TAIPEI —
A marine sanctuary proposed by the Philippine president inside a contested South China Sea shoal risks upsetting rival claimant China despite an ecological mission and a recent thaw in relations with the Asian superpower.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte told local media in late November he planned to issue an executive order declaring the triangle of water inside Scarborough Shoal a no-fishing zone. Duterte said he had notified his Chinese counterpart of his intention for the shoal, encompassing about 158 square kilometers (58 square miles) of water.
Competing claims
China and the Philippines have tried since August to repair relations damaged in part by competing claims to the tiny land form 198 kilometers (123 miles) west of Luzon Island. Vessels from China and the Philippines entered a two-month standoff at the shoal in 2012. The president’s order would effectively reassert Philippine sovereignty.
“Designating the Scarborough Shoal area as a marine sanctuary would be a renewed claim by the Philippines to sovereignty over that area,” said Jonathan Spangler, director of the South China Sea Think Tank in Taipei. “Any unilateral actions that imply sovereignty are likely to cause friction between rival claimants, even if they are framed as marine conservation efforts.”
China claims about 95 percent of the South China Sea, including waters west of the Philippine archipelago. It has upset Manila and four other Asian governments since 2010 by reclaiming land for artificial islets, militarizing some of them and passing vessels through tracts of ocean claimed by other countries.
http://www.voanews.com/a/philippine-marine-sanctuary-in-disputed-sea-risks-upsetting-china/3624705.html