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Chinese expert warns Philippines not to mistake humanitarian accommodation for concession as Philippine military twists facts on Ren’ai Jiao resupply_我的网站
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Chinese experts warned on Wednesday that Manila should not mistake humanitarian accommodation for a concession and must bear the consequences if it scraps the arrangement.
Yang Xiao, a research fellow at the Institute of Peaceful Development under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Wednesday that the Philippine side's claims are fundamentally flawed from legal, historical and practical perspectives.
Ren'ai Jiao is an inherent part of China's Nansha Qundao, over which China has indisputable and complete sovereignty, Yang said, adding that it is legally untenable for the Philippines to claim that Ren'ai Jiao is part of its exclusive economic zone.
"The Philippines deliberately grounded the abandoned warship at Ren'ai Jiao in 1999 and repeatedly pledged to remove it and restore the reef, but has failed to honor those commitments for more than two decades. This itself constitutes a continuing violation of China's territorial sovereignty," Yang said.
This is not the first time the Philippines has denied seeking China's approval for resupply missions to Ren'ai Jiao. In April 2025, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun responded to similar claims, saying that China's position on how to handle the current situation at Ren'ai Jiao is clear and consistent.
"First, by keeping its warship grounded at Ren'ai Jiao for decades running, the Philippines has been violating China's sovereignty and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC). We demand that the Philippines tow away the warship. Second, between now and when the warship is towed away, should the Philippines need to send living necessities, China is willing to allow it in a humanitarian spirit if the Philippines informs China in advance and after on-site verification is conducted. Third, if the Philippines were to send large amount of construction materials to the warship and attempt to build fixed facilities or permanent outpost, China will absolutely not accept it and will resolutely stop it in accordance with the law and regulations," said the spokesperson.
"This means that the Philippines' so-called '15 safe and incident-free resupply missions' were all made possible by China's humanitarian accommodation and strict oversight," Yang stressed. Each mission was reported in advance and allowed to proceed only after inspections confirmed no prohibited construction materials were aboard. The CCG intercepted any such materials through lawful measures, Yang said.
The Philippines' unilateral denial of its notification and inspection obligations while enjoying the arrangement's benefits amounts to a blatant breach of its commitments, the expert noted.
Yang also noted that Manila's narrative contains an obvious logical contradiction. If Philippine resupply missions were truly unimpeded, there would be no need for Manila to repeatedly claim that China had "blocked" its missions and call for international intervention. Yet if China had continuously "obstructed" the missions, the Philippines could not have completed 15 safe and incident-free resupply operations.
"Manila has simply manipulated its narrative to suit its publicity needs, portraying itself as a 'victim' when seeking international attention while touting smooth resupply operations and its own strength when seeking to project toughness. Its hype over the 15 resupply missions is essentially aimed at rallying domestic support and stoking confrontation internationally to conceal the reality that its illegal presence is tightly constrained," Yang said.
China's handling of the Ren'ai Jiao situation, meanwhile, has consistently reflected restraint and humanitarian considerations. According to a statement by the China Coast Guard (CCG) spokesperson on the transfer of injured personnel by the Philippine side, Jiang Lue, a CCG spokesperson, said that on the morning of July 21, out of humanitarian considerations, China allowed the Philippines to transfer injured personnel by small boats from the BRP Sierra Madre (LT-57), which has been illegally grounded at Ren'ai Jiao, to Philippine Coast Guard vessel 9702. The CCG questioned and verified the Philippine vessels and monitored the entire process.
The CCG will continue to carry out rights-protection and law enforcement operations in accordance with the law in the waters around Ren'ai Jiao to safeguard China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, Jiang said.
Yang said, stressing that Manila's tough talk and one-sided claims cannot make up for its legal and moral shortcomings.
"Any attempt to permanently occupy Chinese islands and reefs, unilaterally tear up the understanding and continuously challenge China's territorial sovereignty runs counter to international law and the broader trend toward peace and development in the region and is ultimately doomed to fail," Yang added.
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At 29, Shi belongs to a new generation of desert-control workers equipped with drones, machines and remote irrigation systems. An earth auger can now do in a day what once required about 200 laborers, while a single phone can control drip irrigation across more than 1,000 mu (about 66.67 hectares) of woodland.
For the older Shi's generation, the challenge was getting trees to survive in moving dunes. For the grandson, it is figuring out how to make those forests healthier and more resilient for decades to come.
Their story captures a broader shift in desert control along the southern edge of the Maowusu Desert in northwest China's Shaanxi Province: turning shifting sand into forest was only the beginning.
