Philippine military counts 29 Chinese navy and coast guard ships in the West Philippine Sea in a week

The Armed Forces of the Philippines says it tracked 29 Chinese government vessels, a mix of People's Liberation Army Navy warships and China Coast Guard cutters, at four features in the West Philippine Sea between 3 and 8 November. Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad, the military's spokesperson for the West Philippine Sea, released the weekly figures on Tuesday 10 November, when he also briefed reporters at Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City.

The largest group was at Ayungin Shoal, known internationally as Second Thomas Shoal, where the military counted one navy ship and nine coast guard vessels. Bajo de Masinloc, or Scarborough Shoal, had three navy ships and five coast guard vessels. Escoda Shoal had three of each, and the waters around the Pag-asa Islands had two navy ships and three coast guard vessels. Taken together, that is nine navy ships and 20 coast guard vessels over six days.

The weekly update follows a monthly count the military published on 3 November, which put the number of Chinese vessels seen at the same four features in October 2026 at 80, down from 101 in September. In that October tally Bajo de Masinloc had the heaviest presence, with 30 coast guard vessels and 11 navy ships, while Ayungin Shoal had 11 coast guard vessels and 13 navy ships. Escoda Shoal had three coast guard vessels and eight navy ships, and Pag-asa had three coast guard vessels and one navy ship.

At the Camp Aguinaldo briefing, Trinidad rejected the idea that the armed forces were provoking China by asserting Philippine rights at sea. He was responding to Vice President Sara Duterte, who told overseas Filipino workers in Hong Kong on Sunday 8 November that the government should keep good relations with Beijing, leave the maritime dispute to diplomats and negotiators rather than confrontations at sea or online arguments, and consider the jobs and businesses of Filipinos working in China.

Trinidad said he agreed that the Philippines should not antagonise other countries, but argued that standing up for what is legally the country's own is not a fight with anyone. Asked about the vice president's point that China's armed forces are far stronger, he said the size of the military is not the issue, that the Philippine forces are improving their capabilities, and that a capability gap would not stop them from carrying out their mandate.

He also ruled out scaling back military activity in the area to make room for diplomatic engagement with Beijing. According to Trinidad, rotation and resupply missions, patrols, maritime domain awareness work and the armed forces modernisation programme will all continue. He described diplomacy and defence as separate tools of policy, with the Department of Foreign Affairs handling talks and the Department of National Defense handling security.

Trinidad pointed to the 2016 arbitral ruling as a legal landmark that upheld Philippine maritime entitlements and said every Filipino, including elected officials, should champion it. He argued that the Philippines had not started the tensions, citing China's construction of artificial islands and what he described as coercive actions against Philippine vessels.

Beijing claims almost all of the South China Sea, a waterway that carries more than 3 trillion US dollars in trade each year, and parts of it are also claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia. Manila uses the name West Philippine Sea for the waters on its western side, including the area around the Kalayaan Island Group and Bajo de Masinloc. The 2016 tribunal found that China's claims to historic rights within its nine-dash line had no legal basis under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, a ruling Beijing has refused to recognise.