n MANILA FRETS OVER REED BANK INCIDENT China, now the world's second largest economy and a rising global military power, has been projecting itself in recent years as a “soft power” and reassuring the world of its “peaceful rise.” But an incident in which a Chinese naval patrol vessel shooed away a Singapore-registered and French-owned ship conducting a survey on natural gas reserves with the permission of the Philippine government prompted the Philippine Star newspaper in Manila to write an editorial that it appears to be a neighborhood bully. Excerpts: Such avowals of its benign rise and commitment to global peace fly out the window each time China uses military resources to assert its claim over disputed areas in the South China Sea. The latest incident erupted in the Reed Bank basin, 250 kilometers off Palawan island, where two Chinese naval patrol vessels shooed away a Singapore-registered and French-owned ship conducting a survey on natural gas reserves with the permission of the Philippine government. Manila has filed a diplomatic protest with Beijing and dispatched Coast Guard vessels to escort the ship, which was conducting the survey for an Anglo-Philippine consortium. Reed Bank lies close to the Philippine-claimed Kalayaan Islands, and the incident is just the latest irritant between the two countries over disputed areas in the Spratly island chain. Beijing has often declared its commitment to the status quo and a peaceful resolution of overlapping claims by six countries in the South China Sea. But over the years Chinese troops have built structures on Mischief Reef off Palawan, which Beijing initially said were shelters for Chinese fishermen. The shelters have become a multi-story building flying the Chinese flag. Recently, China made a rare and welcome gesture by granting a Philippine request, personally delivered by Vice President Jejomar Binay, for a stay in the execution of three Filipinos convicted of drug trafficking in China. But the Reed Bank incident is dissipating the goodwill generated by that gesture. It also reinforces arguments for a settlement of the territorial dispute not through bilateral talks but through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations – something that Beijing has opposed – and in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. It disputed area may be called the South China Sea but it doesn't mean all the waters belong to China. The last thing a nation professing to be committed to world peace should want is to be seen as the bully in its own neighborhood. __
