The Philippines protested in April after discovering that Chinese dredging ships had reclaimed a large patch of land in Johnson Reef in the Spratlys that it could use to build a military outpost or an airstrip far from the Chinese mainland.
President Benigno Aquino III said today that he was bothered after seeing surveillance photos of ships capable of reclaiming land in the vicinity of two other Chinese-occupied reefs in the Spratlys called Cuarteron and Gaven.
When asked whether reclamation of land was underway in the two Chinese-controlled reefs, Aquino did not give a clear reply, but two military officials told The Associated Press that government surveillance had monitored land reclamation activities in Cuarteron and Gaven.
The Chinese Embassy in Manila did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
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China, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam have overlapping territorial claims in the Spratlys, a group of mostly barren islands, reefs and atolls that are believed to be sitting atop oil and natural gas deposits. They also straddle the world's most-traversed sea lanes.
China later stepped up efforts to take control of uninhabited submerged reefs by reclaiming land and constructing buildings on them that resembled military outposts.
China's spats with Vietnam and the Philippines in the South China Sea have particularly flared, with the most serious confrontation erupting when Beijing deployed an oil rig on May 1 in waters that Hanoi claims were within its exclusive economic zone.
That zone refers to the 370-kilometre stretch of sea in which a coastal country has an exclusive right to fish and exploit undersea gas and oil deposits under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.