State Department condemns new Chinese claim to disputed South China Sea shoal as ‘destabilizing’
by Bill Gertz · The Washington TimesNew Chinese government controls over a disputed South China Sea reef are a “destabilizing activity” and legal claims that Beijing is protecting a nature reserve there are questionable, the State Department said in pushing back against China’s expansive regional maritime claims.
In an unusually blunt statement, State Department spokesman Tommy Piggot condemned China’s recent announcement regarding Scarborough Reef, a sea feature claimed by China and the Philippines located within Manila’s exclusive economic zone.
“The United States rejects China’s ongoing attempts to enforce its destabilizing ’national nature reserve’ at Scarborough Reef and deny Filipino fishermen access to their traditional fishing ground as reflected in the 2016 Arbitral Award,” Mr. Piggot said in a statement.
“This is yet another unilateral attempt by China to use dubious environmental and legal pretexts, backed by coercion, to advance its sweeping territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea at the expense of its neighbors.”
The spokesman said the United States backs its regional ally, the Philippines, in supporting a free and open Indo-Pacific.
The Chinese government announced Aug. 1 it is imposing new rules that restrict fishing, undersea mining, harvesting coral and other activities at the reef, also called Scarborough Shoal and known by China as Huangyan Dao.
Days later, People’s Liberation Army warships and Chinese coast guard vessels conducted high-profile naval drills around the reef.
Beijing declared the sea feature a nature reserve last year as part of what U.S. officials say is a larger effort to control some 90% of the sea.
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The strategic waterway is used to transport an estimated $5 trillion in trade goods annually.
Tensions remain high in the region despite a 2016 ruling in favor of Manila by an international tribunal in the Hague that declared China’s expansive claims in the sea to be illegal.
Chinese state media criticized Mr. Pigott’s statement on the reef.
“It is absurd for the U.S., a country that is not a party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, to pass judgment on the Huangyan Dao National Nature Reserve,” the Chinese Communist Party outlet Global Times stated, quoting a Chinese official.
The United States lacks jurisdiction in the South China Sea and the standing to judge regional affairs, said the report published Sunday.
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“At a time when the broader China-U.S. relationship is moving toward an easing of tensions, attempts by certain U.S. officials to encourage provocations out of narrow political interests run counter to the overall trend,” the report said.
The harsh State Department response contrasts sharply with comments by Elbridge Colby, undersecretary of defense for policy, who made no mention of the Scarborough dispute in a major speech in Manila on Monday or in remarks later.
Mr. Colby made no direct mention of China in the speech outlining a new conciliatory Pentagon policy of “realism” toward China featuring quiet diplomacy and respectful relations with the communist state.
Adm. Sam Paparo, commander of the Pacific Command, said in a speech Aug. 3 that some nations in the region are using coercion and “false claims of legitimacy” to justify intimidation, an indirect reference to Chinese actions.
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“That’s not the rule of law. That’s the rule by law. That distinction between law as a tool of order versus law as a weapon of raw power, is the defining fault line of our time,” he told a regional security conference in Malaysia.
A Pacific Command legal office report rejected the nature reserve declaration in August 2025 as legal warfare that is destabilizing the region.
“China’s nature reserve represents another example of legal warfare – i.e., China’s misuse and weaponization of legal mechanisms to create a veneer of legitimacy to justify its malign actions,” the report said.
“China’s actions add to its pattern of aggressive and unlawful behavior in the [South China Sea] that includes persistent and dangerous harassment of Philippine vessels in the Philippine EEZ, annually establishing sweeping and legally baseless fishing bans over waters in which it has no legal entitlement under international law, and employing maritime barricades to preclude traditional fishing rights authorized by international law.”
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The legal warfare is part of a Beijing’s larger strategy to “win without fighting” through excessive maritime claims and eroding international legal norms, the report said.
The effort “directly undermines U.S. national security and the interest of our allies and partners across the IndoPacific region, the report said.
In addition to Scarborough, China has reclaimed several other disputed islands, dredged coral reefs and built runways and military bases on them.
Despite a 2015 promise by Chinese President Xi Jinping not to militarize the islands, Chinese military forces have deployed missiles and electronic warfare gear on several, according to the Pentagon.
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Scarborough reef is a coral atoll located 124 miles from the main Philippines island of Luzon and hundreds of miles from mainland China and remains a major flashpoint between the two nations.
In recent months, Chinese vessels have fired water cannons at Philippine fishing vessels in a bid to drive them out of the area.
Both countries conduct patrols around the reef and a year ago a Chinese navy ship collided with a Chinese coast guard vessel while both were harassing a Philippine coast guard ship.
China recently disclosed that two of its sailors died in the collision.
The latest clash between China and the Philippines took place July 20 when Chinese personnel hit and wounded a Philippine navy sailor in the head at another disputed island called Second Thomas Shoal.
In June, a think tank report stated that the shoal has reemerged as a major focus of regional tensions.
“The confluence of increasingly frequent aerial encounters and maritime interactions near Scarborough Shoal inevitably increases the chance of accidental escalation between Chinese and Philippine forces, which could ultimately trigger U.S. treaty obligations and risk spiraling into a wider conflict,” stated the report by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, part of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The report said in the previous 10 months, China expanded sea patrols near the reef which it seized from the Philippines in 2012.
The resource-rich reef is also claimed by Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei.
China affairs specialist Gordon G. Chang said China is attempting to annex the entire South China Sea and ultimately the Pacific.
Chinese state media reported that Beijing may build a military base on Scarborough Shoal, and the threat is real, he said, noting that Chinese personnel moved a floating platform temporarily to the reef in May.
“The shoal is especially strategic: It guards the mouths to both Manila and Subic bays,” Mr. Chang said.
The South China Sea is a key waterway that allows American naval forces to pass to and from allied states in northeast Asia, southeast Asia, the Middle East and Australia.
Retired Navy Capt. Stu Cvrk said China dredged about 3,200 acres of new land onto seven Spratly Island features, including Fiery Cross, Subi, Mischief, and others between late 2013 and late 2016.
The islands were then militarized with new radar and communications arrays, airstrips and hangars for combat aircraft, and surface-to-air and anti-ship cruise missile systems, he said.
Chinese water cannon attacks, vessel ramming and, in some cases, the use of blinding lasers against Philippine personnel are not a response to regional U.S. destabilization, as China state media claims, Capt. Cvrk said.
“It’s the [Chinese Communist Party] unilaterally escalating coercion against a much smaller neighbor’s fishermen and coast guard within that neighbor’s own EEZ, using a maritime militia specifically because it affords deniability — gray-zone activities that use non-military vessels to assert territorial claims while avoiding accountability for overt military force,” he said.
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