In 1986, Shi Guangyin, Shi Jianyang's grandfather, led more than 300 villagers into Langwosha, a sandy area in Dingbian County in Yulin City. He had raised 60,000 yuan (about 17,377 U.S. dollars at the time) by selling his family's 84 sheep and borrowing from relatives and banks to contract 3,500 mu of barren sandy land.
The early setbacks were severe. Strong winds destroyed about 90 percent of the saplings in the first year, and about 80 percent of those planted the following year failed to survive.
After seeking advice from forestry experts, Shi and the villagers laid out checkerboard-shaped barriers on windward slopes to hold the sand in place, then planted trees, shrubs and grasses within them. Sapling survival rates rose to about 80 percent.
Over the next four decades, Shi and those working alongside him treated 250,000 mu of sandy and saline-alkali land, with more than 53 million trees and shrubs taking root.
Greening the Maowusu Desert is part of a much larger national undertaking. It is one of the three major battlefronts of China's Three-North Shelterbelt Forest Program, a decades-long effort to curb desertification across northern China.
China has made desertification control a national ecological priority. Since 2023, the country has stepped up efforts under the program, with greater emphasis on systematic restoration and on consolidating earlier gains.
Decades after the first trees took root, a new challenge emerged. Poplars planted decades ago for their rapid growth began reaching the end of their life cycle, with large numbers of trees dying, while forests dominated by a single species were more vulnerable to pests and disease.
Making a forest was one challenge. Keeping it healthy for another generation is another.
Shi Jianyang grew up watching his grandfather and father work to hold back the sand. His father, Shi Zhanjun, spent years planting trees alongside Shi Guangyin before dying in a road accident in 2008 while transporting saplings.
As a boy, Shi Jianyang sometimes resented the work that had taken his father. He spent summer holidays in makeshift tents in the sandy land, eating meals gritty with sand. During planting season, his father would return home with painful blisters in his mouth.
Yet he eventually chose forestry himself.
After studying forestry technology in university, Shi returned home in 2020 and began working in desert control. His team, initially made up of just seven or eight young locals, later brought in university graduates with expertise in soil science, landscaping and pest control.
The younger generation faced a different question: not simply how to make trees survive, but how to make a forest last.
Shi and his team spent more than 40 days in a 5,000-mu woodland setting up sample plots, measuring rainfall, studying soil microorganisms and tracking tree lodging. They proposed renewing aging forests with better-planned forest structures and expanded the planting of Mongolian pine, a long-lived evergreen species that had been successfully tested locally.
To date, about 50,000 mu of land has been planted with Mongolian pine. As some trees fail to survive and require replacement in subsequent planting seasons, the cumulative area of planting operations has reached about 65,000 mu.
Technology has also changed daily work. Drones patrol forests from the air, mechanized equipment dig planting pits, and irrigation can be managed remotely. Sapling survival rates, which Shi Guangyin's generation had raised to about 80 percent through improved sand-control and planting methods, have climbed further to about 92 percent with greater mechanization and more precise management.
Shi said the changes can be felt on the ground. Strong sandstorms have become rare, winds are weaker inside the forest, and the ground stays moist longer after rain. Summer days beneath the trees also feel cooler, while morning dew appears more often. The changes lead him to rethink desert control.
His approach also reflects a broader effort in China's desert regions to link ecological restoration with local livelihoods, giving communities a stronger economic stake in protecting restored land.
With his grandfather's support, Shi and his team have been looking for ways to make better use of the restored land as ecological conditions improve. They have developed potato seedlings suited to sandy soil, promoted greenhouse farming, and set up a livestock cooperative, while increasingly growing potatoes, watermelons and peppers on land once prone to losing water and nutrients.
Shi has also turned to livestreaming e-commerce to market potatoes and other local farm produce, while developing forest-based health and leisure projects. More than 2,000 local residents have seen their incomes rise steadily as farming, livestock breeding and other businesses have developed.
"We used to fear the sand and keep away from it. Now we understand it and know how to make use of it," Shi Guangyin said. "Today, there are opportunities to make a living everywhere in this sandy land."
Across Yulin, forest coverage has risen from 1.8 percent in 1949 to 34.8 percent, while shifting dunes that once encroached on villages have been brought under control.
For Shi Jianyang, however, the green landscape is not proof that the work is finished. "Planting a tree is not difficult," he said. "The difficult part is looking after it for decades."
The grandfather generation learned how to stop the sand. The young generation is learning how to make what grew there last.
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