China drives away Philippine gunboat near disputed Scarborough Shoal

China’s coastguard says it drove away a Philippine navy gunboat near the contested Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea on Tuesday.

The coastguard said the ship had ignored verbal warnings so it had followed and monitored the vessel before forcing it to leave the area, where China claims sovereignty.

“The operations at the scene were professional, standard and legitimate,” the Chinese coastguard said.

The statement added that China would continue to enforce its maritime rights and accused the Philippines of violating Chinese sovereignty.

The Philippine military chief General Romeo Brawner denied that China drove away its ship, according to Reuters.

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“We are having it verified, but nothing like that happened. In our view, it’s Chinese propaganda,” he told reporters.

The territorial dispute in the South China Sea between China and the Philippines has intensified since a Chinese coastguard ship fired water cannons at Philippine vessels resupplying troops stationed on another disputed reef, the Second Thomas Shoal.

That encounter – and later resupply missions in which Chinese forces and militias surrounded and blocked Philippine ships – united lawmakers across party lines in Manila to condemn China’s “continued harassment”.

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China said it had placed the barrier there to stop Philippine fishing boats entering the shoal’s lagoon and insisted it had removed the barrier voluntarily.

The Philippines has also complained about China’s use of lasers in its law enforcement and dangerously close encounters at sea.

In recent weeks, China has also clashed with other South China Sea claimants, including Vietnam. Vietnamese media reported in August that a Chinese coastguard had fired water cannon at a Vietnamese fishing boat, breaking a fisherman’s arm and injuring another’s head.

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Beijing claims “historical rights” over most of the South China Sea, demarcated with the so-called nine-dash line. However, it has not said specifically what rights it has beyond its claims to various land features, including the Spratly, Paracel and Pratas Islands and the Macclesfield Bank.

In 2016, the Philippines won a case against China at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which rejected most of China’s claims and ruled that Beijing had unlawfully prevented Filipinos from fishing in the Scarborough Shoal’s territorial sea.

The case was brought under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a treaty signed by both countries.

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China declined to recognise the arbitration, saying that the tribunal had no power to rule over issues of sovereignty. The tribunal disagreed and said the case would not advance either side’s sovereign claims.

The South China Sea is rich in natural resources, including fish. The United States Energy Information Administration said the waters also contain an estimated 11 billion barrels of oil and 5.4 trillion cubic metres (190 trillion cubic feet) of natural gas.