Last month I wrote about the ongoing strategic battle between China and the Philippines over an underwater reef known as Ayungin Shoal. The short version is that China has claimed Ayungin Shoal is its territory, just as they’ve claimed nearly all of the South China Sea. China has already militarized Mischief Reef which is only a few miles west of Ayungin Shoal and they want to do the same to Ayungin but there’s a problem. The Philippines has also claimed the island and back in 1999 they anchored a rusting old ship there which they keep constantly manned with a handful of naval personnel. This is the ship:

In 1999 the Philippine Navy deliberately grounded an old US Navy ship on Second Thomas Shoal/Ayugin Reef in the Spratly Islands and kept it manned year-round as a South China Sea sentinel. It's been annoying China ever since and now China is upping … https://t.co/TypQ6YKuFd pic.twitter.com/coZa9XB2UG

— Chris Cavas (@CavasShips) August 9, 2023

The men staying on that rust-bucket have to be resupplied and replaced occasionally and China clearly wants to prevent that. So in early August a Chinese Coast Guard turned water cannons on a resupply vessel heading to Ayungin Shoal.

BREAKING:

The Chinese Coast Guard has used water cannons to attack a small vessel used by the Philippine Navy to resupply its Ayungin (Second Thomas) Shoal outpost.

The attack took place only 190 km from the Palawan island of the Philippines.pic.twitter.com/D2kQREWNPK

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) August 6, 2023

The Philippines returned and this time four Chinese ships tried blockading the resupply ships. Here’s what that looked like.

Because the Philippines had brought some large ships of its own, the resupply was able to get through the blockade. But I predicted in August that China would surely escalate the situation again and yesterday they did.

About five Chinese coast guard ships, eight accompanying vessels and two navy ships formed a blockade on Sunday to prevent two Philippine coast guard ships and two boats from delivering food and other supplies to Filipino forces stationed at Second Thomas Shoal aboard a marooned navy ship, Philippine coast guard Commodore Jay Tarriela said.

During the standoff, one of the Philippine coast guard ships and a supply boat were separately hit by a Chinese coast guard ship and a vessel. Only one of the two Filipino boats managed to deliver supplies to Philippine forces, Tarriela said.

The senior Chinese diplomat who was summoned by Philippine foreign officials repeated China’s assertion that the Philippine vessels intruded into Chinese territory.

“China once again urges the Philippines to take seriously China’s grave concerns, honor its promise, stop making provocations at sea, stop making dangerous moves, stop groundlessly attacking and slandering China, and to tow away the illegally ‘grounded’ warship as soon as possible,” Zhou Zhiyong was quoted as saying by the Chinese Embassy in Manila.

Here’s video of the resupply boat being hit by a much larger Chinese ship.

There was also another collision captured here:

The BBC reports it’s not an accident we’re getting high-quality video of these incidents.

The confrontation between Manila and Beijing over submerged shoals in the South China Sea has been going on for decades.

But in recent months something has changed. The spats at sea are now unfolding in the full glare of the television media. This is the second time in weeks Philippine journalists have filmed a close encounter near a particularly sensitive reef known variously as Second Thomas Shoal, Ayungin Shoal or Ren Ai Reef.

This is no accident. It is part of a deliberate policy by the Philippine government to shine a spotlight on what it has called China’s “brute force” in asserting control over what Manila says are its waters.

“I think we’ve seen a significant change this year. It’s what I call an assertive transparency campaign,” says retired Colonel Raymond Powell of Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Centre.

The BBC adds that there may be a reason for China’s aggressiveness at this moment. The ship grounded on Ayungin Shoal (the Sierra Madre) isn’t expected to last very much longer. If it were to collapse into the sea, the Philippines would be forced to pull its men off it and that would give China a moment to move in and claim it. They are laying the groundwork for that moment now.