Footage of military drills misrepresented as 'the Philippines blowing up Chinese ship'

The video was shared on Facebook on June 22, 2024 by a page called "Atin ang West Philippine Sea (West Philippine Sea is ours)" and captioned: "China Philippines war latest news...China's ship blown up and sunk."

The West Philippine Sea is Manila's label for waters immediately to its west in the South China Sea.

The footage showed a ship launching a missile, followed by aerial footage of another ship exploding after being hit. The text above and below the video read "Ship from China blown up. The Philippines is strong."

A narrator speaking in Tagalog can be heard saying at the beginning of the clip: "An old China-made ship was sunk in the West Philippine Sea during the Balikatan Exercises of the Philippines and America." 

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Screenshot of the false Facebook reel taken on July 12, 2024

Tensions over the strategic South China Sea, a key passage for sea-borne trade, have soared in the past 18 months following a series of escalating confrontations between Philippine and Chinese ships.

The most serious happened on June 17, when China Coast Guard personnel wielding knives, sticks and an axe surrounded and boarded three Philippine Navy boats during a resupply mission to Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly Islands. 

While the countries agreed in early July to "de-escalate tensions" over the disputed reefs and waters, a top security official in Manila said -- eight years after an international ruling against China in the territorial contest -- that the archipelago will "stand our ground." 

The video was also shared on Facebook with a similar false claim here, here, here, and here. 

Users left comments suggesting they believed Manila started a war against China.

"We don't want war, we want peace. Stop this, please," said one. 

"Philippine leaders are so stupid for starting a war when we're just relying on the United States and other countries to help us," another wrote. 

In fact, the ship was blown up as part of military drills and the vessel is owned by the Philippine Navy.

Military exercises

Multiple keyword searches led to the original video, published by local media organisation News5 on its official YouTube channel on May 8 (archived link). 

The video was titled: "BRP Lake Caliraya has sunk in a maritime strike exercise between the Philippines and America in the West Philippine Sea (WPS)."

The original YouTube video also featured text above the video that read "BRP Lake Caliraya was sunk in the "West Philippine Sea".

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video shared in the false posts (left) and the original News5 YouTube video (right):

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Screenshot comparison of the video shared in the false posts (left) and the original News5 YouTube video (right)

The Tagalog-language caption read: "The Armed Forces of the Philippines shared footage showing the firing of a missile hitting and sinking the decommissioned China-made ship BRP Lake Caliraya in the waters near Laoag, Ilocos Norte. 

It added that the sinking was part of a maritime strike exercise during the annual Balikatan -- "shoulder to shoulder" in Filipino -- military drills between Philippines and US troops held between April to May 2024.

The war games were concentrated in the northern and western parts of the Philippines, near the potential flashpoints of the South China Sea and Taiwan.

The ship sunk during the exercise -- the BRP Lake Caliraya -- was the Philippine Navy's first oil tanker, which the country's navy said was constructed in China in 2007 and was first used by the Philippine National Oil Company, according to reports by local media including Rappler and GMA News (archived here and here). 

China's state-run Global Times newspaper described the sinking of the Chinese-made tanker as "a ludicrous performance by Manila, but the Philippine Navy said its use was "coincidental" (archived links here and here).

The footage was also posted on the Philippine military's official Facebook page and shared with other news outlets including AFP (archived link).

Further keyword searches found that the narration used in the misleading post was taken from another News5 segment about the drills, published on its official TikTok account on May 8, 2024 (archived link).