China to build air-naval base in Scarborough, Carpio warns

China will erect air and naval bases in Scarborough Shoal, grabbed from the Philippines in 2012. It’s being rushed. Armed facilities in the far end of the South China Sea from Beijing is to bolster control of international waters it illegally claims as an internal lake. While world attention is on combatting the COVID-19 pandemic, Beijing increasingly has been militarizing the SCS.

The telltale sign: Beijing recently announced it will impose an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in the SCS. Such ADIZ can work only if China has military installations on Scarborough, said retired Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio in a forum Tuesday.

An ADIZ is airspace over land or sea territory. Identification and control of international civil aviation are enforced for sovereignty and security. Aircraft must state identity and purpose, and stay within the course assigned by the country that owns the airspace. Breaches can be deemed hostile acts; more so impositions of ADIZ beyond one’s territory.

“China recently abundantly hinted it would soon declare an ADIZ over the SCS,” Carpio said. “It only meant one thing: China will soon put up an air and naval base in Scarborough.”

Without air and naval facilities “an ADIZ over the SCS cannot be enforced,” Carpio added. “[There will be] a hole in China’s radar, missile, and jet fighter coverage in the northeast section of the SCS in the vicinity of Scarborough.”

China has long wanted to build a base in the 15,000-hectare shoal surrounded by 46 km of rocks and reefs. Such facility would complete its SCS control triangle of island-fortresses – with Mischief Reef, stolen from the Philippines in 1995, and Subi Reef, concreted in 2014.

“In early 2016 China sent dredgers steaming from the coast of Guangdong to Scarborough,” Carpio recalled. “US satellites monitored the dredgers. President Obama called President Xi Jinping that the US will take serious measures if the dredgers proceeded to reclaim Scarborough. The Chinese dredgers turned back.”

Before that Beijing publicized drawings to reclaim the shoal into a resort city facing Luzon. Airstrips, navy berths, and weapons silos were shown on the other side. Chinese constructors were named, along with bills of materials.

In 2013 Beijing declared an ADIZ over the East China Sea, where it claims Japan’s Okinawa and Senkaku Islands. Without prior information, the US flew B-52 bombers on “training missions” near China mainland. Beijing stood down.

As with Tokyo, Washington has defense and visiting forces agreements with Manila. The latter had served notice in Feb. to terminate the VFA in six months. But it suspended the termination process last week due to “political and other developments in the region.” Carpio linked that to China’s threats to impose an ADIZ in the SCS. Analysts noted a growing wariness in ASEAN over China’s military escalation in the disputed waters, while pandemic distracts the world.

Chinese gunboats occupied Scarborough after a 2012 standoff with a Philippine Navy patrol. Only 123 nautical miles from Luzon, the shoal is within the Philippines’ 200-mile exclusive economic zone but 800 miles distant from China. It is part of Philippine territory, as stated in Spanish authorities’ Velarde map of 1734, and in 1935-36 correspondences of Washington with the Philippine Commonwealth. Once called Bajo de Masinloc, for the Zambales town that exercised jurisdiction, it was renamed in British maps after a ship that ran aground there. Official name today is Panatag Shoal.

Wrongly calling it Huangyan “Island”, China fictitiously claims ownership. Supposedly ancient engineers observed Huangyan from towers far away on the mainland. The shoal’s highest rock protrusion is only 1.5 meters (five feet) above water.

In 2016 a UN court outlawed Beijing’s baseless claim over the entire SCS. China’s annexation of Scarborough violated Philippine maritime and fishing rights. Same with its concreting of Mischief, 110 miles from Palawan, and Subi, 22 miles from Pag-asa Island, Kalayaan municipality. Ignoring the verdict, Beijing dispatched Coast Guards and fisheries militia to poach giant clams and fan corals anew inside the shoal lagoon. Filipino fishermen were driven away with water cannons and rifle fire.

Tuesday’s webinar, led by Stratbase-ADR Institute, consisted of diplomats and specialists in international law and geopolitics. It marked the first anniversary of the sinking of a Filipino wooden fishing boat by a steel-hulled Chinese naval militia launch at Recto Bank. The sea feature is within Philippine EEZ.

Discussions focused in part on pressing for Chinese recompense for continuous destruction of Philippine reefs and fisheries.

Former foreign secretary Albert del Rosario, Institute chairman, dwelt on Filipino resistance to China’s bullying and injustice: “As we celebrate Independence Day, we Filipinos must always remember to stand up for our rights.”

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Dishonest money dwindles away, but whoever gathers money little by little makes it grow... A good person leaves an inheritance for their children’s children, but a sinner’s wealth is stored up for the righteous. (Proverbs 13: 11, 22 NIV)

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