Carpio warns: Chinese Politburo could one day send its Navy to police South China Sea
MANILA, Philippines — Acting Supreme Court Chief Justice Antonio Carpio on Saturday warned that China could one day order its Navy to enforce its sweeping claim to most of the disputed South China Sea, which is widely seen by experts as a potential regional flash point.
The Philippines claims parts of the South China Sea within its exclusive economic zone and calls it the West Philippine Sea.
Ties between the Philippines and China have significantly improved under President Rodrigo Duterte, who has set aside a landmark ruling from a United Nations-backed tribunal that struck down Beijing’s “Nine Dash line” claim that encompasses most of the resource-rich sea.
Duterte's management of the maritime dispute has frustrated nationalists, who criticized his seeming inaction towards China's military buildup in the strategic waterway.
At a forum in Taguig City, Carpio said there’s a possibility that the Chinese politburo — a top decision-making body of the ruling Communist Party — would send warships to the South China Sea to police the widely contested waters.
“We must prepare for the day the Politburo of China will instruct the powerful navy of China to enforce the nine-dash line as a national boundary of China,” Carpio said.
‘Biggest threat since World War II’
In 2016, Duterte secured a pledge for $9-billion official development assistance during his trip to Beijing — which highlighted his “separation” from the Philippines' only treaty ally, the United States.
Although it is not a party to the maritime row, Washington has been infuriating China for repeatedly sending warships close to Chinese-controlled reefs in recent years.
Last April, US aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt arrived in Manila for a port visit just days after China conducted a naval muscle flexing in the South China Sea.
A staunch critic of Duterte and was one of the lawyers who represented Manila in closed court hearings in The Hague, Carpio qualified that China’s maritime encroachment is “the biggest external threat to the Philippines since World War II.”
The Supreme Court magistrate also slammed China for being a “squatter” inside the Philippines’ 376,350-square kilometer EEZ.
“We are going to lose a huge maritime space, we lose all the fish, oil and gas resources here because under UNCLOS [and] the ruling of the tribunal, we have exclusive sovereign rights to all the natural resources in this area but China is claiming all of that,” Carpio said. — Ian Nicolas Cigaral
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