By AFP | 2025-01-28

MANILA -- The Philippines suspended a scientific survey in the contested South China Sea on January 25 because of "dangerous" harassment by Chinese navy and coast guard vessels and aircraft.

Three Chinese coast guard vessels and four smaller boats made "aggressive maneuvers" toward two Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources ships and their inflatable boats on January 24 near Thitu island, according to a Philippine coast guard statement.

The Philippine vessels were transporting scientists intending to conduct a "marine scientific survey and sand sampling" at a sandbar off Thitu, the largest Philippine-occupied island in the disputed Spratlys chain, the coast guard said.

Thitu lies about 430km from the major Philippine island of Palawan and more than 900km from China's nearest major landmass, Hainan island.

Chinese forces garrison the Subi Reef near Thitu.

A Chinese navy helicopter "hovered at an unsafe altitude" above the Philippine fisheries agency's inflatable boats, "creating hazardous conditions due to the propeller wash," Manila's coast guard said.

"As a result of this continuous harassment and the disregard for safety exhibited by the Chinese maritime forces," the Philippine coast guard said it and the fisheries agency "regrettably suspended their survey operations and were unable to collect sand samples" from unoccupied sandbars off Thitu.

Despite the "dangerous confrontations," no accidents occurred, the Philippine coast guard said.

The Chinese coast guard said in a statement later on January 25 that the Philippine boats had entered waters near Tiexian Reef, the Chinese name for Sandy Cay, a few kilometers from Thitu, and were forced to leave.

Those on board the Philippine boats "attempted to land illegally" to collect sand samples despite China's "unquestionable sovereignty," Beijing said.

Chinese flout an international ruling

China claims nearly all of the disputed waterway, brushing off rival claims from other countries -- including the Philippines -- and an international tribunal ruling that its assertion has no legal basis.

It has deployed navy and coast guard vessels in recent months in a bid to bar the Philippines from strategically important reefs and islands in the South China Sea.

Also on January 24, the same day as the incident near Thitu, Philippine forces resupplied and rotated without incident troops manning a derelict navy vessel grounded on the Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratlys, the Foreign Affairs department said.

Manila had deliberately grounded the vessel on the reef to assert its claim over the area.

The Philippine government raised the alarm in January over Chinese coast guard ships patrolling closer to the main Filipino island of Luzon, calling it an "intimidation tactic" by Beijing to discourage Filipino fishing.

China rejected the allegation, with a Foreign Ministry spokesperson saying the patrols were "in accordance with the law."