Did former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte (2016-2022) spend a gentlemen’s agreement with his Chinese counterpart, promising not to repair or consolidate the wreck of the Sierra Madre, a Philippine warship stranded on shoals in the Spratly archipelago, in the South China Sea, since 1999 to maintain a Philippine garrison? This revelation, partly confirmed at the end of March by Mr. Duterte’s former spokesperson, Harry Roque, would explain why the Chinese coast guard has redoubled its aggressiveness in recent weeks in the face of resupply missions from the Sierra Madre.
These are organized every month by a small civilian vessel accompanied by the Philippine Coast Guard. Chased, it was bombarded twice, on March 5 and 23, by the water cannons of the Chinese coast guard, breaking the windshield of their boat and injuring several people. The Philippine coast guard does not intervene against the Chinese ships but strives to publicize as much as possible what they denounce as “Chinese aggression”.
Wang Wenbin, spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, confirmed on 1er April, according to the Chinese daily Global Timesthat “the truth about [l’atoll Second Thomas] is that the Philippines has gone back on its words. They made a firm promise to tow their illegally stranded warship, but twenty-five years later, the Philippine ship is still there.. Chinese allegations of long-term promises, already refuted in March by the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs, come about ten days before the meeting, scheduled for April 11 in Washington, between the Philippine President, Ferdinand Marcos Junior, the Prime Minister Japanese, Fumio Kishida, and the American president, Joe Biden.
“Illegal attacks”
This tripartite summit, the first of its kind, is a strong signal to China and its irredentist demands, in the two eminently strategic parts of the Pacific which surround Taiwan, the South China Sea and the South China Sea. the East, from which it wants to expel the Americans. The government of the Philippine president, for its part, replied in substance that no oral agreement emanating from a previous government and of which there is no trace could have any binding effect.
Mr. Duterte, elected in 2016, was the architect of a “pivot” with Beijing following the tensions of 2012-2015, which saw China carry out a coup on the Scarborough atoll, however located in the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines, and develop seven other atolls of the Spratly archipelago under the Chinese flag into military bases.
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