China shadows U.S. Navy ship near Sabina Shoal

China’s military said it tracked and monitored the U.S. Navy littoral combat ship USS Charleston (LCS 18) after the vessel sailed near Sabina Shoal, a disputed feature in the Spratly Islands that both China and the Philippines claim, early on Oct. 20, 2026.

The People’s Liberation Army Southern Theater Command Navy said in a statement carried by China’s state-run Global Times that the Charleston had “illegally intruded” into waters near the shoal, which China calls Xianbin Jiao, without the Chinese government’s approval, and that it dispatched forces to follow the ship. The statement did not say how close the Charleston came to the shoal, how many Chinese ships or aircraft took part, or how long the encounter lasted.

A spokesperson for the command said China holds sovereignty over the Spratly Islands, which it calls Nansha Qundao, and their adjacent waters, and called on the United States to immediately stop such activities, saying Southern Theater Command forces remain on high alert.

The U.S. Navy had not commented on the transit or said whether it was a freedom of navigation operation, the type of mission the United States uses to challenge maritime claims it considers excessive under international law.

Sabina Shoal, known in the Philippines as Escoda Shoal, lies about 140 km (87 miles) from the Philippine island of Palawan, inside the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. In 2024 it became one of the main flashpoints in the South China Sea, when Chinese and Philippine coast guard ships collided there several times during a months-long standoff over a Philippine patrol vessel anchored at the shoal.

China claims most of the South China Sea under a boundary it calls the nine-dash line. An international arbitration tribunal ruled in 2016, in a case brought by the Philippines, that China’s sweeping claims had no legal basis under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a ruling Beijing has rejected. The United States, which has a mutual defense treaty with the Philippines, does not take a position on who owns individual features but says it will keep sailing and flying wherever international law allows.

The Charleston is an Independence-class littoral combat ship, a fast, shallow-draft warship with a distinctive trimaran hull, and is forward-deployed in the Indo-Pacific. U.S. Navy ships in the region regularly operate near disputed features in the Spratly and Paracel islands, and the PLA routinely says it has tracked them and calls such transits illegal.