A multinational search by Vietnamese, Philippine and Chinese rescuers was underway on Sunday for 17 crew members missing after a cargo ship sank in bad weather off a Chinese-occupied shoal in the disputed South China Sea.

The Vietnamese cargo vessel Khoi Nguyen 18, carrying 62 people, sank late Saturday (July 25, 2026) near Fiery Cross Reef, which is a Chinese-built island and a military outpost in the hotly contested Spratly Islands.

Of those on board, 45 crew members have been found and 17 others are still reported missing.

The vessel “sank while operating in bad weather conditions in the East Sea,” Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Pham Thu Hang said.

The Philippine Coast Guard said it deployed a patrol vessel and an aircraft to help search for the missing crew members after receiving a request from Vietnam. Chinese rescue ships and helicopters, along with other vessels in the area, joined the operation.

Vietnamese authorities said fishing vessels had joined the search and that the families of those on board had been notified.

Philippine Coast Guard spokesperson Commodore Noemie Cayabyab said that it was coordinating with Vietnam’s coast guard “for other operational information needed to guide the search and rescue response.”

She said the coast guard was also using a search planning system to improve the chances of locating the missing crew members and had issued a navigational warning urging ships transiting the area to keep watch and assist if it was safe to do so.

The Philippine Coast Guard said the operation was being conducted under international maritime agreements and bilateral cooperation with Vietnam.

Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry thanked China for its swift assistance and said it hoped the search would continue to find the remaining crew members.

China has become increasingly aggressive in asserting its claims in virtually the entire South China Sea, through which about $5 trillion in global trade transits each year. The sea passage is also believed to be sitting atop vast undersea deposits of oil and gas.

As well as China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also have overlapping claims in the strategic waterway.

A multinational search by Vietnamese, Philippine and Chinese rescuers was underway on Sunday for 17 crew members missing after a cargo ship sank in bad weather off a Chinese-occupied shoal in the disputed South China Sea.

The Vietnamese cargo vessel Khoi Nguyen 18, carrying 62 people, sank late Saturday (July 25, 2026) near Fiery Cross Reef, which is a Chinese-built island and a military outpost in the hotly contested Spratly Islands.

Of those on board, 45 crew members have been found and 17 others are still reported missing.

The vessel “sank while operating in bad weather conditions in the East Sea,” Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Pham Thu Hang said.

The Philippine Coast Guard said it deployed a patrol vessel and an aircraft to help search for the missing crew members after receiving a request from Vietnam. Chinese rescue ships and helicopters, along with other vessels in the area, joined the operation.

Vietnamese authorities said fishing vessels had joined the search and that the families of those on board had been notified.

Philippine Coast Guard spokesperson Commodore Noemie Cayabyab said that it was coordinating with Vietnam’s coast guard “for other operational information needed to guide the search and rescue response.”

She said the coast guard was also using a search planning system to improve the chances of locating the missing crew members and had issued a navigational warning urging ships transiting the area to keep watch and assist if it was safe to do so.

The Philippine Coast Guard said the operation was being conducted under international maritime agreements and bilateral cooperation with Vietnam.

Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry thanked China for its swift assistance and said it hoped the search would continue to find the remaining crew members.

China has become increasingly aggressive in asserting its claims in virtually the entire South China Sea, through which about $5 trillion in global trade transits each year. The sea passage is also believed to be sitting atop vast undersea deposits of oil and gas.

As well as China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also have overlapping claims in the strategic waterway.

The Philippine military on Monday (July 20, 2026) accused China’s coast guard of allegedly injuring a Filipino sailor during an incident in a disputed shoal in the South China Sea.

The military said Chinese coast guard personnel aboard a motorboat repeatedly struck the sailor on the head with a wooden baton, injuring him and damaging his smaller vessel.

The assault was captured on video by other Filipino sailors in the hotly disputed Second Thomas Shoal and set off angry condemnations by Philippine officials. They praised the Filipino navy personnel, saying they did not do anything that could have caused an escalation.

China’s coast guard responded by claiming that two rubber boats belonging to an “illegally” stationed Filipino vessel had rammed the Chinese patrol boat “in a dangerous manner.”

“During the incident, Philippine personnel maliciously attacked Chinese law enforcement personnel using oars and long sticks,” the Chinese coast guard said in a statement on social media.

