Philippines urges China to remove floating structure at Scarborough Shoal

Manila urged Beijing to remove a floating structure at Scarborough Shoal after Philippine monitors spotted an object about 6 by 6 metres with what appeared to be an antenna inside the disputed lagoon. Philippine officials said the installation was placed without Manila’s consent and was therefore illegitimate, turning a small piece of equipment into a fresh test of sovereignty in one of the South China Sea’s most volatile flashpoints.

The National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea said the structure appeared unauthorized, and maritime affairs spokesman Rogelio Villanueva said its presence had no legal standing. Manila said it had already undertaken diplomatic action, underscoring a familiar pattern in the South China Sea: surveillance, protest, counterclaim and counter-surveillance, with both sides trying to shape facts on the water without crossing into open conflict.

China’s foreign ministry responded by repeating its claim of indisputable sovereignty over Scarborough Shoal and insisting that Chinese activity there, including scientific research, was legitimate. That exchange matters because the dispute is no longer just about one floating object. Philippine officials see even a temporary platform as a possible first step toward more permanent construction, a creeping form of normalization that can harden control a few square metres at a time.

Scarborough Shoal has been under de facto Chinese control since the 2012 standoff, and the stakes are higher than the size of the new structure suggests. The shoal lies about 240 kilometers west of Luzon and roughly 900 kilometers from Hainan, putting it at the center of a contest over fishing access, patrol patterns and military signaling. In 2016, the arbitral tribunal in the South China Sea case found that Scarborough Shoal is a rock entitled only to a 12-nautical-mile territorial sea and that China violated the traditional fishing rights of Filipinos there, even though it did not decide sovereignty.

The 2002 ASEAN-China Declaration on the Conduct of Parties also looms over the dispute. It calls for self-restraint and says parties should refrain from inhabiting presently uninhabited islands, reefs, shoals and cays. Former Philippine justice Antonio Carpio has said any new construction at Scarborough Shoal could be a precursor to occupation. Satellite imagery in late May and early June showed the object near the lagoon entrance before later images suggested it may have disappeared, adding uncertainty but not reducing the strategic significance. For Manila, the concern is not the footprint of a single structure but the precedent it sets for the next one, and the one after that.