The United States accused China’s navy of carrying out “dangerous and destabilizing conduct” over the weekend following two separate incidents with Philippine vessels.
Outside Scarborough Reef on Saturday and near the Second Thomas Shoal a day later, Chinese ships used water cannons and “reckless maneuvers, including forcing a collision, causing damage to Philippine vessels undertaking official supply missions to those locations, and jeopardizing the safety of the Filipino crew,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
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The PRC ships in the first incident deployed what Miller described as "acoustic devices" that incapacitated the Filipino crew members and drove away Philippine fishing vessels.
"The U.S. continues to call for peace and stability in the South China Sea after unsafe PRC operational behavior against Philippines lawful operations near Second Thomas Shoal this weekend," Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said. "Our commitment to the Philippines, and to our Mutual Defense Treaty, remains ironclad."
An international tribunal decided in July 2016 that the Chinese had no lawful maritime claims to the waters around Second Thomas Shoal and Filipinos were entitled to traditional fishing rights around Scarborough Reef. The decision is legally binding.
The Philippine vessels "ignored Chinese coastguard's warnings and insisted on rushing into" waters near the Second Thomas Shoal, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said, adding that China's operation was "professional, reasonable and legal."
The Chinese navy has repeatedly engaged with U.S. or international vessels in international waters, which Beijing claims as its own. America, in turn, will conduct freedom of navigation operations in the Pacific to push back on Beijing's efforts to force the U.S. out of the Pacific.
The Chinese military has increased the frequency of interceptions of U.S. aircraft or naval vessels in the region in recent years.
Ely Ratner, assistant defense secretary for Indo-Pacific security affairs, told reporters last week: "The amount of these risky and coercive intercepts that we've seen over the last couple of years is more than we've seen in the decades preceding it. So the overall number of these events has increased significantly."
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Last month, President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced the resumption of military-to-military communications between the two countries that had been halted for more than a year. Beijing severed those ties back in the summer of 2022 after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) traveled to Taiwan.
“We are currently in the process of discussing with the PRC Defense Department about what that is going to look like in the months and years ahead,” Ratner said about the restart of military communications, noting this will comprise “a combination of what will be meetings, calls, dialogues and engagements over the next 12 months.”