'China is target of Manila's transfer of forces to Subic'

MANILA, Philippines - Experts from China are claiming that the Philippines is targeting the Asian giant in its plan to move some military forces to Subic, Zambales.

Li Guoqiang, deputy director of the Center for Chinese Borderland History and Geography at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said in a report by the China Daily that Manila is building up and concentrating its military forces near the West Philippine Sea with China as its "clear target."

Li said in the report that the recent move of the Philippines "increases the risks of conflicts in the region."

"If all related parties resort to military means as Manila has for a resolution, the region will surely become a powder keg," Li was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, Su Hao, a professor of Asia-Pacific studies at China Foreign Affairs University, said in the same report that external forces sharing the Philippines' goal of containing China "are complicating the regional South China Sea issue."

"What Manila sometimes did was to meet the needs of Washington and US allies, to seek more support from them," he said.

The Philippines, China, and other Southeast Asian nations are currently in a territorial dispute over the West Philippine Sea, with the Asian giant claiming indisputable sovereignty over nearly all the disputed waters.

The Philippines decided to take the issue before an international tribunal after exhausting all other means to peacefully settle the sea dispute.

The country is seeking to stop Chinese incursions into its exclusive economic zone in the West Philippine Sea and to invalidate China’s sweeping claim to the disputed waters.

Amid the territorial row, the Philippine government has recently expressed its plan to move its Air Force and Navy to Subic to closely monitor the country's maritime domain.

Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin said Sunday that as soon as relocation funds are available the government plans to transfer air force and naval forces and their fleets of aircraft and warships to Subic Bay, which has become a busy free port since the 1992 departure of the U.S. Navy.

"It's for the protection of our West Philippine Sea," Gazmin said from South Korea, where he was on a visit, using the name adopted by the Philippine government for the disputed South China Sea.

"We're looking now for the funding," he said.

Subic Bay is a natural deep harbor that can accommodate two large warships acquired recently by the Philippines from the United States, a defense treaty ally, he said, especially compared to shallower harbor at the naval fleet base at Sangley Point in Cavite province, south of Manila.

A confidential defense department document obtained by The Associated Press says Subic's location will cut reaction time by fighter aircraft to contested South China Sea areas by more than three minutes compared with flying from Clark airfield, also north of Manila, where some air force planes are based.

"It will provide the armed forces of the Philippines strategic location, direct and shorter access to support West Philippine Sea theater of operations," the document said. -With Jim Gomez, Associated Press