Palace airs concern over Sino incursions into Benham Rise

Concerned about Chinese ships sailing in the waters of Benham Rise, Malacañang said on Friday the Philippines would continue asserting its sovereignty over this maritime territory east of Luzon, according to presidential spokesperson Ernesto Abella.

Abella said in a statement that the United Nations had recognized Benham Rise, an undersea landmass in the Pacific Ocean potentially rich in mineral and natural gas deposits, as part of the Philippines.

“The Department of National Defense has already notified the Department of Foreign Affairs regarding this matter as we continue to assert our sovereignty over our territory,” Abella said.

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana earlier said a Chinese survey ship was spotted sailing around the region for three months last year.

Lorenzana said he did not know why the Chinese survey ship was there but disclosed that he had received reports indicating the Chinese could be looking for possible submarine stations.

Benham Rise, also known as Benham Plateau, is a 13-million hectare undersea region off the provinces of Isabela and Aurora.

Lorenzana said on Friday the Philippines was planning to buy more modern radar systems to detect and prevent foreign incursions into the country’s territorial waters.

These radars could be purchased using parts of the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ 2018-2022 modernization program budget to acquire equipment for external defense.

Modern radars were also needed in the Celebes and Sulu seas, where the bandit group Abu Sayyaf had been abducting crews of foreign vessels.

China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Geng Shuang, said on Friday its ships had every right of freedom of navigation in those waters, and its research ships did pass through seas northeast of Luzon last year.

“But this is purely carrying out normal freedom of navigation and right of innocent passage, and there were no so-called other activities or operations,” he told a regular news briefing in Beijing.

The report of Chinese presence in the area comes at a time when President Duterte is trying to avoid confronting Beijing with last year’s arbitral tribunal ruling that invalidated China’s claim to nearly the entire South China Sea.

Mr. Duterte earlier said he would raise the ruling with China only after good relations between the two countries had been established.

“We cannot discuss things when angry,” Mr. Duterte said in a speech last month. “We have to settle things before facing each other. There’s respect and dignity on both sides.”

Ties between China and the Philippines soured during the Aquino administration, especially after Manila challenged Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea at the Arbitral Tribunal in The Hague in 2013.

Mr. Duterte has eased tensions between Manila and Beijing since taking office, and has said he wanted to improve the country’s economic partnership with China.

China, in turn, has offered the Philippines multibillion-dollar loans and business deals.

On Wednesday, Mr. Duterte thanked “President Xi Jinping and the Chinese people for loving us and giving us enough leeway to survive the rigors of economic life [on] this planet.”

Benham Rise, named after American geologist Andrew Benham who discovered the area in 1933, lies within the continental shelf of the Philippines as defined by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The region is not the subject of any maritime boundary disputes and claims. —WITH  REPORTS FROM PHILIP C. TUBEZA AND REUTERS