Trillanes with Aquino (left); Del Rosario (right) in a photo from the 2017 annual report of Hong Kong-based First Pacific, of which he is a director. Controlled by an Indonesian, some 30 percent of First Pacific’s shares are held by US investors.
Rather than sending its own warships though, China deployed several CMS vessels to escort more than 90 Chinese fishing boats to the shoal in, ironically for us, a seaborne “People Power”-of-sorts tactic against our ships. For seven weeks, there was a standoff, with both Chinese and Philippine vessels refusing to leave the area.