“The Chinese side has maintained a number of coast guard vessels for law enforcement patrols in the waters of Huangyan Dao”, the embassy said, referring to the Chinese name for Scarborough Shoal.
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A Philippines official said on Wednesday the defence minister, who is at the summit in Vientiane, ordered the release of the photographs and a map.
The photos, some of which were published by The Manila Times on Tuesday, showed Chinese ships in the Panatag Shoal area that the DND said were capable of dredging sand and other activities required to build an artificial island.
The overlapping maritime claims in the region were discussed during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations-China meeting held here and attended by heads of state and government, including President Duterte.
Philippines’ President Rodrigo Duterte sits for the retreat session in the ongoing 28th and 29th ASEAN Summits at the National Convention Center, Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016 in Vientiane, Laos.
But the release of the photos came just a few hours before Duterte and other leaders from the 10-member Asean met China’s Li.
“We believe that this is a precursor to possible building of structures on the shoal”, spokesman Arsenio Andolong said, adding that China’s denial was “even more disturbing”.
The signing of the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea at a summit in Vientiane, Laos comes as the Philippines warned China might be preparing for fresh construction work.
The move by the Philippines comes after a spat with the United States, its main ally.
The Hague tribunal ruled against China’s claims in the South China Sea in July, after the Philippines lodged a case with the court in 2013.
China this week insisted that it had not launched any efforts to begin construction at the shoal, which has huge strategic importance for its ambitions to control the sea and weaken U.S. military influence in the region.
Duterte has taken a more reconciliatory track to rebuild relations with China ad has said he would not raise the long-simmering territorial disputes in an adversarial manner that might upset Beijing.
Japan itself has been at loggerheads with China over a group of tiny, uninhabited East China Sea islets.
The gathering in Laos is the first ASEAN meeting since an global court ruled in July that China’s claims to the sea had no legal basis, and its artificial island building programme in the waters was illegal.
But the USA president cancelled his planned meeting with Duterte, during which the sea issue was to be discussed, after the volatile Philippine president called him a “son of a whore”. The waterway has become a flash point for a broader tussle between China and the US for influence in the area.
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The research includes the violent maritime stand-off between Beijing and Hanoi over the placement of a Chinese oil exploration rig off the Vietnamese coast in 2014, as well as tensions that led up to China’s occupation of the Scarborough Shoal off the Philippines in 2012.
