CNN —A floating barrier installed by China to prevent Filipino boats from fishing in a disputed area of the South China Sea has been removed, Philippine authorities said Monday, in the latest flashpoint between Manila and Beijing over their competing maritime claims.
The video is a vivid illustration of a fraught power struggle that has been playing out for years in the South China Sea as Manila tries to push back against increasingly assertive claims to the disputed strategic waterway by Beijing.
“The barrier posed a hazard to navigation, a clear violation of international law,” the Philippine Coast Guard said in a statement Monday, adding that it also infringed on Philippine sovereignty.
Beijing claims “indisputable sovereignty” over almost all of the 1.3 million square miles of the South China Sea, as well as most of the islands and sandbars within it, including many features that are hundreds of miles away from China’s mainland.
In 2016, an international tribunal in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines in a landmark maritime dispute, which concluded that China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to the bulk of the South China Sea.
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Wang Wenbin, ”
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