MANILA/BEIJING: The armed forces of five countries conducted joint maritime exercises in a portion of the South China Sea on Saturday as China carried out its own military drills in the disputed waterway.

The exercises involving the Philippines, United States, Australia, Japan and - for the first time - New Zealand took place in Manila’s exclusive economic zone and sought to improve the militaries’ interoperability, the Philippine armed forces said in a statement. Saturday’s exercises included a Philippine warship, the United States’ USS Howard, Japan’s JS Sazanami, and New Zealand’s HMNZS Aotearoa, it added.

Australia’s Department of Defense said the drills demonstrated “our collective commitment to strengthen regional and international cooperation in support of a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific”. The exercises follow a series of air and sea encounters between the Philippines and China, which have sparred over disputed areas of the South China Sea, including the Scarborough Shoal, one of Asia’s most contested features. The shoal has been occupied by China’s coast guard for more than a decade.

On Wednesday, naval vessels from New Zealand and Australia sailed through the Taiwan Strait, part of the South China Sea. China, which claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own, says it alone exercises sovereignty and jurisdiction over the strait. Both the US and Taiwan say the strait - a major trade route through which about half of global container ships pass - is an international waterway.

Australia has “consistently pressed China on peace and stability in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait”, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in a speech to the UN General Assembly on Saturday. “We have welcomed the resumption of leader and military level dialogue between the US and China,” Wong said, according to a transcript.

Chinese naval and air forces conducted patrols around a flashpoint reef in the South China Sea on Saturday, after a slew of tense encounters with the Philippines in the disputed waterway in recent months. The patrols coincided with joint exercises carried out by the United States, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the Philippines in Manila’s exclusive economic zone and within the South China Sea.

Beijing claims almost the entire South China Sea, brushing off rival claims of several Southeast Asian countries, the Philippines among them, and an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis.

Its claims include the waters around Scarborough Shoal—which Beijing seized from Manila in 2012 -- where the Chinese military’s Southern Theater Command said Saturday it held air and sea patrols.

The triangular chain of reefs and rocks is 240 kilometers (150 miles) west of the Philippines’ main island of Luzon and nearly 900 kilometers from the nearest major Chinese land mass of Hainan.

Beijing said the training activities around the shoal included “reconnaissance, early warning, and air-sea patrols”. “Certain countries outside the region are stirring up trouble in the South China Sea, creating instability in the region,” the Southern Theater Command said in a statement. — Agencies