If China ‘owns’ WPS, why is it destructive?

Google Maps, Google Earth and Flight Radar now distinguish West Philippine Sea from South China Sea. The world’s most popular digital cartographs thus validate Philippines’ exclusive economic zone under international law.

Expect Communist China to react with violence and vitriol. It baselessly claims the entire South China Sea beyond its own EEZ. To dispute Google, it will even portray itself as victim of global bullying.

Get the facts straight, as China lackeys are on propaganda offensive.

China is destroying WPS, something a real owner will never do to its patrimonial assets. Separate studies detail the wrongs.

Chinese trespassers not only steal but also overfish and employ forbidden methods. They despoil corals, and landfill reefs into island-fortresses.

Every November to May, about 400 China Maritime Militia trawlers swarm Pagkakaisa (Union) Bank. One fourth blockades Julian Felipe (Whitsun) Reef to net baitfish, change oil and dump trash.

Escorted by China Coast Guard vessels, they spread out to traditional Filipino fishing grounds around Pag-asa Island, Recto (Reed) Bank and Bajo de Masinloc or Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal.

Each trawler can haul in 12 tons of fish per day, which they transfer to motherships, then continue to poach.

Favorite catch at Julian Felipe and Pag-asa are one- to two-kilo endangered baby mameng (napoleon wrasse), which grow to sofa size. Also, rare nautilus for meat and decorative shells. Easiest are large galunggong (round scad) for “export” to the Philippines.

At Bajo de Masinloc, trawler propellers are replaced with circular saws to dislodge five-feet long taklobo (giant clams) from rocks and corals. The meat is too tough to eat; Chinese steal them for ornament. CCG abets them, although prohibited in Hainan island-province.

They illegally harvest fan corals and catch pawikan (giant turtles) and shark for fin soup and teeth for talisman. Dolphins entangled in nets are sold for meat or circus entertainment.

Aside from poaching at Recto, Chinese pulverize meter-high corals to spite Filipino authorities. Last year they leveled 12,000 hectares of Rozul (Iroquois) Reef and Escoda (Sabina) Shoal, Climate Change Commissioner Albert dela Cruz reported.

As far back as 2019, UP Marine Science Institute Prof. Deo Florence Onda, PhD, estimated Chinese damage at Bajo de Masinloc at 550 hectares. Plus 1,300 hectares at Kalayaan (Spratlys).

Dutch analytics outfit Elsevier values coral reef ecosystems at $353,429 or P18 million per hectare per year. The damaged 12,000 hectares at Rozul and Escoda means P216-billion loss a year. The 1,850 hectares at Bajo de Masinloc and Kalayaan means another P33.1-billion loss per year.

International organization Oceana has taken note of the damage, said vice president Atty. Gloria Estenzo Ramos.

China’s aggression in WPS escalated with its 2012 grab of Bajo de Masinloc. It began fortifying Panganiban (Mischief) Reef in 1995, followed by Zamora (Subi) and Kagitingan (Fiery Cross) Reefs in 2013.

Filipino commercial catch in WPS has since declined five percent a year.

Total drop is 60 to 80 percent, UP Institute of Biology Prof. Jonathan Anticamara, PhD, estimated mid-2024.

Filipinos lose 7.2 million kilos of fish per month to Chinese poaching, environment lawyer Asis Perez said in 2021. At only half the market price of that volume, the country forfeits P720 million a month, or P8.64 billion a year.

As Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources director in 2010-2016, Perez distributed bancas and gear, and anchored hundreds of “payao” (fish aggregators) all over WPS.

But CCG vessels watercannon and machinegun Filipinos. CMM also unchain payao rafts.

Anticamara lamented the thousands of bancas idled due to Filipinos’ fear of Chinese belligerence. BFAR boats ration food and fuel to WPS fishers. But CCG vessels ram them, while Chinese fighter jets buzz BFAR air patrols.

The plummet of catch impoverished 350,000 commercial fishers. Filipinos were deprived of their main source of protein and iodine.

Worst hit were Zambales and Bataan, whose fishers used to enter Bajo de Masinloc 120 miles away. Today, CCG gunboats, backed by People’s Liberation Army-Navy warships, allow only Chinese into the shoal-lagoon.

Also severely affected were Palawan and Occidental Mindoro, whose fishers used to sail to Recto and Pagkakaisa. The Philippine Statistics Authority recorded almost continuing slides in commercial catch from 2012 to 2021.

Last year Beijing commissars ordered the arrest of all “unauthorized foreigners” in broad South China Sea, including WPS and East Vietnam Sea.

“Para kaming magnanakaw sa sarili naming bayan,” Zambales fisherman Leonardo Cuaresma told Congress in May 2024. The House committee on national defense and security investigated the effects of Beijing’s edict on Filipinos.

Cuaresma said they suffered Chinese hostility since 2012. They now fish outside Bajo de Masinloc – and only if China coastguards are not watching.

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