If it is true that the BRP Lake Caliraya that is to be sunk during the Balikatan 2024 military exercise is Chinese-made, then its selection for that purpose had nothing to do with any association with Beijing.

The Navy was responding to an editorial on Chinese media, in the Global Times, that called out the scheduled sinking of the ship off Laoag, Ilocos Norte as one of the main events in this year’s iteration of Balikatan between the Philippines and United States militaries.

This “approach of trying to have it both ways has turned Manila into a joke in the region and is an example of its opportunistic behavior in the entire South China Sea issue,” the editorial said.

“However, they are attempting to cover it up and refuse to acknowledge it, making the farcical claim that it is not intentional,” it added.

Navy spokesperson for the West Philippine Sea, Commodore Roy Vincent Trinidad, said they would check if a Chinese firm had indeed built the ship.

“We have to check. If this is a China-made vessel, there’s no meaning to that. It’s not complicated; it’s coincidental,” Trinidad said in a press conference on Tuesday at Philippine Navy headquarters on Roxas Boulevard, Manila.

He said the BRP Lake Caliraya was procured from the Philippine National Oil Company (PNOC), adding that most of the country’s decommissioned older ships were from the US.

“The process to get a clearance to use it for a sinking exercise is quite long and tedious so it should be approved by the US. This one (BRP Lake Caliraya) we bought it from the PNOC,” he said.

Meanwhile, Vice Admiral Toribio Adaci Jr., Philippine Navy Flag Officer-in-Command (FOIC), said the Lake Caliraya was an old oil tanker, formerly known as the MT Lapu-Lapu.

“There’s no issue with that. The vessel has been in use by the Philippines for a long time so any attachment to China — if ever there was any — it doesn’t matter at all,” Adaci said.

The Navy chief underscored that decommissioned old vessels are usually used as targets in “any ship sinking activity conducted” worldwide.

“It is the same as what we are doing with the BRP Lake Caliraya,” he added.

Trinidad said the Chinese media raising the issue of which country built the Caliraya was just part of Beijing’s efforts to control the “battle of messaging” as it asserts its sovereignty over the South China Sea.

“I didn’t even know that it was made in China. If that message came from the other side of the fence, that should be part of the narrative to sow intrigue internally,” he said. “It is a battle of messaging, so every Filipino has to understand the right messages here.”

The BRP Lake Caliraya was formerly the (motor tanker) M/T Lapu-Lapu of the PNOC Shipping and Transport Corp. that was donated to the Navy on 26 March 2014.

“This is an old tanker. We commissioned it to support the conduct of our naval operations since it is an old tanker. But because we can no longer… we found it appropriate for decommissioning so as not to incur too much expense on its repair and maintenance,” Adaci said.