The row was just the latest altercation between Chinese and Philippines personnel in disputed waters in the South China Sea, which Beijing claims virtually in its entirety. China has demanded that Manila pull away a long-marooned and now rusting navy ship, the BRP Sierra Madre, which is manned by Filipino navy personnel and serves as a fragile territorial outpost.

The Philippine military said a Chinese coast guard inflatable boat carrying eight personnel was deployed from a ship and approached the BRP Sierra Madre within close range and maneuvered around while its occupants took pictures and video.

Filipino sailors aboard two rubber boats asked the Chinese to back away in a non-confrontational manner. “The Chinese coast guard vessel personnel reacted violently and aggressively by striking a Philippine Navy personnel on the head with a wooden baton, causing injury and damaging the navy rubber boat,” the Philippine military said.

The extent of the Filipino sailor’s injury was being assessed to determine if he needed to be medically evacuated, it said.

“No act of coercion or aggression will deter us from carrying out our constitutional mandate or exercising the Philippines’ lawful rights in the West Philippine Sea,” the military said, using the Philippine name for the South China Sea.

“The latest act of violence and harassment committed by the China coast guard against Philippine navy personnel … adds to a clear pattern of provocative and hostile behavior and further contributes to the People’s Republic of China’s deficit of trust and credibility,” the Department of National Defense said in a statement.

The Chinese coast guard accused the Philippines of distorting facts by falsely accusing China, “which is a complete reversal of right and wrong,” according to its statement.

The Philippines deliberately beached the Sierra Madre in the shallows of the Second Thomas Shoal in 1999 to serve as a territorial outpost. China, which also claims the shoal, later surrounded the atoll with its ships in a tense territorial standoff that has dragged on for years.

The long-simmering territorial disputes, which also involve, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan, is high in the agenda of annual talks in Manila this week between foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and their Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi.

Both sides have been negotiating a nonaggression pact that aims to prevent a major armed conflict that could draw in the United States, which has vowed to help deter growing Chinese aggression and defend freedom of navigation in the busy waterway.

Taiwan said on Saturday (June 6, 2026) that a Chinese coast guard ship and a survey ​ship had carried out the first coordinated operation to “provoke” ‌Taiwan, in waters around strategically located islands in ​the South China Sea.

The Taiwan-controlled ⁠Pratas Islands, a national park toward the northern end of the South China Sea and lightly defended by the coast ‌guard, have emerged as a new pressure point in China’s ongoing military and quasi-military ‌operations around Taiwan in an effort to ‌assert ⁠Beijing’s sovereignty claims.

The islands between southern Taiwan ⁠and Hong Kong are seen by some security experts as vulnerable to Chinese attack due to their distance — more than ​400 km (250 miles) — from ‌Taiwan island.

Taiwan’s coast guard said in a statement that, along with a Chinese coast guard ship that had approached the Pratas on Friday (June 5), a Chinese ‌oceanographic survey vessel approached the islands on ​Saturday (June 6).

“This is the first observed instance of Chinese coast guard and survey vessels acting ⁠in coordination to provoke Taiwan,” it said.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office did not immediately respond to a request for ‌comment. China considers Taiwan and the Pratas, an atoll with no civilian population, as its territory. Taiwan’s government rejects Beijing’s claims, saying only the island’s people can decide their future.

The Chinese coast guard vessel broadcast that it was conducting law ‌enforcement operations and that “Taiwan’s future lies in national reunification”, said Taiwan’s ​coast guard, which dispatched its own vessels in response.

It said the Taiwan ship ⁠broadcast back: “Stop undermining peace. You should return and pursue democracy – ⁠that is the proper way to serve your country.”

China is trying to create a “false ‌illusion” of jurisdiction over the area, the coast guard said. “Taiwan’s maritime sovereignty brooks no provocation.”

The Philippine and U.S. militaries sailed together at ‍a disputed South China Sea shoal this ​week, Manila’s armed forces said ‌on Tuesday (January 27, 2026), performing joint exercises ​to boost interoperability between the two treaty allies.

The joint sail was held in the Scarborough Shoal in South China Sea waters lying within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, which ​China also claims as part ⁠of its territory. It was the 11th “maritime cooperative activity” involving the United States and the Philippines ​since November ⁠2023.

“The successful conduct of these activities enhanced coordination, tactical proficiency, and mutual understanding between allied forces,” the Philippine ‌armed forces said in a statement.

The ‌joint sail showcased the Philippines’ frigate Antonio Luna, a Philippine ‍coast guard offshore patrol vessel, as well as two military planes and ‍a helicopter.

