Philippine Coast Guard REMOVES China's Floating Barriers in West Philippine Sea

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With tensions running high in the South China Sea over territorial rights, the Philippines offered a direct challenge to Beijing by instructing its Coast Guard to haul away a Chinese barrier.
Faced with China’s determination to exert control over a vast area of the South China Sea far from its mainland, the Philippine had taken matters into its own hands, taking down a Chinese barrier that had kept Filipino fishing boats at bay.
A floating barrier installed by China to prevent Filipino boats from fishing in a disputed area of the South China Sea has been removed, in the latest flashpoint between Manila and Beijing over their competing maritime claims.
Video released by the Philippine Coast Guard on Monday showed a Filipino diver cut what it said earlier was a 300-meter-long string of buoys near Bajo de Masinloc, also known as Scarborough Shoal, a small but strategic reef and fertile fishing ground 130 miles west of the Philippine Island of Lozon.
The footage showed the diver with a simple mask and snorkel, slipping below the waves to use a small knife to cut through rope after reaching the barrier, on a rickety fishing boat with a small crew. The video vividly illustrates a fraught power struggle that has been playing out for years in the South China Sea as Manila tries to push back against increasingly assertive claims to the disputed strategic waterway by Beijing.
Philippine authorities claimed Sunday that three Chinese Coast Guard boats and a Chinese maritime militia service boat had installed the barrier following the arrival of a Philippine government vessel in the area. The barrier posed a hazard to navigation, a clear violation of international law, adding that it also infringed on Philippine sovereignty.
With tensions already rising in the South China Sea, it was unclear how Beijing might respond. But China has made clear its intent to militarize the waters through which one-third of global ocean trade passes. The Philippines is not the only country in the region that is tangling with China over fishing rights and territorial claims. Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei have also had conflicts.
In a regular press briefing on Tuesday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said, China is resolved in safeguarding its sovereignty and maritime interests over Huangyan Island, referring to the disputed shoal by its Chinese name.
He advised the Philippines not to make provocations or seek trouble. Beijing claims indisputable sovereignty over almost all of the 1.3 million square miles of the South China Sea, as well as most of the islands and sandbars within it, including many features that are hundreds of miles away from China’s mainland.
Over the past two decades, China has occupied a number of reefs and atolls across the South China Sea, building up military installations, including runways and ports, which have not only challenged the Philippines’ sovereignty and fishing rights but have also endangered marine biodiversity in the highly contested resource-rich waterway.
Already, more than 900 miles from their mainland, the Chinese have established a military base on Mischief Reef, off the Philippine Island of Palawan, complete with radar domes and a runway that can handle fighter jets. An international tribunal has determined that the area does not belong to China, but with armed Chinese vessels out in force, Filipinos who have fished the waters for generations have been forced to stand down.
In 2016, an international tribunal in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines in a landmark maritime dispute, which concluded that China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to the bulk of the South China Sea. Beijing has ignored the ruling.
Western marine security experts, along with officials from the Philippines and the United States, have increasingly accused Beijing of using ostensibly civilian fishing vessels as a maritime militia that acts as an unofficial naval force that China uses to push its territorial claims both in the South China Sea and beyond.
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Видео Philippine Coast Guard REMOVES China's Floating Barriers in West Philippine Sea канала ASEAN Analytics