PCG: Chinese ship faked location near Batanes cable corridor

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Coast Guard has accused a Chinese ship of deliberately broadcasting a false location to hide its movements in the waters off Batanes. 

The Chinese ship, Jia Hai Ke 7, had been holding its position in waters crossed by undersea cables, which the PCG said was consistent with an unauthorized seabed survey.

"A seabed-survey vessel hiding its position while holding station in this corridor raises serious concern over the security of the country's undersea communications infrastructure and the potential military use of the data collected," the PCG said in a statement.

The PCG checked the ship's movements using Canada's Dark Vessel Detection system. The ship's Automatic Identification System, the transponder that broadcasts a vessel's identity and position, showed it leaving Xiamen in China's Fujian province past midnight on September 21. 

By 8:10 p.m. that day, its signal placed it somewhere off Bindari, Papua New Guinea, more than 2,000 nautical miles away. 

The PCG called the trail "physically impossible" and said the ship falsified its location to hide its movements from Philippine authorities.

A PCG monitoring station in Itbayat detected the ship. On Monday morning, a patrol plane sent by Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan, the coast guard commandant, confirmed it was about 38 nautical miles northwest of Itbayat, inside the Philippines' exclusive economic zone. 

Itbayat is the country's northernmost municipality and is around 160 kilometers from Taiwan.

The PCG said its aircraft crew radioed the Chinese ship several times to explain its presence and stop any unauthorized activity. The ship did not respond.

Batanes sits between northern Luzon and Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its territory. In June, Chinese scholars argued that Batanes is a natural extension of Taiwan, a claim vehemently rejected by the Philippine government.

This comes days after Chinese navy and coast guard ships interfered with a Philippine resupply mission to Ayungin Shoal on September 24, an incident the United States condemned on Sunday, September 27. 

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