China Coast Guard patrols creeping toward Luzon — PCG

Upgrade to High-Speed Internet for only ₱1499/month!

Enjoy up to 100 Mbps fiber broadband, perfect for browsing, streaming, and gaming.

Visit Suniway.ph to learn

January 22, 2026 | 3:28pm

MANILA, Philippines — Chinese vessels came as close as within 23 nautical miles of the Philippine coast last year, according to the Philippine Coast Guard's (PCG) summary of Chinese vessels' maritime behavior in 2025, which noted this was their closest approach on record amid Beijing's extended patrols toward the Luzon coastline.

The incursion off Dasol town in Pangasinan province on April 8, 2025, put China Coast Guard vessels (CCG) about 43 kilometers from shore, roughly the distance from Manila to Masungi Georeserve in Rizal.

This marked an aggressive shift in China's maritime behavior, said PCG Spokesperson Jay Tarriela in a statement on Thursday, January 22. 

Chinese ships that generally only focused on patrolling Scarborough Shoal, a triangular reef 140 kilometers offshore, in 2024, roamed a widening corridor from Ilocos province down to Mindoro in 2025, based on the PCG's monitoring.

"[Filipino] fishermen have been displaced farther from [Bajo de Masinloc], as [China Coast Guard] vessels have aggressively driven them toward the Luzon coast and away from their traditional fishing grounds," Tarriela said in a statement.

Manila responded by keeping its own patrol vessels at sea an average of 27 days per month near the shoal last year, near-constant patrols aimed at blocking Chinese vessels from treating waters within the Philippines' exclusive economic zone as its own.  

Expanding footprint

The data shared by the PCG shows Chinese vessels widening their operational area in the West Philippine Sea (the part of the South China Sea that falls within the Philippines' EEZ), no longer content to hover around Scarborough Shoal but instead pushing closer to Philippine shores.

In 2024, Chinese vessels typically stayed within a 10 to 15 nautical mile radius of the shoal, Tarriela said. By 2025, CCG cutters, navy destroyers and maritime militia boats ranged across a far broader swath of sea.

The PCG tracked 39 Chinese government vessels around Scarborough Shoal in April 2025 alone — the highest monthly count last year. The tally included People's Liberation Army Navy warships, CCG ships and vessels from China's shadowy maritime militia.

The 23-nautical-mile distance places Chinese vessels' patrols outside the Philippines' 12-nautical-mile territorial sea, where Manila has full sovereignty, but well inside its 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone, where it holds rights to fish and exploit resources under international law.

Scarborough Shoal — called Bajo de Masinloc by the Philippine government — lies 124 nautical miles from Zambales. 

A 2016 international tribunal ruled the shoal a traditional fishing ground and rejected China's claims to most of the South China Sea. Beijing rejected the decision and has held de facto control around the shoal since 2012.

In September, Beijing declared the shoal a "nature reserve" — a move that analysts and the Philippine side saw as a way to justify the construction of monitoring stations or other infrastructure. Manila protested this declaration.