Chinese coast guard used knives and machetes to puncture Philippine rubber dinghies that were attempting to reach the outpost and confiscated equipment on Philippine navy vessels, officials said. One sailor’s hand was severely injured because it was caught in one of the rubber dinghies.
“This is piracy,” Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr., the Philippine armed forces’ chief of staff, said in a news conference held in Palawan. “They boarded our boats illegally, they took our equipment. They are like pirates with the actions they carried out.”
Chinese coast guard officials, in turn, said a Philippine supply ship had “deliberately and dangerously” approached a Chinese ship, causing a minor collision.
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China has sought to dominate the South China Sea, a highly strategic waterway that is also claimed in part by six other governments. As the Philippines has ramped up its efforts to push back against the Chinese, it has been met with an increasingly forceful response that security analysts say could spur broader conflict in the Pacific.
The United States shares a mutual defense treaty with the Philippines and has stressed in recent months that an armed attack on Philippine military vessels or personnel in the South China Sea could trigger a U.S. military response. The U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, MaryKay Carlson, on Tuesday condemned China’s “aggressive, dangerous maneuvers” at sea but did not say whether or how the United States would respond. A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Manila declined to answer questions on a potential U.S. response.
Earlier this month, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said at a security summit in Singapore that the death of a Filipino citizen through a “willful act” would be “close to an act of war” that could prompt a military response. “Our treaty partner holds that same standard,” he said, referring to the United States.
Tan reported from Singapore.
