on Sunday, the same day Harris landed in Manila when a Philippine coast guard vessel tried to pick up an unidentified object drifting near Pag-Asa Island, an islet occupied by the Philippines and located some 290 nautical miles off the western coast of Palawan, close to a Chinese-appropriated island in the disputed Spratly archipelago.
As the Filipino crewmen had already begun to pick up the object, presumably the remains of a Chinese rocket, an inflatable boat deployed by a Chinese coast guard vessel rushed up and seized it, according to the Philippine Armed Forces spokesman at Sea. from South China, Major Cherryl Tindog.
The Chinese crew members "cut the rope that connected the boat with the drifting object and took it towards the Chinese ship," explained Philippine Vice Admiral Alberto Carlos. The Chinese ship blocked the Philippine ship "on two occasions" to seize the object.
Hours after the clash between the two patrol boats, "explosions or artillery fire" were heard, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper. The blasts "are being investigated" by the Philippine Armed Forces.
Harris plans to visit Palawan
The naval incident takes place ahead of Kamala Harris's visit to the island of Palawan, where she is scheduled to meet on Tuesday with members of the Philippine coast guard team and local fishermen's associations, many of whom have for years denounced the Chinese occupation of several islands off the Philippine coast where they used to fish.
The presence of Harris this Tuesday on the island closest to the archipelago in dispute with China, the first time a senior US administration official has visited the place, could increase tension in the region, according to experts.
China and the Philippines are in a territorial dispute over sovereignty over several islands and atolls in the South China Sea, which Beijing claims as its own for "historical reasons", even though some of them are less than 200 miles from the western coastline. Philippine, a limit that the UN established as a sovereign maritime border between countries and to which China adhered in 1996.
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| US Vice President Kamala Harris at the Manila presidential palace. |
Harris meets this Monday with Marcos Jr., son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, a meeting that is expected to strengthen the historic security alliance between the Philippines and the US, after the steps back taken during the administration of his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, who announced a closer rapprochement with China.
Inaugurated as president on June 30, Marcos Jr. has tried to redirect the focus of Philippine foreign policy, after Duterte even temporarily struck down an agreement that allows the US to maintain a military presence in the archipelago.
The Philippines and the US maintain other more important security treaties, such as the Mutual Defense Agreement, which dates from 1951.
Before his arrival in the Philippine archipelago, Harris stressed that the US has an "unwavering commitment" to upholding international rules and regulations in the South China Sea. "An armed attack against the Philippines, its military, its public vessels or aircraft in the South China Sea would invoke mutual defense commitments to the United States and that is an unwavering commitment we have to the Philippines," he said.
The US vice president will defend international law this Tuesday in Palawan, pulling muscle against Beijing.
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