The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command deployed the USS John Finn, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer and an MH-60R Seahawk helicopter.

Military engagements between the treaty allies have soared under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who ⁠has pivoted closer to Washington in response to China’s growing presence ​in the South China Sea.

China claims sovereignty ⁠over nearly all the South China Sea, including parts of the exclusive economic zones of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and ⁠Vietnam. 

The Philippine coast guard said on Saturday that three Filipino fishermen had been wounded and two fishing vessels suffered “significant damage” when Chinese coast guard ships fired water cannon in a disputed South China Sea shoal. Manila’s coast guard said nearly two dozen Filipino fishing boats near Sabina Shoal were targeted with water cannon and blocking manoeuvres on Friday. A small Chinese coast guard boat also cut the anchor lines of several Filipino boats, endangering their crews, it said.

“The PCG calls on the Chinese Coast Guard to adhere to internationally recognised standards of conduct, prioritising the preservation of life at sea over pretensions of law enforcement that jeopardize the lives of innocent fishermen,” Manila’s coast guard said in a statement. China’s embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside office hours. On Friday, China’s coast guard said it had driven away multiple Philippine vessels and taken “control measures”. That statement, Philippine coast guard spokesperson Jay Tarriela said on Saturday, was an admission of wrongdoing.

“They admitted this evil wrongdoing to ordinary Filipino fishermen,” Tarriela said by phone. The Philippine coast guard vessels it deployed to aid the injured fishermen were also blocked repeatedly from reaching Sabina Shoal. “Despite these unprofessional and unlawful interferences, the PCG successfully reached the fishermen this morning and provided immediate medical attention to the injured, along with essential supplies,” the statement said. Sabina Shoal, which China refers to as Xianbin Reef and the Philippines as the Escoda Shoal, lies in the Philippine exclusive economic zone 150 km (95 miles) west of Palawan province.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea, a waterway carrying more than $3 trillion of annual commerce. The areas it claims cut into the exclusive economic zones of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. An international arbitral tribunal ruled in 2016 that Beijing’s sweeping claims had no basis under international law, a decision China rejects.

China’s military said on Saturday (November 1, 2025) it monitored and tracked a joint patrol organised by the Philippines in the disputed South China Sea on October 30 and October 31.

Washington and Manila have beefed up military cooperation, unveiling plans on Friday (October 31, 2025) to form a new joint task force for areas including the South China Sea, a conduit for more than $3 trillion of annual ship-borne commerce.

Tian Junli, a spokesperson of the Southern Theater Command of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, said the patrol, with unnamed partners, “seriously undermined regional peace and stability”.

He called the Philippines “a troublemaker” in the region.

“The theater command forces remain on high alert and will resolutely safeguard national territorial sovereignty and
maritime rights and interests,” Mr. Tian added in a statement.

The Philippine embassy in Beijing did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

The Armed Forces of Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and the United States held a drill in the South China Sea on October 30 and 31.

The U.S. 7th Fleet said the exercise aimed to demonstrate “a collective commitment to strengthen regional and international cooperation in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific”.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea, including parts claimed by Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

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

China’s Coast Guard accused a Philippine ship of deliberately ramming one of its vessels on Tuesday (September 16, 2025) near Scarborough Shoal, a disputed territory that both countries claim in the South China Sea.

A Coast Guard statement said more than 10 Philippine government ships coming from various directions entered the waters around the shoal, which is called Huangyan island in Chinese. It said it deployed water cannons against the vessels.

The encounter came six days after China announced it was designating part of Scarborough Shoal as a national nature reserve.

There was no immediate comment from the Philippines. The government in Manila said last week it was filing a diplomatic protest against the designation of a nature reserve at what it calls Bajo de Masinloc.

China and the Philippines have clashed repeatedly around outcroppings in the South China Sea, which China claims almost in its entirety. The two countries are among several that have competing claims to territory in the waters, which are of strategic importance and home to valuable fishing grounds.

The Chinese Coast Guard statement blamed the Philippines for Tuesday’s (September 16) collision, calling its actions both provocative and egregious.

Several friendly countries have backed the Philippines on the nature reserve.

A statement from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the Chinese action “yet another coercive move to advance sweeping territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea at the expense of its neighbours.”

Great Britain and Australia expressed concern about the announcement in social media posts.

The Canadian Embassy in the Philippines said: “We oppose attempts to use environmental protection as a way to take control over the disputed Scarborough Shoal.”