The Philippines and China have been engaged in a long-running maritime standoff in the strategic waterway that has included regular clashes between coast guard ships and massive naval exercises.

China approved plans to turn Scarborough Shoal – which Beijing calls Huangyan Island and which is known in the Philippines as the Panatag Shoal – into a national nature reserve last week, without announcing its specific boundaries.

Analysts said the move amounted to China trying to take the moral high ground in the dispute between Beijing and Manila over the atoll, part of a wider contest over sovereignty and fishing access in the South China Sea, a conduit for more than US$3 trillion of annual ship-borne commerce.

The Philippines embassy in Beijing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"On Sept. 16, the China Coast Guard took control measures against a number of Philippine officials vessels operating illegally in the territorial waters of the Scarborough Shoal in accordance with the law," the coast guard said on its official WeChat, a social media platform.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea, overlapping the exclusive economic zones of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. Unresolved disputes have festered for years over ownership of various islands and features.

In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague ruled that China's sweeping claims in the region were not supported by international law, a decision that Beijing rejects.

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