The Philippines has filed a diplomatic protest over a Chinese Coast Guard vessel engaging in "close distance maneuvering" that heightened a risk of collision in the disputed South China Sea, Manila's national security adviser said on Tuesday.
It is the latest of more than 200 diplomatic protests that the Southeast Asian country has filed against China, which claims large swathes of the South China Sea and continues to assert its presence in the strategic waterway.
"There may be counter-claims but we, as a nation, will stand by our established sovereign rights and sovereignty over the area," Hermogenes Esperon, the country's top security adviser, told reporters.
