Carpio warns of China’s looming encroachment on Scarborough

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Sunday, March 19, 2017
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MANILA – Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio has warned that China may impose an air defense zone and control the whole South China Sea if the Philippines will not stop its plan to build a radar station in the disputed Scarborough Shoal.

Carpio made the statement following reports of Beijing’s plan to install an environmental monitoring station at the shoal – a resource-rich rocky outcrop 124 nautical miles off Palawan’s northwestern coast.

“A radar station on Scarborough Shoal will immediately complete China’s radar coverage of the entire South China Sea. China can then impose an ADIZ, or air defense identification zone in the South China Sea,” said Carpio, a member of the Philippine legal team during the arbitration proceedings against China in The Hague, Netherlands.

Several nations, led by the US, Japan and Australia feared that a Chinese-imposed ADIZ in the South China Sea – one of the world’s most vital commercial and strategic waterways – would impede freedom of navigation and overflights.

China claims “indisputable” ownership over nearly the entire waters, where rich mineral deposits, oil and natural gas have been discovered in several areas.

It ignored criticisms and protests over their actions, insisting that all its activities in the South China Sea are within the bounds of its territorial sovereignty.

Former foreign secretary Perfecto Yasay said Chinese President Xi Jinping made the commitment not to reclaim the shoal during President Rodrigo Duterte’s state visit to China in October 2016.

Since he assumed office in June, Duterte has taken steps to mend ties with China that considerably deteriorated during the time of his predecessor, Benigno Aquino III, who brought the territorial rifts to international arbitration in 2013.

Relations between China and the Philippines have vastly improved under Duterte, who has sought Chinese trade and economic aid while shelving long-running territorial disputes, including an arbitral tribunal case won by the country.

Carpio recalled that in 1987, China made a similar construction in the Fiery Cross Reef, an outcrop in the southern part of the South China Sea, called the Spratlys.

The Chinese, he said, erected a radar weather station apparently to help the global oceanic survey of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

But from 2014 to 2015, Carpio said the Chinese turned the weather station into a 270-hectare military air-naval base.

“Now it’s the turn of Scarborough Shoal,” he said.

 

“That means China will grab 80 percent of Philippine exclusive economic zone and 100 percent of Philippine extended continental shelf in the West Philippine Sea,” he said. (GMA News)

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