For this week’s season premiere of 60 Minutes, correspondent Cecilia Vega and a producing team intended to report on tensions between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea. They did not expect to end up in the middle of an international incident themselves, seeing China’s intimidation tactics first-hand.
The plan was for the 60 Minutes team to accompany the Philippine Coast Guard on a routine mission to resupply its ships and stations. Vega and team boarded the Cape Engaño, a Philippine Coast Guard ship, around 8 p.m. and prepared for their trip to Sabina Shoal, an atoll that lies 93 miles west of the Philippine province of Palawan.
Around 4 a.m. the next day, the 60 Minutes team was woken up by a loud bang, followed by an alarm. A Chinese ship had rammed the Cape Engaño, the Philippine crew informed them, telling them to put on life jackets and stay put inside their cabins.
As 60 Minutes producers Andy Court and Jacqueline Williams assessed the situation, several possible scenarios came to their minds.
“Are we taking on water? Are we going to sink out here in the middle of the South China Sea?” Williams recalls thinking. “I’m seeing Coast Guard personnel standing by the door, guarding the door. So we’re thinking, ‘Are the Chinese about to board our ship?'”
On the advice of veteran 60 Minutes cameraman Don Lee, the crew grabbed their passports and made a plan to secure the footage they had been shooting on board, in the event that Chinese sailors did board the Cape Engaño and attempted to take the cameras’ digital memory cards.
“We had to make sure that when we got off that ship, that we had that footage and we could show the world what it was that we were seeing,” Williams said.
Once back on deck, the 60 Minutes crew saw the three-and-a-half-foot hole torn into the Cape Engaño’s hull. As daylight dawned, they also saw how many Chinese ships surrounded the Philippine ship, bows pointed at it. During the standoff, the crew aboard the Cape Engaño was unable to access internet or cell service, and the Filipinos said it was likely because the Chinese were jamming their communications.
“I’ve been working for this show for a long time,” Court said. “I’ve been in a lot of situations that were dangerous and tense in some way. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this vulnerable. You’re completely isolated out there. You’re completely surrounded.”
As the Filipinos tried to negotiate a way out, they were forced to abandon the first stop on their resupply mission.
The incident was one of many between China and the Philippines during increasing tensions in the last two years. An international tribunal at the Hague in 2016 defined the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, a 200-mile area that includes Sabina Shoal and the area where the Cape Engaño was rammed. China does not recognize the ruling and continues to claim sovereignty over most of the South China Sea, through which more than $3 trillion worth of global trade passes annually.
Over the past few months, China has rammed Philippine boats, sprayed them with water cannons, and blocked their safe passage within the Philippine EEZ. The incident 60 Minutes witnessed on the Cape Engaño signaled a movement of the conflict closer to the Philippine shore than ever before.
China has blamed the Philippines for the tense events at sea. Within hours of the ramming of the Cape Engaño, the Chinese publicized their own version of events. It was the Filipinos, they said in a published video, who rammed the Chinese Coast Guard ship. The video highlighted the faces of the 60 Minutes crew on deck, accusing them of being used as part of a Philippine propaganda campaign.
“The idea that the Filipinos at 4 in the morning could think of nothing better to do than to ram a much larger Coast Guard vessel, a vessel nearly twice their size, seems a little implausible to me,” 60 Minutes producer Andy Court said.
According to correspondent Cecilia Vega, the 60 Minutes team was there simply to document what they witnessed and to show the world what the Filipinos routinely experience.
“The intimidation is very real when you see it up close,” she said. “What you also see, and it takes going out there to see this for yourself, is just how volatile this situation is.”
The video above was produced by Brit McCandless Farmer and edited by Scott Rosann.
