China’s Menacing Words for a Boat in Disputed Waters: ‘Get Out!’
Javier C. Hernández, The New York Times | July 12, 2016 9:00 AM ET
But waiting in the waters, the mouth of Scarborough Shoal, was a 46-metre Chinese coast guard ship. If we were to get more than a glimpse of this speck of coral and rock — the latest potential point of contention between China and the United States in the South China Sea — our boat would have to be quick.
Capt. Alex O. Tagapan, who usually takes tourists on sightseeing cruises, steered toward the entrance of the boomerang-shaped atoll and accelerated. Turning to a small statue of Santo Niño de Cebú, a patron saint of the Philippines known for miraculous powers, he prayed.
Within minutes, the Chinese sent a speedboat painted with the coast guard’s red stripes racing toward us. “Get out! Get out!” a man on the boat wearing a bamboo hat and an orange vest shouted in English, waving his arms.
Now, China is said to be considering plans to build Scarborough Shoal into an island, too, an effort that would be its most ambitious and provocative yet. China would gain an outpost on the eastern side of the sea, more than 850 kilometres from its mainland but just 225 kilometres from the Philippines.
That could bolster China’s claim to the sea, including oil exploration and fishing rights, and could substantially extend its radar, air and missile coverage, including over U.S. forces in the Philippines.
Last month, I set out to see this patch of water, which has inspired bluster from two superpowers but which Charles Darwin once described in almost poetic terms: “a hundred fathoms, colored blue.”
“The Chinese are relentless. There’s nothing we can do. We just have to go home”
Scarborough does not beckon visitors. Named after a British tea ship that crashed in 1784, it has long been known for shipwrecks, ensnaring Swedish steamers and French cargo vessels caught in typhoons. But as I traveled the coast of the Philippines looking for a boat to take me, the chief worry was China, which wrested control of the reef from the Philippines four years ago.
People everywhere were reluctant to make the journey, afraid of harassment by Chinese ships. Filipino fishermen, clutching bottles of rum, described playing cat-and-mouse games in the moonlight with Chinese crews armed with water cannons and assault rifles.
“The Chinese are relentless,” said Renante Etac, 40, the captain of a ship that fishes near Scarborough. “There’s nothing we can do. We just have to go home.”
In Subic Bay, where the U.S. military once maintained its largest overseas naval base, I stumbled upon the Motoryacht Isla, a boat that took a group of television journalists to Scarborough a few years ago.
When I pressed him, Ongpin found a new crew, led by Tagapan, a quiet man with a sailor’s swagger who saw the loss of Scarborough as a bruise to national pride.
“It is time for us to stand up on our own,” he said.
On a Friday afternoon, we departed. If all went according to plan, it would take 20 hours to reach Scarborough, covering about the same distance as between Miami and the Bahamas.
On Tuesday, an international tribunal in The Hague is expected to rule on a request by the Philippines to invalidate many of China’s claims in the South China Sea, including several related to Scarborough. China has boycotted the tribunal, asserting that ancient maps establish its sovereignty.
While the tribunal cannot decide Scarborough’s rightful owner, the Philippines has asked it to declare that Scarborough is not an island that can be used to establish an exclusive economic zone.
What I could see was a Chinese coast guard ship. The last time the Isla had made the journey to Scarborough, the Chinese intercepted it 8 kilometres from the shoal. Now we were less than a kilometre away.
Suddenly, the Chinese speedboat whirred up behind us. The man in the bamboo hat — one of two men aboard — gesticulated as if conducting a symphony.
After 15 minutes, the crew wanted to turn around. I asked Tagapan if we could circle back or find another way in, but he was uneasy. The Chinese ship was gaining on us, and a larger, 1,000-tonne coast guard cutter with water cannons had appeared on the horizon.
“We don’t want to get shot,” Tagapan said.
As we reversed course, the smaller ship pulled within 30 metres, and its crew snapped photographs of us. The cutter came close enough to buffet us with its large wake.
Not far from Scarborough, we came upon a small fishing boat, the JJ2. Its 16-member crew, some wearing bandannas and Chicago Bulls jerseys, whistled and cheered as we approached.
The boat’s captain, Paolo Pumicpic Jr., told us that he and his crew had encountered the Chinese coast guard a few days earlier and had been chased away.
Pumicpic, whose father and grandfather once fished at Scarborough, said he and his crew used to catch about $1,000 worth of fish daily. Now, he said, they managed less than $100 worth.
In one instance last year, he said, Chinese officers boarded his boat, beat crew members with bamboo sticks, cut their fishing lines and seized their catch.
“They are salot, a plague,” he said of the Chinese coast guard. “We used to take refuge inside the shoal when the seas got rough. Now we can’t go there.”
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