China has seized Sandy Cay, a disputed reef near a Philippine military outpost in the South China Sea, state broadcaster CCTV said, citing the area’s “environmental protection.”
Chinese coast guard officers raised the Chinese flag to assert their sovereignty over the reef, marking Beijing’s first formal claim to a previously uninhabited land feature in years.
Although small, Sandy Cay is strategically valuable because of the territorial waters it commands, overlapping Thitu Island, home to one of the Philippines’ most important military bases.
The move comes as the Philippines and the United States prepare for their largest annual military exercise, the Balikatan (translated as “shoulder to shoulder”) exercise on Monday near the Spratly Islands with 14,000 soldiers and sailors. Specifically 9,000 Americans and 5,000 Filipinos.
Who claimed the island that China occupied?
The island has been occupied by Vietnam since 1974 (initially by South Vietnam and then by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam after 1975). However, no Vietnamese stations have been built. Until the second half of the 20th century, no nation had full sovereignty over the islands.
The island has been claimed by China, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan. As of today, it is occupied by China, which will seek to impose its control over the waters around the reef.
China raises environmental protection issue
China has concluded that the degradation of coral reefs in the waters surrounding Sandy Cay – a disputed reef in the South China Sea – is due to a combination of natural phenomena and human activities, specifically Philippine construction projects on a nearby island.
In the first “comprehensive” Chinese assessment of the coral ecosystem around Sandy Cay and Whitsun Reef, a research team said it found that the coral reef ecosystem had “seriously degraded” in recent years, while the ecology on nearby Whitsun Reef was “generally healthy.”
The results of the survey were released Friday by a team including members of three agencies of the Ministry of Natural Resources and a Hainan-based coral reef observatory.
The team, which based its findings on satellite imagery and field inspections, partly attributed the degradation in the area to “frequent human activities,” including construction and Philippine fishing on Thitu Island, two nautical miles away.
Chinese and US aircraft carriers “side by side”
The Shandong deployed to the disputed South China Sea for the second time in April, according to the US Naval Institute (USNI). But the US aircraft carrier Nimitz is also there.
It should be noted that the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson left the Indo-Pacific region to assist in attacks against Yemen’s Ansar Allah and is in the Red Sea.
