MANILA: The Philippines said China\u2019s deployment of its largest coast guard vessel inside Manila\u2019s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) was alarming and clearly meant to intimidate fishermen operating around a contested shoal in the South China Sea.
\n\u201cWe were surprised about the increasing aggression being showed by the People\u2019s Republic of China in deploying the monster ship,\u201d National Security Council spokesperson Jonathan Malaya said in a press conference on Tuesday.
\nManila has lodged a protest over the presence of the 165 m long vessel Chinese coast guard vessel 5901, which was spotted 77 nautical miles off the coast of Zambales province, and demanded its withdrawal from the EEZ, Malaya said.
\n\u201cIt is an escalation and provocative,\u201d Malaya said, saying the presence the vessel was \u201cillegal\u201d and \u201cunacceptable.\u201d
\nThe Philippine Coast Guard said it had deployed two of its largest vessels to drive away the Chinese vessel.
\nChinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said on Monday that its coast guard\u2019s \u201cpatrol and law enforcement activities\u201d were \u201creasonable, lawful and beyond reproach.\u201d
\nTensions between the Philippines, a US treaty ally, and Beijing have escalated over the past two years due to overlapping claims in the South China Sea.
\nIn 2016, an international tribunal ruled China\u2019s claims to large swathes of the disputed waterway had no basis, a decision Beijing rejects.
\nChina\u2019s expansive claims overlap with the EEZs of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. The disputed waterway is a strategic shipping route through which about $3 trillion of annual commerce moves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MANILA: The Philippines said China\u2019s deployment of its largest coast guard vessel inside Manila\u2019s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) was alarming and clearly meant to intimidate fishermen operating around a contested shoal in the South China Sea. \u201cWe were surprised about the increasing aggression being showed by the People\u2019s Republic of China in deploying the monster …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":75617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75588"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75618,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75588\/revisions\/75618"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}