Philippine military's monthly tally of Chinese ships at disputed features nearly doubles to 101

The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) said on Tuesday, 6 October, that it monitored 101 Chinese government vessels at four features in the West Philippine Sea during September, almost double the 56 it reported for August. The figure covers ships of the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and the China Coast Guard (CCG) seen between 1 and 30 September, according to an update from Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad, the AFP spokesperson for the West Philippine Sea, reported by GMA News.

By Trinidad's count, Bajo de Masinloc, the Philippine name for Scarborough Shoal, again drew the largest presence, with 25 coast guard ships and 14 navy ships. Pag-asa Island, the Philippine-held island also known as Thitu, had 23 coast guard and five navy vessels. At Ayungin (Second Thomas) Shoal, home to the Philippine Navy's BRP Sierra Madre, the AFP logged 14 coast guard and nine navy ships, while Escoda (Sabina) Shoal had seven coast guard and four navy vessels.

Navy presence more than doubles

Adding up the AFP's feature-by-feature figures, coast guard vessels rose from 41 in August to 69 in September, while PLAN warships more than doubled from 15 to 32. The August tally, released on 1 September, had itself been an increase on the 48 Chinese ships the military reported for July.

The largest change was at Pag-asa, where the AFP counted six Chinese ships in August and 28 in September, more than four times as many. Ayungin Shoal saw the steepest growth in naval presence: the military recorded a single PLAN ship there in August but nine in September, even as the number of coast guard ships at the shoal dipped from 17 to 14. The count at Scarborough Shoal rose from 23 to 39.

The September update, as reported by GMA News, did not give a reason for the increase. Like the August figure, the monthly tally counts only PLAN and CCG ships at the four features, rather than every Chinese vessel operating across the wider West Philippine Sea.

Weekly snapshots and a broader picture

The monthly totals sit alongside weekly figures the AFP released through September. The military reported 27 Chinese navy and coast guard vessels at the same four features from 1 to 7 September, 48 from 8 to 14 September and 35 from 15 to 21 September, according to the Philippine News Agency. In the second of those weeks, the AFP counted six coast guard and six navy ships at Pag-asa.

When the August numbers were released, Trinidad said the monthly figures were meant to give a broader picture of the continued presence of Chinese naval and coast guard ships than a one-week snapshot could, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported. The Inquirer noted that the August monthly count included PLAN warships even though the weekly tally released a week earlier had recorded none. Trinidad said then that the military was not yet drawing conclusions from such differences and would need perhaps one to three months of data before offering a fuller assessment of the trend.

In mid-September Trinidad also said there were no signs that a Chinese research vessel that lingered at Scarborough Shoal for about 25 to 28 days had conducted drilling, describing its track as consistent with surveillance or research, according to the Philippine News Agency report carried by SunStar.

The Daily Tribune reported that in releasing the August count Trinidad described the Chinese presence as illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive, and said the AFP would maintain its presence and monitoring in the area. BusinessMirror reported that he described the military's approach as sustained operational presence, stronger maritime domain awareness, closer coordination between agencies and continued capability development.

China claims almost all of the South China Sea, including waters the Philippines calls the West Philippine Sea, despite a 2016 ruling by an arbitral tribunal in The Hague that found Beijing's sweeping claims had no legal basis. China has rejected the ruling.