China and the Philippines are sending vessels to Sabina Shoal to secure their competing territorial claims to the feature. Manila withdrew the Teresa Magbanua, a coast guard vessel that had left that strategic spot in the South China Sea, on Sept. 14.
China will undoubtedly block the Philippine attempt to reoccupy the shoal. The probability of an incident — and war — is high.
The U.S., a party to a 1951 mutual defense treaty with Manila, is bound to be involved in any conflict.
The 318-foot Teresa Magbanua had been anchored at Sabina for more than 150 days to, among other things, protect the Philippines’ territorial claims.
Both China (which calls it Xianbin Jiao Lagoon) and the Philippines claim Sabina as sovereign territory. Manila’s formal name for the contested feature is Escoda Shoal.
Beijing claims as “blue national soil” all the shoals, reefs, islands, islets and other features, as well as all the waters inside its infamous “cow’s tongue,” defined by 10 dashes on official maps, which encloses about 85 percent of the South China Sea.
A Hague tribunal, adjudicating between the Philippines and China under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, invalidated Beijing’s expansive sovereignty claims to Philippine features in that body of water in 2016. China, with virtually no legal support, has consistently maintained that the decision “is illegal, null and void.”
China’s forces have continually committed provocations in Philippine waters — especially since the middle of June — at Sabina, Second Thomas Shoal, and other features close to islands universally recognized as part of the Philippines. Journalists featured on a Sept. 16 episode of 60 Minutes reported the Chinese rammed a Philippine craft in the South China Sea while they were on board.
Sabina is about 76 nautical miles from Palawan, a main Philippine island, and therefore within the Exclusive Economic Zone of the Philippines. Sabina, by contrast, is 648 nautical miles from China’s Hainan Island. An Exclusive Economic Zone is a band of water between 12 to 200 nautical miles from the shoreline where the coastal state has certain economic and other rights against others.
The Teresa Magbanuawas monitoring suspected Chinese reclamation activities. China had seized from the Philippines nearby Mischief, Subi and Fiery Cross Reefs and turned them into sprawling military bases. Beijing is threatening to do the same thing to Scarborough Shoal, which it grabbed in 2012.
There is a crisis in the making, as China has already been using, in the words of CBS’s Jacqueline Williams, “tactics just short of war.”
“This time, they may use extreme force to prevent the Philippine ship from getting close to Sabina Shoal,” says James Fanell of the Geneva Center for Security Policy and co-author of “Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure.” “The risk of China trying to sink the ship is real.”
“Neither side can afford to back down,” David Day of the Global Risk Mitigation Foundation, a Honolulu-based non-profit focused on Southeast Asia, told me.
The Chinese know they must prevent the return of a Philippine vessel to Sabina because, should it anchor there, its presence will undercut what Day correctly calls “their bogus sovereignty claims.”
The Philippines will not back down either. Manila cannot afford to let China take away another island, reef, shoal or rock, because the Philippines is nothing more than a collection of rocks, shoals, reefs and islands.
Fanell, a former U.S. Navy captain who served as director of Intelligence and Information Operations at the U.S. Pacific Fleet, believes the U.S. Navy must begin escorting Philippine craft when they begin the journey back to Sabina.
“America must enforce its words about a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific,’” he said. “If we do not, that phrase will become more hollow than it is today.”
China, in fact, sees America’s words as “hollow” as Beijing has been ignoring a series of pronouncements from Washington.
The Biden State Department, for instance, has issued a dozen written warnings — the last one on Aug. 31 — that the U.S. was willing to use force against China to discharge its obligations pursuant to Article IV of the mutual defense pact. President Biden has orally issued similar warnings, for instance on Oct. 25 of last year and April 11.
Despite these warnings, China has increased the tempo of provocative acts and its belligerence. At the moment, Beijing wants the world to see how aggressive Chinese forces are. China’s officials had to know there was a 60 Minutes crew on board the Philippine Coast Guard vessel they rammed.
In recent years, Xi Jinping has sponsored what has become known as “Wolf Warrior diplomacy,” and now he is going to even greater lengths to show off the ugly side of Chinese nationalism.
Chinese leaders are now looking for a fight. Xi has obviously decided to risk war with an American treaty ally, which means he is prepared to wage war against America.
Soon, there will be a confrontation in the South China Sea.
Says Day, “The real clash is just beginning.”
Gordon G. Chang is the author of “The Coming Collapse of China” and the upcoming “Plan Red: China’s Project to Destroy America.” Follow him on X @GordonGChang.