China and Philippines trade accusations after sailor injured at sea

Dispute erupts in South China Sea after incident near Second Thomas Shoal involving Chinese and Philippine vessels. China and the Philippines are engaged in a dispute over who is to blame after a confrontation between their vessels in the disputed South China Sea left a Philippine sailor injured. The incident took place on Monday near the Second Thomas Shoal, home to a grounded Philippine warship, the BRP Sierra Madre, that Manila uses as a military outpost.

Beijing claims almost all of the South China Sea and has demanded the outpost be removed, despite it lying within the Philippines’s 200-nautical mile (370km) exclusive economic zone and about 1,000 km (808 miles) from mainland China. The Philippine military claims that a Chinese coastguard boat approached the outpost and harassed it, injuring one of its sailors with blows to the head from a wooden baton. China’s coastguard has rejected the account, claiming that two Philippine boats had ignored warnings and struck first by ramming one of their patrol vessels.

The incident took place as foreign ministers from across Southeast Asia, among them China’s Wang Yi, gathered in Manila for talks in which maritime tensions were expected to loom large. According to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which China has ratified, the Second Thomas Shoal lies within the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines. Manila has long urged Beijing to honour a 2016 international arbitration court ruling that backed its maritime rights.

China did not participate in the court’s proceedings. The US State Department has condemned China’s “dangerous and aggressive” actions against Philippine navy personnel. “China’s troubling pattern of provocation against lawful Philippine maritime operations undermines regional peace and stability and directly contradicts China’s repeated commitments to resolve disputes peacefully,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement.