CNA Reporter Podcast: A trip to the disputed Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea

Here are excerpts from the podcast:

Teresa Teng:

One thing I found very interesting about your TV coverage is that when you were on the water, you actually saw these orange buoys in the distance with Filipino words on them, which you said translated to “this is ours,” which was very symbolic. Did you have any problems being on the water? You know what happened when you approached the shoal?

Hello Bernal:

So, 40 miles from the coast, two Chinese coast guard ships had begun to follow our convoy. At this point, the 100 little wooden boats were no longer with us… After that trip, I spoke to experts because 40 miles from the coast is well within a country’s 200-mile exclusive economic zone, and those distances are set by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which defines the maritime areas a country can claim sovereignty over based on distance from its coast.

They told me that according to their monitoring, Chinese ships monitoring the West Philippine Sea (the maritime area that the Philippines calls the South China Sea) are getting closer to the coast. They found that China changes its target each time. In 1996, China occupied Mischief Reef in the West Philippine Sea, and in 2012, China occupied the inner lagoon of Scarborough Shoal.

Now the issue becomes the Sabina Shoal, which is the closest major island in the West Philippine Sea to Palawan. So, what you are really seeing here, according to the scholars I spoke to, is China’s so-called constructive occupation of the West Philippine Sea.

Scholars say it is trying to normalize the movement of its targets. So efforts like this, civilians are trying to go to these islands… or this is a civilian mission that I participated in, there are medical missions going to the Spratly Islands, at least to the Philippine occupied islands there, there is a cruise ship, a cruise ship again going to the Spratly Islands, which I also participated in last year.

So, they say, all these efforts to “civilianize” the area are basically a defiance or a challenge to China’s increasingly constructive occupation of the West Philippine Sea, or to China’s militarization of the region.