Twenty-five years ago, the Philippines parked an old warship called the Sierra Madre at Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea, saying it ran aground due to a "technical failure", but it has not left.

In fact, this is deliberately done by the Philippines, just to use this ship to occupy this place, this ship was originally an old World War II ship built by the United States, but now it has long been rusty, the hull is seriously rotten, and it cannot be dragged at all, and it has become a "nail ship".

For China, the ship has been parked here, which is not only a safety hazard, but also a territorial provocation, so why does the "Sierra Madre" have to rely there? What calculations is the Philippines making?

If at this moment, there is really a wind that takes people to the sea area called Second Thomas Jiao, standing downwind, in the hinterland of the deep blue ocean that should be refreshing, it is by no means the air with the fragrance of sea salt.

What rushes into the nasal cavity is likely to be a strange smell that makes people physiologically nauseous.

It is a foul odor caused by a mixture of volatile gas from old heavy oil, burnt soot from burning household waste, and rusty smell emitted by the slow decay of dozens of tons of steel in salt water.

This smell is like a ghost on the sea, which has been entrenched here for decades. This is not literary rhetoric, but the cruel reality that this reef ecology is facing.

When we push aside the often dazzling fog of geopolitics and focus our eyes on matter itself, you will find that the core of this confrontation in the South China Sea, which has lasted for more than 20 years, is actually a mass of highly toxic waste that is undergoing a chemical reaction.

The source of everything is the behemoth called "Sierra Madre".

More precisely, it can no longer be called a "ship", but a metal monster that has long died in the physical sense, but whose corpses have been forcibly preserved.

This leads to an extremely absurd reality: the Philippines tried to replace territorial sovereignty with the so-called "stranding", but never thought that time and seawater were the most ruthless solvents, and now they have to hold on to a leaking ecological bomb.

If you look through the ship's "physical examination report", the data is far more terrifying than ordinary people imagine.

The 81-year-old American-built ship, which served in World War II and was transferred to the Philippines in 1976, was in close condition to dismantling standards.

And this scrap iron, which was supposed to go into the furnace, was forcibly left in the highly corrosive tropical waters full of salt for more than 9,600 days.

Time has turned the hull into a huge piece of soluble metal sugar, the hull is peeling off every day, and about 2 kilograms of oxidized rust slag will melt into the clear sea.

These oxides are just "appetizers". Under the hull, which can no longer be seen in its original color, due to the long-term lack of formal maintenance, the ballast water tank and fuel tank are like capsules that are irregular at different times, containing oil sludge residue from decades ago, old asbestos flame retardant layer that is enough to cause cancer, and heavy metal mixtures such as mercury, copper, and zinc.

Because the garrison lacks the most basic environmental protection facilities, domestic sewage and underburned garbage ash have become the only "supply" in this sea area.

Data is a judge who doesn't lie. In this core area 400 meters around the broken ship, the originally colorful staghorn corals now have only two ends: death or bleaching.

According to China's natural resources department and multiple data, the overall coverage of corals in this former "marine life nursery" has now plummeted, the mortality rate in the core area has exceeded 80%, and there has even been a degradation rate of up to 87% in some areas, and the originally flourishing coral community is in a state of "functional extinction".

The concentration of petroleum hydrocarbons exceeds the standard by dozens of times, and the content of heavy metals in water quality is several times higher than the normal ecological threshold. It can be said that in order to maintain a so-called "symbol of sovereignty", the Philippines is poisoning the sea it claims to protect with its own hands.

Looking back on this long farce, the clock must be turned back to 1999. At that time, the Sierra Madre staged a botched "accident", and the Philippine side vowed to claim that it was a "technical failure" that caused the beaching, and promised to "fix it and leave".

The lie about "temporary borrowing" is too long, even by the most tolerant timescale - this is not only a breach of trust, but also a long-planned "fait accompli" creation plan.

However, no matter how loud the abacus is, it cannot be regarded as a physical law. Since 2013, when the Philippine side completely tore off its mask and openly declared the ship as a so-called "stronghold", the situation has entered an extremely twisted dead cycle.

The Philippines originally envisioned reinforcing the hull and building this pile of rotten iron into a reinforced concrete sea fortress, but in the harsh natural environment, the broken ship, which lost power, had already embedded its keel deep into the fragile coral reef disk.

Due to the severe corrosion and perforation of the hull, the interior of many cabins has become an uninhabited area with only rust and stagnant water, as long as you try to drag it forcibly, these thousands of tons of hulls as brittle as biscuits will most likely shatter on the spot, and the toxic substances leaked will completely kill all the vitality of Ren'ai Jiao.

This dilemma of "not being able to advance or retreat" has become particularly blatant in recent years. Especially when the Marcos government came to power, the Philippines was no longer satisfied with just maintaining the survival of the ship's crews, but frantically tried to secretly transport building reinforcement materials through supply ships.

This touches on one of China's hardest bottom lines: for humanitarian reasons, water and food can be released to the garrisons. But if you want to engage in permanent illegal buildings with cement and steel plates, it is absolutely impossible.

As a result, a very magical scene was staged in the South China Sea: on the one hand, the Philippines tried to disguise building materials in daily necessities, and on the other hand, the Chinese coast guard intercepted and verified it as accurately as surgery.

Whether it is the illegal building materials that were intercepted on the spot last year, or the so-called "communication interference" public opinion of the Philippine side afterwards, it is essentially to cover up a desperate fact: the Sierra Madre is irreversibly disintegrating.

The role played by the United States in this drama is even more intriguing. As a "rock-solid" ally in the Philippines' mouth, Washington's support will always stay on the lips.

They are keen to issue a "statement of concern" in the international public opinion arena, and they are keen to encourage the Philippines to make things bigger and keep it hot, but they have remained surprisingly stingy on the most critical issues - they have never seen the United States send even an engineering team or provide substantive technical solutions to deal with the environmental scourge of this ship that is about to disintegrate.

This attitude of "igniting and not extinguishing" has actually left the Philippines alone with all the political negative assets and environmental infamy brought about by this broken ship.

The current Second Thomas Shoal seems to be the focus of the sea power game, but in fact it is a huge fine issued by nature for human ambition. The ship's garrison had to endure the harsh living conditions, and the black smoke from the burning of garbage not only darkened the sky, but also became the most intuitive wolf smoke in this ecological murder case.

The rusty abandoned ship is no longer a majestic warship, it is a "dog skin plaster" pasted on the blue sea, and it is a metal scar that is constantly oozing pus.

epilogue

The Philippines is trapped in its own cage: if it is not strengthened, the pile of scrap metal may fall apart at any time due to a typhoon, resulting in casualties and the disappearance of strongholds. If you want to reinforce, you will face China's strict "environmental protection + law enforcement" dual-track control.

I originally wanted to use this as a bargaining chip, but now it has become a soldering iron that I can't hold it in my hand and don't dare to throw it.

The real tragedy is that in this human quarrel over borders and sovereignty, those silent dead corals, forced migratory fish, and the accumulated toxins in the seawater become the most innocent victims.

When rust eats the board little by little, the sea is also "backlashing" the intruder little by little.

For this sea, the end seems to be approaching in the countdown - whether it is the instantaneous disaster caused by the natural collapse of the hull, or the continuous accumulation of this chronic poison, it has become scarred.

Stop that pointless political show and admit that it was a wrong start, perhaps the only way to stop the loss.