 Welcome back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel and this is Global Connections and we're talking to Carla Cruz as she is a marine security analyst in Manila. When she joins us from Manila we're going to talk about the trouble in the South China Sea or maybe you'd call it the East China Sea, maybe you'd call it the North Philippine Sea, but it's not too far from the Philippines and it's been in the press every day for the past 10 days anyway although it has existed for a long time with the Chinese take advantage of do provocative things to Filipino stations and ships and fishing boats and the like. They are trying to possess the whole area under their what dash 11 line 11 dash line claiming everything beyond beyond Taiwan and so the Philippines is very concerned about that and Carla is very concerned about it and we want to talk about the Chinese influence in that area and the Chinese provocations in that area and the Chinese presence in the Philippines. Welcome to the show Carla, nice to have you. Thanks for having me again Jay. Thank you so much. So what's been going on since the last time we spoke because there have been some actual contacts now and that's very serious. I was in the coast guard and I can tell you that any ship touches any other ship it's real serious and that's what you have had. So actually it's been like we spoke two weeks ago right and I think that at that time it was concerning yes but they so that the last time we spoke they have just caught the barrier at Bajo de Masinloch which was about 180 nautical miles right out of the Philippines so it's within the EEZ and on October 11 during a normal regular resupply machine there was contact with a Navy vessel and a Coast Guard vessel and then on October 22 three days ago and then I'm sorry on the 11th there was there were hundreds of fishing Militia vessels so Maritime and Spam and B and then on the 22nd there was actual contact with two boats and one Navy boat so a Navy boat and a Chinese Coast Guard boat made contact and a Militia vessel and a Philippine Coast Guard vessel so those are two incidents yeah just a slight um that digression is that is that when you're at sea and this is all at sea open sea essentially yeah and two vessels contact each other they touch each other it's always serious because you don't know what the forces involved are you don't know what damage will be done you don't know whether the hull will stand up under the forces involved and from you know when the people say well that just bounce off no they don't just bounce off sometimes you can sink a vessel or you can kill people by just making contact and that's why this is very serious this is way beyond just cutting a cable which is what they did last time you know it that it wasn't even a cable it was just a rope rope yes oh for on the okay so what happened on the 11th was um so let me let me explain for a bit so the um the all the footage I mean everybody can look at it online right but what what we're talking about is in the area of the of the of the Yuen Shoal which they call Second Palma Shoal it's the BRP Sierra Madera which is LS 57 it's a it's a it's a ship that was um word I mean that was essentially beached because it's it's um very shallow there with beach it was beached to claim our state in an area that was disputed at the time it is no longer disputed because we have been awarded um at the hate ruling as you know and the arbitral ruling right at the at the at the UN for that being our territorial our territory in our sovereign waters so that answers the fact that we can fish there the Philippine fishermen can fish there and the Philippine government has the freedom to say okay Vietnam okay Indonesia you can come fish here too and China if you're nice you can come fish here now this is within your exclusive economic zone as confirmed by the Hague the international court the Hague and that and that court made a ruling flat out in favor of the Philippines in favor of your rights in the economic zone uh in that area Sierra Madre was was beached intentionally as a way to establish a presence in that area and to act as a supply ship for the Filipino fishing boats and so this is your way of you know of taking control essentially of your area so and they don't like it they don't like it because they they see everything in that area as belonging to them and they don't care what the United Nations has to say or the court in the Hague has to say or what the law of the sea has to say and so they know they are a signatory yeah no there are they are a signatory but they ignored the proceedings they didn't appear in the proceedings and when the proceedings went against them they said we are not going to follow that which is really lawless that's lawless so anyway the Philippines you know want to abide by the decision in the Hague and the law of the sea and international law in general so they have this Sierra Madre ship out there and they fish because they've always been fishing out there so the Chinese want a stop and the Chinese have an ever-growing navy and an ever-growing coast guard and they have put down you know military equipment on these atoll atolls that they have you know built in the South China Sea and they want to just control everything and you know it's just another digression for a moment right now we have fighting going on in Ukraine we have fighting going on in the Middle East we have we have a lot of problems in some Saharan Africa for that matter South America and now we have fighting here in the South China Sea I shouldn't say fighting in the same sense but the Chinese are being very aggressive with you and they they called you out they say you can't be here they send you signs and email and make bullhorn statements to you from the coast the Chinese coast guard ships telling you you can't be there and you have to leave now which is completely unsupported by any law so what we have is a contention