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The move comes after more than 200 Chinese fishing boats were spotted off Whitsun Reef earlier this month.
The Philippine air force has been conducting daily air patrols over Chinese fishing boats parked near a disputed reef, the country’s defense chief said, repeating a call for Beijing to withdraw from its area.
The diplomatic dispute began earlier this month when some 220 boats were first sighted off the boomerang-shaped Whitsun Reef, west of the island of Palawan.
The Philippines ordered China to withdraw the ships and described their presence as an incursion into its sovereign territory. But China, which claims almost the entire South China Sea, said the flotilla is made up of fishing vessels that guard against bad weather.
The Philippine Foreign Ministry has filed a diplomatic protest, while several countries, including the United States and Australia, have expressed concern about renewed tension in the region.
Philippine Navy and Coast Guard ships have been deployed to the area to monitor the situation, in addition to air patrols, according to Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana.
“We are ready to defend our national sovereignty and protect the marine resources of the Philippines,” Lorenzana said Saturday night.
He added that there will be a “greater presence” of navy and coast guard ships patrolling Philippine waters.
The resource-rich South China Sea is questioned by several countries, including the Philippines and China.
Beijing often invokes the so-called nine-dash line to justify its claimed historical rights to most of it, and has ignored a 2016 international court decision that declared this claim to be unfounded.
On Thursday, spokesman Harry Roque said Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte had expressed concern about the presence of the ships to the Chinese ambassador in Manila.
Duterte is being pressured to take a firmer stand against the Chinese government in the face of a separate disclosure of “significant construction activity” by China on an artificial island built on Subi Reef, also within the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines.
“The volume of change is significant and may indicate the early stages of major construction at Subi Reef,” according to Simularity, a US-based technology company that studied satellite imagery in the South China Sea.
Duterte has fostered warmer ties with China since taking office in 2016 in exchange for greater economic cooperation with its neighboring superpower.
But the change has failed to contain Chinese ambitions in the South China Sea or unlock much of the billions of dollars of trade and loans promised.
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