The China Coast Guard monster ship’s frequent anchoring very near Zambales aims to scare, surveil and sabotage.
CCG-5901 is 165 meters, six basketball courts. Like sister 5902, it’s the world’s largest coast guard gunboat, with 68-mm cannons, 50-caliber machineguns and helicopter gunships. At 12,000 tons, it’s heavier than 8,000-ton destroyers.
5901 attempts to accustom Filipinos to its presence only 50 miles from shore. It asserts Beijing’s bogus ownership of waters just outside Luzon’s 12-mile territorial sea and within Philippine 200-mile exclusive economic zone. “It wants the world to think it’s normal, though illegal,” says Philippine Coast Guard Commodore Jay Tarriela.
5901 escorts a dozen China maritime militia (CMM) steel trawlers. Each with 76-ton capacity, they poach endangered marine species. The monster’s presence off Capones Island terrifies Zambales fishermen, says Leonardo Cuaresma, president of Federated Association of Fisherfolk. Capones is near Subic Bay where the Philippine Navy docks its newest warships.
CCG-3304, 111 meters, alternates every several days with 5901. Starting Jan. 22, CCG-3103, 78 meters, convoyed 5901.
PCG flagship Teresa Magbanua, 96 meters, rotate with BRP Gabriela Silang, 84 meters, and Cabra, 44 meters, in shadowing the intruders. They radio them hourly to depart from Philippine EEZ. Intruders radio back that they’re in Chinese territory, so it’s the Philippine patrols that must depart.
Another mission is surveillance. 5901’s equipment map ocean floors, measure depths and salinity, identify minerals and more.
Supplementing it are surface and submarine drones, like five recently captured by the Philippine Navy. Locations: two in Calayan Island, Cagayan, and one each in Pasuquin, Ilocos Norte; San Pascual, Masbate; and Initao, Misamis Oriental.
Pasuquin, like Capones, faces West Philippine Sea. During a Phl-US joint naval exercise there last Jan 17-18, People’s Liberation Army-Navy warships sailed close by.
San Pascual faces Philippine Rise, where China illegally claims five undersea features because it supposedly named them while surveying – without Manila’s consent.
Calayan of Babuyan Islands and Initao off northern Mindanao are in sealanes through which foreign vessels can innocently pass. That is, on straight path, no stopping, surveying, spying.
Last Dec. 13, CCG-21543 engaged in automatic identification system spoofing, Tarriela reports. Instead of keeping the AIS permanently on under international rules, it shut this off while approaching Zambales.
Surveillance presages sabotage. Of late, Chinese ships have been participating in Moscow-style hybrid warfare:
• Oct. 8, 2023, Hong Kong-flagged New Polar Bear dragged its anchors to snag two underwater data cables and a gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia. Ignoring requests to halt, it hid in Tianjin, China. Estonia lost telecoms and electricity.
• Nov. 19, 2024, Chinese cargo ship Yi Peng 3 dragged two anchors to snap two subsea cables connecting Germany and Finland, and Lithuania and Sweden. Attempting to flee, it was encircled by Finnish coastguards. But Beijing forbade boarding for inspection.
• Jan. 3, 2025, Cameroon-registered but Chinese-owned and -crewed Shunxing 39 used anchors to rip cables off northeast Taiwan. It ignored calls to stop, and headed for Busan, South Korea.
NBI arrested Jan. 17 a Chinese and two Filipinos surveilling Fort Bonifacio in Makati. Confiscated spying equipment showed he had made 3D images of other military and police camps, city halls, power plants and shopping malls in Metro Manila.
In April 2024 UP Prof. Chester Cabalza exposed the proliferation of 460 Chinese exchange students in one university in Cagayan, where two Army camps host US trainors and hardware. Speaking no English and hiring interpreters to attend classes, the Chinese students are in their 30s, the age of soldiery.
The Chinese drones were interdicted in waters where telecom cables connect the Philippines to Southeast Asia mainland, Taiwan and Mindanao to Visayas.
Filipinos are no strangers to Chinese bullying via ship ramming in WPS:
(1) July 3, 2024, 3 p.m., Chinese commercial ship Yang Fu rammed a wooden boat tied to a payao off Subic. Thrown off, Robert Mondoñedo held on to a plank till he resurfaced, then saw his brother Jose being dragged away.
(2) June 29, 2024, two CCG gunboats tried to ram BRP Sindangan which was rushing to rescue fishing boat MV Akio, afire near Panatag Shoal. Rescued crewmen led by Rolando Lumampas belied Chinese embassy claims that the CCG helped them.
(3) Dec. 5, 2023, 4 p.m., Chinese cargo vessel MV Tai Hang 8 overran fishing boat Ruel J off Mindoro Occidental. Five fishermen resting beside a payao waved at the vessel to change course. Thrown into the sea, they noticed Chinese crewmen watching them on deck. Not stopping to help, Tai Hang 8 proceeded to Bunati, Indonesia.
(4) Oct. 22, 2023, midmorning, CCG gunboat 5203 and CMM trawlers 00003 surrounded, water-cannoned and rammed private outrigger Unaizah May 2. The latter was prevented from resupplying BRP Sierra Madre in Ayungin Shoal. A dozen other CCG and CMM vessels rammed BRP Cabra.
(5) Oct. 22, 2023, afternoon, 44-meter tanker Pacific Anna rammed fishing boat Dearyn in Agno, Pangasinan. Three of 14 Filipino crewmen died. Chinese firm Sinokor Maritime Co. owns Pacific Anna.
(6) June 9, 2019, midnight, Chinese steel-hulled trawler Yuemaobinyu 42212 rammed Gem-Ver 1 anchored fully lighted at Recto Bank off Palawan. The Chinese vessel turned off its searchlight, leaving 22 Filipino fishermen floating in the cold dark sea.
The Navy denounced it as hit-and-run, a serious breach of international maritime law. But then-president Rodrigo Duterte belittled it as “an ordinary accident,” thus exempting the Chinese from recompensing the victims.
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