that is growing am I right this is growing this is becoming more contentious even though they want to cut a rope that's one thing but if they want to bump your ships and risk safety of life at sea and they've done that twice in the last week then the contention is growing right that's correct that's correct and so even more than just growing I think that they have become very innovative with their way so an example is and this is something that we're looking at very close you will notice the coast guard vessel that it boniser me to which is a small wooden hull vessel so they're two contracted Navy ship that are used to supply the boat the the BRP Sierra mother and that's because the area is so shallow that you can only get to that to the to the vessel to the the this year mother if you're in a small fishing vessel right they have shifted their coast guard vessels with the special a steel bumper that you will never see in any coast guard vessel in any on around the world and for some reason it's just on this one and they fit exactly as one this mobile so they've calculated and that's so so scary so this is like a cow catcher right it's like a cow catcher in the front i've seen photos of them and if they if they it's close to the Chinese coast guard with that cow catcher thing in the front it's a shallow shallow water wooden hull vessel it could sink it just as easy right now today correct correct so if it hit it in the right place it would have definitely sunk it definitely sunk it and they would have run over that boat because they were going at that speed right but let's let's go back a little um so when so this these two incidents happened within 10 days of each other right and um when you put together the the military grade laser the water cannon okay and then you escalate to swarming and a blockade i mean i don't know if you're going to work huge so we're blocking if you're in the time of peace but the rules of engagement like you said are different so i'll call it a blockade and and then um you had the other water more water so this is in the last since august july august right but this has the um the the last incident essentially i think this we've come to a point where we need to reassess what it means to to um to attack a country if i may say so to make somebody worse off because you have an interest somewhere right um there was an incident uh in between these that had nothing to do with the coast guard or the navy on the pacific anna a marshal remember we spoke about this the marshal iron and oil tanker seems to have been um owned and managed by the chinese military militia where we maritime militia so it's an m&b the movements of this ship are only within east east chinese sea um the senkaku islands japan all the way down to their disputed islands of the philippine termination differ so there is a 50 news the billion maritime vessel so that i think with those when you see those two um uh you know kinds of uh incidents escalating to the proportion that people are dying remember three fishermen died and pacific anna did not stop did not submit themselves to an investigation when they were when they were um when the ship was boarded in their next portico which was singapore they refused to answer any questions given by the marshal islands because the marshal islands obviously is a flag of convenience but at the end of the day open source intelligence will show you that it is managed by the chinese construction bank which is the second largest bank in china okay so you'll have these roro vessels that they're using to exercise their own time which is 500 kilometers off of the upper east and the north of the philippines because then you can walk across in the north right you have um cruise ships that they are retrofitting you have oil tankers that they're retrofitting that that's that's that's not even white hull that's i don't know what color hull right and then you have the the m m b which is the american military vessel the chinese coast guard and the philip and the chinese navy and the philippine and the people's remember the pl a navy all operating within these waters well you told me before the show about uh a project that was abandoned within the philippines uh where the chinese had a number of ships involved in that project and although the project was abandoned the ships are still there uh and that makes me very nervous i'm sure it makes you very nervous very nervous so i i believe i mentioned this before but they they tend to mine a lot of stands in our island permitted or not they do what they want so currently off our shores there's about 48 to 52 anywhere between 48 to 52 large dredging sand dredging ship they would not be doing research there because everything underneath is dead right it's a major thoroughbred so then they refuse to the um the cat the the u.s government has has um to their ambassador may take part in here has expressed concern for the environmental um uh uh damage this dredging is causing that has really if you're really seeing it instantly because the floods are increasing but also um these ships are full of what are they doing and that's a question that that the international community has to ask because it seems that that the the voice of a sovereign country like the philippine isn't enough for that so whether the whether it says in our week we have a mutual defense should be with the u.s and it's a very unique arrangement that very few are privileged to have right um the concept of an armed attack is not the it's defined in 1956 very differently from how it's defined in 2023 um and so when when you go further into let's just look at the last incident right when you look at one the ships that were used and the the the undercurrent of y right so jay like you say coast guard to coast guard yes you have an issue navy to navy you have an issue but it hears that they're the choice of vessel to get the other was calculated if the maritime militia vessel