Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. condemned on Sunday Chinese air force actions in waters of the South China Sea claimed by both countries, calling the actions \u201cunjustified, illegal and reckless.\u201d <\/p>\n
A day earlier, Manila and Beijing accused each other of disrupting their militaries\u2019 operations around the Scarborough Shoal in the first incident since Marcos took office in 2022, in which the Philippines has complained of dangerous actions by Chinese aircraft. Previously, the actions had involved navy or coast guard vessels. <\/p>\n
The Philippine military condemned \u201cdangerous and provocative actions\u201d when two Chinese aircraft dropped flares in the path of a Philippine aircraft during a routine patrol around the shoal on Thursday. <\/p>\n
The Chinese military\u2019s Southern Theater Command countered that the Philippines had disrupted its training, accusing Manila of \u201cillegally intruding\u201d into its airspace. <\/p>\n
On Sunday, Marcos urged China to act responsibly both in the seas and in the skies. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have hardly started to calm the waters, and it is already worrying that there could be instability in our airspace,\u201d Marcos said in a statement posted by the Presidential Communications Office on the social media platform X. <\/p>\n
The Chinese embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n
The Scarborough Shoal is one of Asia\u2019s most contested maritime features and a flashpoint for flare-ups over sovereignty and fishing rights. <\/p>\n
Chester Cabalza, president of the Manila-based think tank International Development and Security Cooperation, said China\u2019s actions were a \u201cshow of force\u201d in response to Manila\u2019s participation in multi-nation drills that promote freedom of navigation and overflight. <\/p>\n
\u201cAfter a series of gray zone tactics at sea, we may probably see dog fights up in the sky if China continues its growing antagonism in the Philippines\u2019 air and defence zones,\u201d Cabalza said. <\/p>\n
Beijing claims almost all of the South China Sea, a conduit for more than $3 trillion of annual shipborne commerce, including parts claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. <\/p>\n
China rejects a 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague that Beijing\u2019s expansive claims had no basis under international law. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. condemned on Sunday Chinese air force actions in waters of the South China Sea claimed by both countries, calling the actions \u201cunjustified, illegal and reckless.\u201d A day earlier, Manila and Beijing accused each other of disrupting their militaries\u2019 operations around the Scarborough Shoal in the first incident since Marcos took office in <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6242,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6241","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}