‘Special Operation’: Philippines Removes Chinese Barrier at Disputed Shoal in South China Sea

The Philippines announced on Monday that its Coast Guard had executed a “special operation”—as instructed by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.—to remove a floating barrier installed by China at a prime fishing location in the South China Sea. The move could stoke tensions after a years-long détente in Asia’s most hotly disputed waters. Undated video footage by the Philippine Coast Guard shows one of its personnel cutting a rope that was holding a long, buoy-type floating barrier that the Chinese coastguard policed near the Scarborough Shoal—the site of years of intermittent flare-ups over sovereignty and fishing rights—before removing the barrier’s anchor.