A newly emerged video made by the Chinese military shows how People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops on China-occupied islands in the South China Sea have been driving away fishing boats from neighboring countries despite a tribunal ruling against Chinese claims.
During last weekend’s Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, soldiers stationed on Mischief Reef, an artificial island that China has occupied since 1994, “successfully” warned away an unidentified foreign fishing boat from surrounding waters, state-run national military channel CCTV-7 reported on Monday.
In 2016, an international tribunal in The Hague ruled that Mischief Reef, located 250 kilometers east of Palawan Island in the Philippines, was a low-tide elevation and therefore could not have a 12-mile territorial sea, thereby invalidating China’s sovereignty claim over it.
It also lies within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and has been a traditional fishing ground for Filipino fishermen for decades. An EEZ is an area of the sea in which a sovereign state has exclusive rights regarding the exploration and use of marine resources.
The CCTV clip showed armed soldiers, assisted by radars and warships, reacting to a sighting of a fishing boat of “unknown nationality” and using loudspeakers to chase it away.
Troops also conducted regular training with sea and air targets in order to bolster combat readiness, the report said.