🇨🇳❌🇻🇳🇵🇭 — On April 25, 2025, in an act of unilateral aggression against Vietnam and Philippines, Communist China coastguard landed and seized control over, claiming ‘sovereign jurisdiction’ of Sandy Cay in South China Sea

The China Coast Guard (CCG) landed on Sandy Cay, a disputed reef in the South China Sea earlier this month to assert sovereignty over the island that the de jure part of Vietnam and which Philippines also claims, Chinese media reported on Thursday.

Chinese State media reports CCG officers ‘exercising maritime control’ on Sandy Cay, one of the reefs in the Vietnam's Spratly Islands also claimed by the Philippines.

According to the state-run Global Times, photographs show CCG officers unfurling a Chinese flag on an uninhabited sand bank, identified as Sandy Cay, also known as Tiexian Jiao in China, Hoài Ân Island in Vietnam and Pagasa Cay 2 in the Philippines.

Chinese forces occupied the uninhabited island and raising the PRC red flag over the disputed island

“In mid-April this year, the China Coast Guard exercised sovereign jurisdiction by exercising maritime control at Sandy Cay in the South China Sea,” it reported, without specifying the date of the landing.

The officers carried out inspections on the reef “to collect video evidence of relevant illegal activities by the Philippines”, and cleared rubbish like plastic bottles, wood sticks and other debris, the report said.

Part of the contested Spratly Islands, the Sandy Cay is the closest reef to the Subi Reef, China’s second largest artificial island and military base in the South China Sea.

It is also only several kilometers from Thitu Island, the largest base the Philippines currently holds.

Sandy Cay is actually three coalescing sand bars situated between Philippines-occupied Thitu (Pag-asa Island) and China-occupied Subi.

They are now above water at high tide, so they are legal ‘rocks’.

According to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, this ennoscripts them to 12 nautical miles of territorial sea.

Sandy Cay is part of Thitu Reefs in the northwestern sector of the Spratly Islands.

Thitu Reefs consist of two atolls.
The eastern atoll comprises two reefs that are completely submerged.

The western atoll comprises Thitu Island and several sandbars, one of which is Sandy Cay (Hoài Ân/Pagasa Cay 2)
Thitu Island and Sandy Cay are high-tide features.

As noted by observers, the other sandbars are either completely submerged features or low-tide elevations.

Since Sandy Cay is next to Thitu (Pag-asa Island), the main Philippine outpost in the Spratly Islands, by taking it over, China is also applying pressure on Thitu.

Such an act of aggression is just yet another step in China's encroaching game in the Spratly Islands.