The frigate pinned itself to a reef on Thursday at Half Moon Shoal, on the south-eastern edge of the Spratly Islands, and remains ''thoroughly stuck'', according to Western diplomatic sources last night. Salvage operations could be diplomatically challenging, given the vessel appears to have run aground within 200 kilometres of the Philippines coast, squarely within what the country claims to be its Exclusive Economic Zone.
The stricken People's Liberation Army-Navy ship, believed to be No. 560, a Jianghu-class frigate, has been involved in aggressively discouraging Philippine fishing boats from the area.
The Spratly Islands. Advertisement
Yesterday's meeting of the Association of South-East Asian Nations in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, ended in disarray, without a code of conduct for resolving conflicts in the South China Sea, following robust intervention from China.On Thursday China dispatched one of its largest ever fishing expeditions from Hainan Island to another disputed archipelago in the South China Sea.
Territorial disputes in the South China Sea
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have increased in the past several months between the Philippines and China, and between Vietnam and China.
One of the conflicts, which lasted for months, involved a standoff between lightly armed vessels belonging to China and to the Philippines at the Scarborough Shoal off the coast of the Philippines.
Another dispute was centred on a law enacted in Vietnam claiming sovereignty over the Spratly and Paracel islands, which China also claims.
China has made it clear that it wants to deal with the South China Sea disputes with each country individually, and not through any regional forum. That stance has made unclear the future of a code of conduct to resolve disputes in the area.
Earlier in the week PLA generals and top foreign policy advisers urged China to do more to press its claims as its relative power grows.
Cui Liru, president of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a leading think tank that reports to the main intelligence department, said Beijing had previously focused too much on shelving disputes and seeking common grounds with its neighbours.
''In the foreseeable future, say at least in five years, the Asia-Pacific region will still be showing every feature of a transitional period, which is characterised by a certain level of chaos,'' he said.
Cambodia, the host of the ASEAN conference and a close ally of China, refused to play the customary role of seeking agreement among the 10 participating countries.
That undermined the possibility of an accord, a senior diplomat from the association told The New York Times.
''China bought the chair, simple as that,'' the diplomat said.
The diplomat referred to an article on Thursday by China's state news agency, Xinhua, in which the country's Foreign Minister, Yang Jiechi, was quoted as thanking Cambodia's Prime Minister for supporting China's ''core interests''.
With NEW YORK TIMES
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