China gaslighting Philippines in West Philippine Sea dispute — expert

MANILA, Philippines — International maritime security expert Ray Powell accused China of gaslighting the Philippines over the disputed West Philippine Sea.

In an interview with “Storycon” on One News on Tuesday, Powell said China is maintaining its “typical” behavior of blaming the country whenever an incident caused by China Coast Guard's unlawful and aggressive maneuvers occurred in West Philippine Sea

China has issued a false narrative about the incident on Monday, pinning the blame on the Philippine Coast Guard's vessels.

“This is pretty typical of China. Whenever they try to block the Philippines’ movement. The Philippines tries to get around the ship and [when] the ships collide, they blame the Philippines. What possible motivation would the Philippines have going out and running out into Chinese ship?” Powell asked.

“It’s what the term gaslighting is. It is trying to refute your reality, it is introducing its completely contrary and clearly false idea. And trying to see if they can get you and others (to believe them),” Powell added.

However, Powell said compared to Ayungin Shoal, China will have difficulties in controlling Escoda Shoal.

“It takes a number of ships. Controlling Sabina Shoal is really hard. It’s a much larger feature and you can’t have just one entrance like in Ayungin Shoal,” he said.

“And, of course, it is much closer to the Philippines for they have to go further away from their base Mischief (Panganiban) Reef. And, of course, unlike the BRP Sierra Madre the Philippine ship in Sabina Shoal can move,” Powell said.

“Tactically for China, it’s a harder problem. They are not gonna defend this very, very large feature. And if Teresa Magbanua wanted to move to different parts of the shoal they can do it today,” Powell said.

He said China is engaged in a “grey zone battle” in its serious efforts to take over the WPS, which is merely based on its nine-dash line.

“China’s sovereignty claims over all these are very ambiguous. Sometimes, they will say that all of the nine-dash line belongs to China. But then sometimes they will say we don’t claim sovereignty over everything, it just that specific places. And so really, whatever they decide is theirs,” Powell said.

“It is a moving of the battle lines and, this [is] the grey zone. And the battle lines had been drawn before at Ayungin Shoal and they have now moved closer to Palawan,” he said. – Jose Rodel Clapano, Cecille Suerte Felipe