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While more than 200 Chinese vessels were massed by China near the Philippine-controlled Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea, a five-day live-fire exercises were conducted by the Chinese military off the Leizhou Peninsula in China’s southern Hainan province. The live-fire drills were conducted during daylight hours for five consecutive days while over 200 Chinese vessels were deployed near the Philippine-occupied Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea where a Philippine garrison is stationed on a deliberately grounded Philippine warship, the BRP Sierra Madre.

Chosun Ilbo online news reported Philippine coast guard and naval monitors have been tracking a large concentration of Chinese vessels, anchored in a line, near the Philippine-claimed Second Thomas Shoal, now known to Filipinos as Ayungin Shoal. The report comes as China is conducting a 5-day live-fire exercise off Leizhou Peninsula during the day. The development has turned the already contentious Philippine-China stand-off into one of the most tense maritime showdowns in the Pacific.

Retired Rear Adm. Roy Vincent Trinidad, AFP WPS Spokesperson, in a press briefing said that the Communist Party of China’s information campaign on the South China Sea is laced with deceptive narratives as they try to bury the truth from the international community. He added that China’s information campaign is another form of psychological operations and are intended to deceive the world on what they are really doing in the West Philippine Sea.

‘Today, those shelters have been transformed into a fortified 550-hectare military air base,’ said AFP’s West Philippine Sea spokesperson retired Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad in a statement. Trinidad said Mischief Reef stands as a permanent, concrete monument to China’s ‘deceptive strategy’ in the West Philippine Sea.

China’s embassy in Manila yesterday insisted that the Philippine government has promised to remove BRP Sierra Madre from the Ayungin Shoal. The Armed Forces Philippine Headquarters however said that the Sierra Madre is permanently anchored in the area as declared by the 2016 Arbitral Tribunal which also ruled that the Ayungin Shoal was a low-tide elevation within the Philippine’s exclusive economic zone and that China’s claims in the WPS were illegal.

The new military chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, Appointed by President Marcos this week, is expected to address the South China Sea situation in his first press conference. His comments will likely attract a lot of attention in the Indo-Pacific as this has become a standard talking point in security discussions between senior defense officials. The US for example has previously stated that it would defend Philippine vessels and aircraft in the South China Sea under the terms of the U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty.

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