Philippine officials said Wednesday that China removed a temporary floating platform from Scarborough Shoal, a disputed atoll in the South China Sea, after the structure first appeared in satellite images at the end of May and raised concerns that Beijing could be preparing for a more permanent occupation.
The platform was more than 300 square feet, Philippine officials said, and appeared in photographs to have an antenna and Chinese nationals onboard. At times it was accompanied by two Chinese vessels, according to the officials.
Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. said in an interview that the platform raised alarm among authorities in Manila. “If it’s a precursor to a more permanent presence, or a precursor to other malign activity, then it’s worrisome,” Teodoro said.
Oceanographers at the state-controlled Chinese Academy of Sciences said the platform was a temporary scientific research facility studying the shoal’s coral reefs. China’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether Beijing planned to build permanent structures at Scarborough Shoal, but officials earlier said the shoal was China’s “inherent territory.”
Scarborough Shoal, a triangular reef 145 miles from the main Philippine island of Luzon, sits along a waterway carrying about a quarter of the world’s seaborne trade. Using coast guard and navy ships, China has controlled access to the shoal since a two-month-long standoff with the Philippines in 2012. The seizure proved an inflection point in Beijing’s efforts to assert its claims over much of the South China Sea. The next year, it began turning submerged reefs and atolls into military bases capable of hosting missiles and aircraft.
Analysts tracking the South China Sea said the movable platform appeared to be evidence of a renewed push by Beijing to tighten its hold over the shoal. “What China appears to be doing here is ‘salami-slicing’ its way toward eventual habitation,” said Ray Powell, executive director at the SeaLight Foundation, which tracks so-called gray-zone activities in the South China Sea.
Beijing’s attention on Scarborough Shoal has increased in recent months. MSI previously reported that China said in April it had conducted combat patrols near the shoal as military drills started. Last year, China more than doubled nearby patrols, according to analysis from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. In August, a Chinese coast guard and navy ship collided during a pursuit of a Philippine vessel, footage from the Philippines showed. Beijing declared a nature reserve in the area in September, and Philippine officials say they have also found buoys and possible antennas there.
Harrison Prétat, an expert on Asian maritime issues at CSIS, said that Chinese researchers might have been focused on conservation, but that the data they collected could also help plan future construction or dredging. “The fact that we keep seeing new things appear at Scarborough—new buoys, new patterns of ship behavior, and now this—I think speaks to a new phase of creativity that we’ve seen from Beijing in the last year,” Prétat said.
If China built a military base on the shoal, as it has on other disputed features in the South China Sea, it could pose a threat to U.S. forces in a fight over Taiwan, which Beijing also claims. Since the 2012 standoff, analysts said, there had been an understanding between Beijing and Washington that any land reclamation at Scarborough Shoal — which would be needed to turn the shoal into a functional military base — would be a red line for the U.S.
For the U.S., any Chinese efforts to physically occupy or expand Scarborough Shoal would come at a delicate moment. President Trump has been working to improve relations with Beijing, and American officials are eager to avoid tensions ahead of a planned visit by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to Washington in September.
A State Department spokesperson said the U.S. shares the Philippines’ concerns that China placed structures at the shoal and said China should abide by a 2016 ruling from a tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague that effectively invalidated the basis for China’s historic maritime claims in the South China Sea. China has rejected the ruling.
The Philippines, a U.S. treaty ally, contends that a large section of the South China Sea falls within its exclusive economic zone and maintains a military presence on some disputed features. The U.S. has deployed ships to the area in freedom of navigation operations.
Ely Ratner, a former assistant defense secretary for Indo-Pacific security affairs who is now a principal at the Marathon Initiative, a Washington think tank, said China is “making incremental changes to the status quo that add up over time.” “Every new little assertion of sovereignty and control matters,” Ratner said.