July 24, 2024: Last month there was a clash in the South China Sea between naval forces of China and the Philippines. The cause of this largely non-lethal battle was a Filipino attempt to resupply Filipino marines stationed on an old LST (Landing Ship Tank) deliberately run aground on Second Thomas Shoal in 1999 to asset Filipino ownership of the Shoal and much of South China Sea. There have been several similar clashes in the last year. The most recent ones in May and June involved a large number of Chinese ships that physically blocked Filipino Coast Guard and supply ships from reaching the grounded LST. Several of the Filipino RIBs (Rigid Inflatable) were sunk by Chinese sailors in speedboats who came alongside and used knives to puncher the RIBs hull and cause them to sink. A Filipino sailor lost a thumb when his boat collided with a fast moving Chinese speedboat. China seized materials meant for the LST and used loud sirens and strobe lights to disorient Filipino sailors trying to get their boats close to the LST. Among the seized materials were additional weapons for the LST crew. China has refused to return the weapons or any other cargo they seized. Technically this is piracy but even if an international court agrees with that, the Chinese will ignore the courts as they did several years earlier when a court ruling confirmed that portions of the South China Sea were under the control of the Philippines. China is one of the many nations that signed agreements governing the law of the sea, but the Chinese later ignore any agreements they signed if these agreements get in their way. This is what continues to occur in the South China Sea.

The Chinese Navy and Maritime Militia mustered dozens of Coast Guard and commercial fishing trawlers that are paid by the Chinese to serve as a naval militia and, when called upon by the government, cease fishing and assemble for whatever the navy wants them to do. Usually it is to congregate in large numbers near disputed, with the Philippines, islands, reefs and shoals to keep Filipino fishing boats out and claim these areas for the exclusive use by Chinese fishing trawlers. In one recent case Chinese ships equipped with water cannon hit Filipino fishing boats with large quantities of sea water to keep them from operating in traditional Filipino fishing areas.

The June clashes were the largest and most violent yet. In one case a Filipino helicopter dropped supplies near the LST and as the marines were retrieving them, Chinese speedboats arrived and seized some of the air dropped parcels and ripped open the waterproof packaging and scattered the contents on the ocean surface. Apparently, the Chinese government has ordered its naval forces to use any means necessary to deprive the grounded LST of any supplies and try to starve out the marines stationed on the LST.

Increasingly more Chinese coast guard ships are patrolling Second Thomas Shoal, First Thomas Shoal, and Half Moon Shoal, all within the Filipino EEZ or Exclusive Economic Zone, waters 380 kilometers from the coast, but now claimed by China. The Philippines EEZ in the South China Sea is where Filipinos have been fishing the reefs and other shallow waters for centuries, long before there was a Philippine state and without interference from Chinese fishermen, who only occasionally showed up. That’s because fishing boats with refrigeration, a 20th century invention, only recently made it possible for Chinese fishermen to scour the entire South China Sea for fish to profitably catch, refrigerate and carry back to China. The 20th century also meant the possibility of finding oil or gas deposits in the South China Sea as well as controlling key shipping routes via the Malacca Strait.

Aerial and satellite photos indicate that Chinese military construction efforts on Woody Island, one of the disputed Paracel Islands closer to China, are complete. The garrison consists of a battalion of naval infantry and a 2,300 meter long air strip. This is long enough to support warplanes and commercial transports as large as Boeing 737s, which China has a lot of. A school building was completed in 2013 for the 40 children of officials and their families stationed there. There is an artificial harbor that can handle ships of up to 5,000 ton displacement. This harbor is heavily used because there is no local water supply and much of the water still has to be brought in along with fuel for all the land, sea and air vehicles as well as the generators. While there is some recreational fishing going on, the two thousand people on the island require regular food deliveries from the mainland.

In addition to the military garrison there is also a civilian rescue detachment equipped with helicopters and small boats. This detachment is largely for the waters around Woody Island and a few smaller islands that amount to about 13 square kilometers of land. China recently used dredging to increase the land area by about 20 percent.

Construction is largely complete for facilities in the capital of Sansha, a new Chinese municipality or city. Sansha is actually Woody Island and dozens of smaller bits of land, some of them shoals that are under water all the time, in the Paracels and the Spratly Islands to the south. In fact, the new city lays claim to two million square kilometers of open sea, which is 57 percent of the South China Sea. China has completed similar construction projects in the South China Sea and satellite photos reveal this to be true.

China claims the South China Sea and all islands and near islands like reefs as Chinese property. To reinforce these claims of sovereignty China is occupying uninhabitable islands and creating new ones by dredging sand from reefs and shoals to create new uninhabitable islands. Like Woody Island, these new islands are staffed with troops and government employees and supplied, at great expense, from the mainland. China even built two special supply ships to make regular deliveries to their many island bases in the South China Sea.