Caskets with anti-China messages appear in Manila, Beijing protests

Five caskets with anti-China messages appeared in Manila and surrounding areas on Friday, leading Beijing to lodge a formal protest. Philippine police are investigating, citing witness accounts and security camera footage suggesting masked individuals placed the caskets before dawn. Photos showed the caskets draped with red banners and disturbing images as if the figures within were deceased.

China and the Philippines are currently locked in territorial disputes over maritime claims in the South China Sea. Recent confrontations between their naval vessels, including one near a disputed shoal in July, resulted in at least one Philippine Navy serviceman being injured. The Chinese Embassy in Manila conveyed its condemnation of the "despicable and shameless" incident, labeling it a "blatant act of political provocation, personal attack, and intimidation and threat, of a most egregious nature."

Meanwhile, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs dismissed the act as not representative of the Philippine government's foreign relations approach or Filipino expressions of dissent. This incident follows a Chinese state-run newspaper's posting of an animated video last month depicting a Filipino as a monkey and subservient to the United States and Japan in relation to an international arbitral ruling on the South China Sea.