hit the coast guard the navy the the uh the chinese coast guard hit the philippine navy so the question mark right is that is that to to a normal person that escalation that's aggression but in this rules of i don't know who really wrote this because somebody it needs to be revisited but it's not constant with an armed attack sweet you are keeping us from feeding our soldiers from and you're making up that we're bringing construction equipment and in that fact that we don't want to tell you if it's construction equipment see it's none of your business because that's our property right so to accuse the philippines navy and coast guard of trespassing and provoking them because we have um we have uh ospreys and we have a Poseidon and we have there were us ships close by it's a freedom of navigation if they claim freedom of navigation why can't we let's leave right that the the it is a year double standard because when they want everybody to call it out to the WHO during covid everybody has to follow but now nobody can follow it in the hate ruling right so so this is this is where we're seeing the issue and i think that it is not a miscalculation that what will spark a conflict it's not the miscalculation in the water it's a miscalculation in communication because the chinese government is telling their people that and i quote china has indistinguishable sovereignty over the nantia island including their renai reed and their adjacent waters philippines actions upon china's territorial sovereignty violate the declaration of the conduct of parties in the south china sea and breaks its own promises we have no code of conduct they have a they a first draft came out after 21 years on the day the issue happened and we have made no promise to them so that's their rhetoric propaganda it's all propaganda correct but we have a shiny a huge immigrant chinese population here and they are very nationalistic so in many ways they're endangering our our people here right so that's that's to me that is the problem and so you know that the the philippine military obviously is only acting in the interest of the country right but you look at the philippine military military is beefy is beefing up under president marcos the philippine government is spending money for additional ships the submarines aircraft and i know that it doesn't have all that much money to spend but it's spending a lot of money for the philippines to gave up its military um but that's going to take a long time and i say well we have no to forget the forward basis but for both humanitarian and forward logistics which is already in place it's not going to take it's going to take a long time yes but being in the position that we are extending geographically having the when being part of the first island chain brings in japan korea indonesia and all the other pacific partners that are already present here doing what other people do and it's patrolling the sea j i'd like to mention one thing that's really important so um and this is this is something that i think everybody should be cognizant of because it's the problem that information that is getting out that that needs to be people need to be more discerning right the chinese news released a statement at 6 11 in the morning there are times so we're in the same time zone at 6 11 in the morning saying that there was uh there is an issue in the south chinese one line okay 6 11 the issue happened that the incident happened at 604 and it doesn't finish in seven minutes right the second it so this is the first the first one this wooden boat was hit went and then 18 minutes later the coast should have been closed guard with it but it so while the event was happening they released a new statement and china never done and then they released another new statement saying that it occurred at a different time at 6 14 okay so 6 11 6 14 that they said that should when it happened but it really happened at 604 and i'm saying this because number one the philippines has a partnership with the us which includes reconnaissance and satellite and the life so satellite times will not lie satellite times show you that the that the um condition happened at 604 and footage from the side is different from footage from the top and footage from the top is up light right so the to accuse the philippines right of of of trespassing in their territory and um and provoking them and our coast guard for backing up of course when a boat is backing up you'll see the weight right there's no way so these are the questions that i obviously cannot post them but you have to pose is what do you i mean if you're in more than just engaging in this competition of risk-taking and and and where's the word it's like pushing the envelope you're pushing the envelope in the print you're putting this out on putting this out on all the social media and and how and so when we as a country need to recognize that manila needs to take a serious step against Beijing right but does that risk a confrontation yes but i think we're there well yeah there sounds to me like they're they're bullying you that's the basic nature of what they're doing um b they they they pre-plan all of this by the minute including the propaganda they they have the propaganda written before the event ever takes place it's all it's all a scenario and it's pre pre-determined pre pre-plan and the other thing is i'd like to explain this with you what what in the world is the reason for doing this aside from bullying maybe bullying is their dna you know that's so everybody and you're not the only one who's getting you know bullied carla they're all over the place bullying people um i also suggest that there's there's manganese nodules down there there's oil down there and obviously there's fish down there those are economic resources and i suspect that not only do they want to control dipping and maritime traffic in that area they want to both people bully people and show how