China has published ecological assessment reports on nine disputed South China Sea features, amid an escalating row with Washington over Beijing’s establishment of a “national nature reserve” in the contested waters.
– On Friday, the Ministry of Natural Resources’ South China Sea Bureau issued its 2025 marine ecological early-warning and monitoring bulletin, alongside a separate marine ecological protection and restoration report for the region. The releases were announced via an article posted on the ministry’s official social media account.
– While the full reports have not yet been made public, the ministry stated that the bulletin represented “the first comprehensive assessment” of overall ecological conditions across the Paracels, known in Chinese as the Xisha Islands, and the Spratlys or Nansha Islands, as well as the Macclesfield Bank and surrounding reefs, part of what China calls the Zhongsha Islands.
– “The bulletin particularly highlighted the actual ecological conditions of nine of those islands and reefs, providing a basis for the classified protection and management of the island ecosystems,” the article noted.
– The reports come amid intensifying territorial disputes in the region, with China seeking to consolidate its control through environmental protection initiatives.
– In a statement issued last Saturday, the US State Department rejected China’s assertion that Scarborough Shoal, known as Huangyan Island in Chinese, constituted a “national nature reserve”, characterising it as an attempt by Beijing to advance its territorial ambitions.
– “The United States rejects China’s ongoing attempts to enforce its destabilising ‘national nature reserve’ at Scarborough Reef and deny Filipino fishermen access to their traditional fishing ground,” the statement said.
– “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 neighbours.”
– In response, China’s foreign ministry urged the US to “stop playing up tensions and instigating confrontation in the South China Sea”.
– Foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said on Friday that the shoal “has always been China’s territory”, adding that establishing and administering a national nature reserve there was “within China’s sovereign rights”.
– According to the latest Chinese report, the overall marine ecology in the South China Sea remained stable last year. But it highlighted the ecological degradation of two contested shoals, laying the blame on the Philippines.
– The document stated that the marine environment around the disputed Sandy Cay and Second Thomas Shoal had suffered “severe degradation”.
– At Sandy Cay, the report blamed the decline on starfish outbreaks, tropical cyclones and foreign human activity, “particularly the Philippines’ continuing construction work”. It noted that live coral coverage at the cay had plummeted by nearly 70 per cent compared with 2016 levels.
– Beijing previously attributed environmental damage in the area to “frequent human activities”, citing Philippine construction and fishing operations on nearby Thitu Island, located just two nautical miles (3.7km) away.
– Second Thomas Shoal – another major flashpoint in the Sino-Philippine dispute – has also experienced a sharp decline in live coral coverage, according to the report. It attributed this deterioration to the accumulation of rubbish, entanglement in fishing nets and prolonged discharge of waste from “a foreign military vessel illegally grounded on the reef”.
– This was a reference to the BRP Sierra Madre, a World War II-era warship that Manila grounded on the shoal, known as Renai Reef in China, to assert its territorial claims over the area in 1999.
– Last year, Chinese natural resources and forestry authorities implemented 66 marine ecological restoration projects across the region, with total investment approaching 5 billion yuan (US$741.6 million).
– By the end of last year, Beijing had designated around 2.7 million hectares (6.6 million acres) as being under “marine ecological conservation red lines”, with an additional 7 million hectares of marine nature reserves and other protected areas, according to one bulletin.
– The South China Sea Bureau noted improvements in its use of satellite remote sensing, underwater in-situ monitoring and underwater robotic surveys.
– Beijing claims sovereignty over most islands and rock features in the South China Sea. Some of its territorial claims in the resource-rich waterway overlap with those of the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei.
– China has strengthened its control over Scarborough Shoal through increased law enforcement patrols and scientific expeditions. In September last year, China approved the creation of a nature reserve at the shoal, a disputed chain of low-lying rocky islets known as Panatag Shoal in the Philippines.
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