As Senator Marco Rubio discussed China’s aggression toward neighboring countries during his confirmation hearing, a ship of the Philippine Coast Guard and a monster ship of the China Coast Guard exchanged English-language challenges. Go to 0:30 in the video accompanying the GMA News Online report (“Trump nominee asks China not to mess with Philippines, Taiwan,” January 17, 2025).
PHILIPPINE COAST GUARD: “China Coast Guard Vessel 5901, this is Philippine Coast Guard Vessel BRP Gabriela Silang. You do not possess any legal authority to patrol inside the Philippines’s exclusive economic zone. You are directed to depart immediately and notify us of your intentions.”
CHINA COAST GUARD: “This is China Coast Guard Vessel 5901. I’m performing law-enforcement duties on the jurisdictional waters of the People’s Republic of China.”
The video cuts to the Rubio confirmation hearing around 3:14 and captures more of what he said than is quoted in the print report.
“There’s this massive, I don’t even know how to describe it, but this massive ship that the Chinese have built that’s like headed toward the Philippines. And the Philippines feels threatened by it. Rightfully so,” Rubio told his fellow U.S. Senators.
“We’ve seen this on a daily basis with the harassment and so forth. The actions they are taking now are deeply destabilizing. They are forcing us to take counter-actions, because we have commitments to the Philippines and we have commitments to Taiwan that we intend to keep. They really need to stop messing around with Taiwan and with the Philippines.
“The PRC is the most potent and dangerous near-peer adversary that this nation has ever confronted. They have elements that the Soviet Union never possessed. They lied about not militarizing and populating island chains in the South China Sea and the like.”
In addition to asserting that the waters of the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines are “the jurisdictional waters of the People’s Republic of China,” China’s vessels in the area are now starting to patrol the nine-dash line circumscribing that part of the South China Sea—the vast majority of the South China Sea—which the Chinese government regards as subject to its control and authority.
