Sabina Shoal, also known as Escoda Shoal in the Philippines and Xianbin Jiao in China, lies 75 nautical miles from Palawan Island, well within the Philippines' 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone. The atoll covers 115 square kilometers, its eastern half consisting of reefs that break the surface at low tide, its western half submerged banks enclosing a lagoon. The feature is claimed by China, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Philippines holds sovereign rights over the natural resources within its EEZ, but UNCLOS does not resolve the underlying sovereignty question. The 2016 arbitration by the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled that China has no legal basis for historic rights within its nine-dash line, a ruling China has refused to recognize.

Tensions at Sabina Shoal are not new. In 1995, shortly after occupying Mischief Reef, China installed three navigation buoys near the shoal. The Philippines confiscated them. In April 2021, a joint patrol by the Philippine Coast Guard and Bureau of Fisheries found seven Chinese maritime militia vessels anchored at the atoll. After repeated challenges from the coast guard, the militia ships departed. But these earlier incidents were skirmishes compared to what came in 2024. That April, the Philippine Coast Guard stationed the BRP Teresa Magbanua, a 97-meter patrol vessel, at the shoal, alleging that China was conducting reclamation activities. China responded by deploying its 12,000-ton, 165-meter coast guard ship, nicknamed "The Monster" for its size, dwarfing every Philippine vessel in the area.

On Philippine Independence Day in 2024, Rear Admiral Armando Balilo of the Philippine Coast Guard held a flag-raising ceremony aboard the Teresa Magbanua at Sabina Shoal, claiming the feature for the Philippines. China promised "strong measures." The measures arrived in August. On August 19, the Cape Engano and Bagacay were both rammed. On August 25, the fisheries vessel BRP Datu Sanday was surrounded by eight Chinese ships, including a People's Liberation Army Navy warship. On August 31, China Coast Guard vessel 5205 rammed the Teresa Magbanua three times: port bow, starboard quarter, then port bow again. China's coast guard claimed the Philippine ship had "deliberately collided" with the Chinese vessel. The United States, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, and the European Union condemned the attacks, demanding China stop its aggression.

The human confrontations at Sabina Shoal have an ecological parallel. In September 2023, the Philippine Coast Guard reported "massive damage" to the shoal's marine environment and coral reef. The destruction was attributed to dumping, illegal fishing, and land reclamation activity by the Chinese maritime militia, part of the broader pattern sometimes called China's "Great Wall of Sand." The damage is not abstract. Coral reefs in the South China Sea support fisheries that millions of people across Southeast Asia depend on for food and income. Destroying reef ecosystems to assert territorial claims undermines the very resources that make these waters worth claiming. At Sabina Shoal, the irony is concrete: crushed dead corals lie heaped on a reef that was once alive.

By late August 2024, up to 71 Chinese coast guard ships and other vessels had been counted at Sabina Shoal in a single week. China warned it might tow the Teresa Magbanua away if the Philippines anchored there again, though analysts noted the practical difficulty of towing a 97-meter ship and the risk of drawing the United States directly into the conflict. The Philippine government, for its part, considered extending the provisional agreement it had reached with China over Second Thomas Shoal to cover Sabina Shoal as well. The pattern is familiar from every South China Sea flashpoint: confrontation, provisional agreement, breakdown, renewed confrontation. What distinguishes Sabina Shoal is the escalating physicality of the encounters. Ramming ships is a different category of action than blocking supply boats or shining lasers. How much further the escalation can go before someone miscalculates is the question no one in Manila or Beijing wants to answer.