Asked if the encounter marked an escalation, Tarriela said he believed China was taking a “calibrated approach” to such interactions, while reiterating President Ferdinand Marcos’s declaration that the country’s mutual defence treaty with the United States could be invoked if a death were to result.
Tian Junli, spokesperson for China’s Southern Theater Command and senior colonel of the Air Force, said the Philippine aircraft had “illegally intruded into Chinese airspace over Huangyan Island”, using the Chinese name for the shoal.
He said naval and air units were deployed “to track, monitor, warn, and expel the aircraft in accordance with the law and regulations”, adding that the “actions of the Philippine side seriously violated China’s sovereignty”.
Flares, collisions
The incident comes less than a week after Australia rebuked Beijing for “unsafe” military conduct, accusing a Chinese fighter of releasing flares within 30 metres of a surveillance plane patrolling above the South China Sea.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said at the time the Australian plane had “deliberately intruded into the airspace around China’s Xisha Islands”, Beijing’s name for the Paracel Islands, which Vietnam and Taiwan also claim.
The Scarborough Shoal has been the site of repeated confrontations as Manila has resupplied Filipino fishermen in the area. It lies 240 kilometres (150 miles) west of the Philippines’ main island of Luzon and nearly 900 kilometres (560 miles) from Hainan, the nearest major Chinese land mass.
