Manila [Phillipines], April 27 : China has "implemented maritime governance and asserted its sovereign authority" over an uninhabited reef in the contested South China Sea, as it raised the national flag on the small sandbank located just a few kilometers from a major Philippine military base, according to a report by The Japan Times.
Images released by Chinese state media on Saturday depicted officers from the China Coast Guard unfolding the flag to effectively assert control over Sandy Cay reef, known as Tiexian Jiao in China, earlier this month. The reef is situated in the contentious Spratly Islands chain, which is also claimed by Taiwan, Vietnam, and the Philippines, as reported by The Japan Times.
Sandy Cay is positioned slightly over 3 kilometers from Thitu Island, referred to as Pag-asa by Manila, which hosts Philippine military installations, including a military-grade runway and approximately 250 residents.
China's Global Times stated that coast guard personnel had arrived on Sandy Cay "to carry out an on-reef inspection and record illegal activities on video" while also cleaning up "plastic bottles, wooden sticks, and other litter scattered across the reef flat" as referenced by The Japan Times report.
In January, Beijing claimed that Chinese forces had intercepted and "dissuaded" Philippine naval vessels that had "entered" the waters near the reef, which they alleged were attempting "an illegal landing and sand sample collection".
The Philippines has stated that it has dispatched coast guard vessels to the region to monitor and investigate whether China is attempting to carry out minor island reclamation projects in the area. China asserts that the approximately 200-square-meter Sandy Cay is a natural formation and not a man-made structure, granting it a 12-nautical-mile (22-km) territorial sea under international law, which would overlap with Thitu Island.
Between 2013 and 2016, China engaged in a significant land reclamation initiative in the South China Sea, constructing several military outposts in a concerted effort to strengthen its claim over roughly 90 per cent of the resource-rich waters, through which trillions of dollars in trade pass annually, as also mentioned by The Japan Times.
"One of the ironies is that China's interest in claiming Sandy Cay is about reinforcing the legitimacy of their claims to the adjacent Subi Reef, which now accommodates a major artificial port and airfield. This results in lawfare that supports further expansionism," wrote Euan Graham, a regional security analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, on X.
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