how powerful they are and get away from us and don't touch our water but also they want the economic benefit of those resources am i right that's true and you know the future isn't isn't the deep sea because i think we've not taken care of everything above right and we we managed to um just exploit i mean the whole world doesn't mean that mistake but you know maybe we can learn from that so the and the Philippines is in a very unique space that to the point that we have some minerals on the on the you know the chemical table that we learn in high school they are not found anywhere else and that's why they are so interested in this area but you know jay they don't have to act this way right the Philippines has always been a friend to all because our people are everywhere do you think that diplomatically we want to come get into a get into a fight our people are everywhere our people will be their first shield that sends chills on my spine right so these people can be the ones and that is what we are so careful about because these people feed their families do their jobs in all of these other countries and the the worrying thing is these countries use that argument against us so of course you're going to think twice right but i think that it's time for the Philippines to take its own step to build an industry that is you know more than just us spending money actually on weapons and arms and and equipment we're building a local defense industry which makes us an part of what is critical moving forward and so that's the Philippines taking a stand and shifting I mean moving and actually it's shift towards one maritime security and archipelagic security but who bringing home our people we have the best seafarers in the world we have the best mech service members I mean you know people in the whole cost for balance in service industry and so you know you put that together and we can build our own industry yeah you already have a maritime industry you can build ships well let me ask you one last question at our remaining time Carla and that is this I mean they're trying to accelerate this they try to make the bullying worse they try to take advantage of you they think you're soft they think they can you know do what they want have their way with you so speak and they'll probably increase that and they'll test you like like you know a pathological person they'll test you and if you don't respond they will test you some more and again and again and then I wonder you know what the Philippines can do to stop that process of course you know you can develop alliances with with countries that will help you that will provide you know support and arms and and defend you when necessary and you can build a you know a maritime sector that has some teeth in it but query what are you gonna do when they get more and more aggressive you know I this is my own opinion and in my analysis I believe that there is not the just a symbol that the military answer is not the only answer and you have to hit China where it hurts them the most and that's economically right more than just taking advantage of our waters China also takes advantage of many of our our gaps in our policies and legislation China it's doing business here in a an irresponsible and inhumane way and then I'm telling you I'll tell you they run illegal um uh like fault centered we have a huge business process outsourcing industry they have taken advantage of those of those of that legislation and all those tax incentives to run tax scams and dating scams and all of that yesterday me and Marjus reported 2700 people we're doing the same here every single day right and we will continue to do that because not only are these people here undocumented but the work that they're doing and the their treatment of their their own work is inhumane so if they don't ascribe to the world if they don't ascribe to the world human rights practices economic practices maritime practices they're isolating themselves more right so it is not only a military answer but they need to take a to take account for the humanitarian problem the humanitarian concerns that they're first second there is a consular diplomat again and I will say I am suggested um to various lawmakers to suspend all our consulate services all around the world to Chinese citizens not just in China but in all right second we are a major trade partner and entrenchment area any ships that cannot be confirmed to be truly bona fide commercial vessels carrying commercial equipment in the same way they question what Onizomay wanted to are taking to our BRPCR modern we can do the same so as their their containers are not carrying whatever it is that they say they're carrying they cannot come to our port they can go somewhere else it might have been right okay the investment of the Chinese in the Philippines need to be reassessed because from the terrorist side to now everything has been promised us over a trillion pesos I don't even know what that is in billion dollars but they've only ever delivered on one small grid that we loaned that was five million dollars so what is their intention I'm not sure because nobody plays by those by these by these rules only them and so we need to really assert that and make them understand that the world is not the way they see it and I only have one piece of advice for you here at the end of our show make it public all their call the world's attention to what they are doing to their bullying and their wise guy maneuvers all the world's attention to it do it on social media and do it in your press and do it in press releases everywhere get it out there and and that includes think tech Carla yeah yeah we need your help you have to have to come back and tell us more let's follow the story but I think it's the way to deal with them and I think you can and should do that we got to go now thank you very much Carla Cruz we really appreciate you coming out thank you thank y'all hello