By Greg Torode and Karen Lema
HONG KONG/MANILA (Reuters) -The Chinese coast guard ship damaged in a collision with a Chinese naval vessel in the South China Sea earlier this month is now under repair at Hainan Island, according to satellite images seen by Reuters – the first confirmation that it made it back to port.
The images provided to Reuters by Maxar Technologies show the vessel with a crushed bow flanked by tugs alongside a dry dock at the Yulin naval base near Sanya, a city on Hainan.
Chinese officials have never commented on the collision, which the Philippines said occurred on August 11 as its coast guard vessels were carrying out a mission to deliver supplies to Filipino fishermen operating near the Scarborough shoal.
It was the first known collision between Chinese vessels in the area amid protracted tensions over disputed features straddling the vital trade route.
Beijing accused the Philippines of “dangerous manoeuvres” without referring directly to the collision but Manila’s foreign ministry said it bore no responsibility for the accident, which it described as an “unfortunate outcome”.
“We demand that the Philippine side immediately stop its infringing and provocative rhetoric and actions,” Chinese defence ministry spokesperson Jiang Bin said at the time.
China coast guard ships routinely patrol Scarborough, which Beijing calls Huangyan Dao, as part of historic claim to much of the South China Sea. Sovereignty over the Scarborough Shoal has never been established.
A landmark 2016 ruling on the South China Sea by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which voided Beijing’s sweeping claims to the region, was not tasked with establishing sovereignty.
But it ruled China’s blockade of the shoal violated international law and said the area was a traditional fishing ground for several countries. China rejected the ruling.
Maxar and other analysts said they were confident the vessel in the images was the same one, CG3104, involved in the collision.
The Chinese defence ministry did not immediately respond to Reuters questions about the fate of the ship, or whether there were any casualties or whether it got to Hainan under its own power.
Philippines Coast Guard spokesperson Jay Tarriela said on Wednesday that they had monitored the departure of two Chinese ships from the shoal the day after the incident but did not see them during a flight later that week.
Tarriela earlier released extensive footage of the crash taken from a Philippines coast guard vessel.
“The Chinese coast guard did not contact the Philippines Coast Guard about any potential casualties or injuries,” Tarriela said.
Online ship trackers noted that CG3104 did not have its transponder on before or after the accident, but another coast guard ship and other Chinese vessels conducted search and rescue operations near the shoal over the following day, according to an X post by Ray Powell of maritime analysts SeaLight.
Singapore-based security scholar Collin Koh said the vessel used to be deployed by the navy as a Type 056 corvette, so it was natural for it to return to a naval base for repairs, rather than a coast guard base.
The Yulin facilities – which also host Chinese aircraft carriers while ballistic missile submarines are also kept nearby – are the most extensive on the southern Chinese coast, said Koh, of Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.
(Reporting By Greg Torode in Hong Kong and Karen Lema in Manila; additional reporting by Beijing newsroom; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
