WAR GAMES: China pushing the Philippines

The quest for oil.
The Chinese Navy is pushing into the South China Sea.

Oil  -  China demands complete sovereignty over island near the Philippines

• Philippines-U.S. military war games get under way.
• The code name for these exercises is Balikatan - Filipino for shoulder-to-shoulder - to emphasise the closeness between the U.S. and the Philippines.

China’s aggressive actions in the South China Sea and West Philippine Sea appear to be motivated by a hunger to exploit the area’s rich oil and gas resources.

Although the Chinese fishing boats have been permitted to leave the lagoon where they had been held by a Philippine warship, the confrontation with Chinese military vessels has raised nationalistic anger on both sides.

The fishing vessels were detained near the Scarborough Shoal (called Huangyan Island by the Chinese), off the coast of Manila. The island has historically been part of the Philippines, but China is demanding sovereignty over it and all the islands in a huge region in the South China Sea.

On Friday, China's Foreign Ministry said:

"Huangyan Island is an integral part of Chinese territory. Actions from the Philippine side have infringed upon China's sovereignty and violated the consensus of maintaining the peace and stability of the South China Sea, not complicating and aggravating the situation. China has sent law enforcement ships to ensure the safety of Chinese fishermen and vessels."

China's demand for complete sovereignty over an island that historically has been part of the Philippines is a portent of things to come.

War Games   -   The games are happening at a time when tensions are already high between China and the Philippines over disputed territorial rights in the South China Sea.

Just last week, the Philippines' biggest warship was involved in a standoff with two Chinese surveillance vessels in the Scarborough Shoal, an area claimed by both Beijing and Manila.  The Philippine navy had been trying to arrest a group of Chinese fisherman, but the surveillance boats prevented them.
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And earlier this month, Luo Yuan, a hawkish Chinese general, wrote in the state-run Global Times newspaper that the Philippines was facing its "last chance" to resolve its sovereignty issues.
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"The biggest miscalculation of the Philippines is that it has misestimated the strength and willpower of China to defends its territorial integrity," he wrote.   (BBC News)


Disputed Territory

The Philippines bases its claim on its proximity and the principle of terra nullius, which holds that it was previously unclaimed by a sovereign state, which is also applied by the Philippines in its claims to the Spratly Islands.
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The People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan) claim that the shoal was first discovered and drawn in a map in the Yuan Dynasty as early as 1279 and was historically used by Chinese fishermen. In 1279, Guo Shoujing, a Chinese astronomer, performed surveying of the South China Sea, and the surveying point was reported to be the Scarborough Shoal. In 1935, China regarded the shoal as part of the Zhongsha Islands. In 1947, China published a map drawing a U-shaped line of claim across South China Sea; the shoal lies within the claim administered from Hainan province. 

 (Philippines and China)

Video  -  Chinese navy off the Philippines

The South China Sea  -  The blue line shows the region claimed by China.

China claims all of the South China Sea, even up to the coast of Southeast Asian countries, as part of its historical territory, on the other hand, The Sultanate of Sulu slams the claim of China as the Spratlys Islands and waters is part of their Ancestral domain with bases dates back from the Mahjapahit and Shrivijaya empires, which extended from Sabah (North Borneo), the Sulu archipelago, Palawan, parts of Mindanao, the islands now known as the Spratlys, Palawan, and up to the Visayas and Manila.

The Spratlys are claimed wholly or in part by Vietnam, Taiwan, China, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei, and all but Brunei have a military presence on one or more of the otherwise uninhabited atolls. The islands are believed to contain substantial offshore petroleum reserves.