By Patricia Lourdes Viray
MANILA, Philippines — The arbitration case that the Philippines filed before an international tribunal might have affected China's actions in the South China Sea but did it did not trigger the island-building.
MANILA, Philippines — The arbitration case that the Philippines filed before an international tribunal might have affected China's actions in the South China Sea but did it did not trigger the island-building.
The camp of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has claimed that the arbitration case filed by the Aquino administration pushed Beijing to build artificial islands in the contested waters.
Estelito Mendoza, a Marcos-era solicitor general and Arroyo's lawyer, even claimed that it was relatively quiet and peaceful in the South China Sea during the Arroyo administration.
Several experts have agreed that China had been planning the militarization of the South China Sea even before the Philippines filed an arbitration case before a United Nations-backed tribunal in 2013.
De La Salle University Professor Renato De Castro said that China's actions in the South China Sea were not directed against the Philippines or the Aquino administration in particular.
"They already had it in mind that's why the purpose, of course, of having control of those features in the South China Sea is to transform them into artificial islands that could be facilities wherein they could conduct reconnaissance," De Castro said in a forum organized by the Stratbase ADR Institute on Tuesday.
De Castro added that China's plan of installing surface-to-air missiles in the South China Sea might have been planned as early as the mid-1990s in the aftermath of the Taiwan Strait crisis, when China test-fired missiles in waters surrounding Taiwan.
The US responded by sending two carrier battle groups and an amphibious assault ship to the region. The USS Nimitz and her escorts as well as the amphibious assault ship USS Belleau Wood sailed across the Taiwan Strait.
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