It has been an unusually busy and strange week in China.
On Monday – as the saga of the alleged spy balloon dragged into its 11th day – a fresh spat between Beijing and Manila erupted. It was more than lasers.
The Philippines has accused China of using a “military-grade” laser light on a Philippine Coast Guard boat. It said the incident occurred on February 6 when the boat was trying to take supplies to the Sierra Madre, a ship used as a Philippine naval outpost in the South China Sea. And that a Chinese vessel intercepted a Philippine Coast Guard boat, blocking its path and using a laser device to temporarily blind the crew.
It’s unclear what type of device the Chinese crew used or how powerful it was, but laser weapons designed to damage eyesight are banned under the UN convention. Many countries including America, Australia, Japan and Germany have immediately condemned this incident.
China, for its part, defended its right to use lasers to protect its “sovereignty” and then denied pointing the light at the Philippine crew, saying they had “hand-held laser speed detectors and hand-held green “Light Pointer” is used, nor are those dangerous.
All this on a submerged rock.
In 2014, As the sun rose across the South China Sea, the horizon showed no sign of our mine.
“Don’t worry,” shouted the captain leading us to the ship above the sound of the engine, “I know where I’m going. It’s on the rock over there.”
He pointed north and saw a rust-gray hulk sitting out of the morning mist, visible only a few feet below the water on top of the ground, a vast sunken rock.
The Sierra Madre was not a particularly large ship even in its youth. Built as a tank landing ship during World War II, it served with the US Navy in the Vietnam War. In 1970 she was transferred to the South Vietnamese Navy, and after the fall of Saigon in 1975 she was scrapped in the Philippines. In 1999, the aging ship was deliberately sunk on top of this reef, 160 km (100 mi) off the coast of the Philippines.
As the small fishing boat approached, large rusted holes appeared on the starboard side of the ship’s hull. It looked like the next storm would wash it away.
Almost 10 years later, the Sierra Madre is still somehow connected more with rust and concrete than steel. And a small contingent of Filipino marines still lives a precarious existence on board.
The Chinese Coast Guard ship’s actions in intercepting Philippine ships may also violate international law. Whatever Beijing says, the waters around the rusting Sierra Madre do not belong to China.
In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague delivered a definitive ruling. China’s claim to a large part of the South China Sea, often described as the nine-dash line, has no basis in international law.
Of course, it’s not as simple as that.
A number of claims and counter-claims are being made about the islands, reefs and waters of the South China Sea. China’s is only the most extensive. The Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan and Malaysia all claim small parts of the sea. And most of these claims are not even supported by international law.
The rugged Sierra Madre of the Philippines sits atop a reef known variously as Second Thomas Shoal, Ayungin Shoal and – in Chinese – Rain-Eye Reef. But a submerged reef is not land, and controlling a reef does not give a country any new territorial waters or expand its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
There is almost no real land in the South China Sea. In the most hotly contested area known as the Spratly Islands, there are a handful of smaller islands. The largest is called Taiping Dao. It is only 1000 meters long and 400 meters wide.
By an accident of history, it has ended up under Taiwanese control. The second largest is called Pagasa. You can walk around it in half an hour. Pagasa was seized by the Philippines in 1971, when the Taiwanese military stationed there retreated to avoid a powerful typhoon. Vietnam has few other pieces of land.
But China, reeling from the internal turmoil of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, was too late — and had no real land. So, he decided to make it himself.
