US and Philippine military officials refuted social media posts that claimed their joint navy forces destroyed a Chinese coast guard ship in the disputed South China Sea. AFP journalists in Manila reported no such incident as of May 9, 2024. The video in the posts, viewed millions of times, misused old clips of military exercises including one staged by US forces in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
“High stakes encounter: US and Philippine navy jointly destroy China Coast Guard ship in South China Sea, escalating tensions,” read the text overlaid on a TikTok video posted on March 29, 2024.
The video, which racked up more than 2.5 million views, intersperses clips of a Chinese coast guard ship with what appear to be soldiers firing naval weapons.
The post surfaced following a series of high-seas incidents involving China and the Philippines as the neighbours asserted rival claims over waters, reefs and rocks in the South China Sea.
China claims almost the entire strategic waterway, brushing off rival claims from other countries, including the Philippines, and an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis.
Sponsor A War Children Today:
SaveWorldChildren.org
Manila and Washington have a mutual defence treaty and recent confrontations between Philippine and Chinese vessels have fuelled speculation of what would trigger it.
AFP has repeatedly fact-checked posts sharing made-up scenarios about the South China Sea dispute here, here and here.
Similar posts were also shared elsewhere on TikTok here and here as well as on Facebook.
However, no official reports indicated the incident described in these posts happened.
“This is misinformation. The event did not occur,” Matthew Comer, media chief of the US Indo-Pacific Command Public Affairs, told AFP on May 7.
Commodore Roy Vincent Trinidad, the Philippine Navy’s spokesman for the West Philippine Sea, separately said on May 5 the claims in the video are “not true“.
Moreover, Google reverse image searches followed by keyword searches found the video shared in the posts misrepresented several clips.
Military exercise
The clip at the start of the video — showing what appears to be a missile launched at sea — was a mirrored version of footage published by the US Indo-Pacific Command on Facebook on March 20, 2019 (archived link).
Its caption read: “Amphibious assault ship USS BOXER LHD 4 fires a RIM-116 missile from a rolling airframe missile launcher during a live-fire missile exercise.
“Boxer is underway conducting routine operations as part of USS Boxer Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) in the eastern Pacific Ocean.”
Below are screenshot comparisons of the video in the false posts (left) and the clip from the US Indo-Pacific Command (right):
A similar video was earlier uploaded on the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS) — a US military public affairs service — on March 14, 2019 (archived link).
Coast guard vessels
A clip showing Chinese and Philippine coast guard vessels appeared at least three times in the video circulating online.
It corresponds to footage published by The Associated Press (AP) news agency on April 27, 2023 (archived link).
“A Chinese coast guard ship has blocked a Philippine patrol vessel steaming into a disputed shoal in the South China Sea,” its caption said.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the clip falsely shared online (left) and video from AP from where it was mirrored (right):
AFP published a similar clip in a report about the incident on the same day.
Military men
The video also flashed clips of military men aboard a vessel firing weapons across the sea.
These were mirrored versions of parts of a video posted on the US DVIDS website about a military exercise in the Philippine Sea on August 11, 2021 (archived link).
The video’s caption read: “U.S. Marines with Light Armored Reconnaissance (LAR), Battalion Landing Team 3/5, 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), and Navy Sailors with Coastal Riverine Group 1, fire a Javelin shoulder-fired anti-tank missile at a target aboard a Mark VI patrol boat in the Philippine Sea, Aug. 11, 2021.”
Below are screenshot comparisons of the misused (left) and the video posted by DVIDS (right):
Philippine media organisation Vera Files also debunked a similar claim (archived link).
This post was originally published on 3rd party site mentioned in the title this site