Second of a series on the South China Sea disputes
PRESIDENT Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. made a fool of himself at the recent Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) meetings when he lambasted China for its vessel’s “dangerous maneuvers” in the “West Philippine Sea” that have endangered Filipino sailors’ lives.
None of the Asean leaders supported his angry stance, with the consensus calling for “internal resolution” rather than hostile criticism. At the very least, the Asean meeting was not the venue to hit China, to which all of the Asean countries except the Philippines the past years have become closer to diplomatically and economically.
Marcos Jr.’s tactlessness — even a breach of Asean diplomatic protocol — is due to the fact that he is so totally ignorant of our disputes with China and the nature of incidents in the South China Sea. He is told what to say, by whom or what I don’t know, and he says it, even in international venues.
He has pursued a foreign policy totally based on lies, hostile to China, the economic and military superpower in our part of the world that we should be wooing instead. Marcos is proving to be a total US puppet, in this declining superpower’s aim to alienate us and Southeast Asia from China.
Among Asean members, Vietnam, Indonesia, and partly, Malaysia, are claiming as theirs those features that China claims or has already occupied. But none of the leaders of these nations have been as hysterical as Marcos in criticizing China for “aggression” even as they have stood their ground in defending their claims.
The bare truth is that Scarborough Shoal (Bajo de Masinloc to us) — where, Marcos claims, China has been undertaking its aggressive moves — has never been part of Philippine territory. Retired justice Antonio Carpio’s claims that this so was an outright lie, as I explained in detail, with maps, in last Monday’s column.
If Carpio, the robotic Philippine Coast Guard official Jay Tarriela and his US puppet masters can disprove my claim, I will stop writing a column in this paper immediately. If they can’t, the two should sew their lips shut and never talk about our disputes with China in the South China Sea.
Ignorant
Tarriela is so ignorant about the dispute over Scarborough that he says it is unquestionably ours since it is within our exclusive economic zone (EEZ). That is so wrong: China claims it is part of its sovereign territory named Huangyan. Sovereignty is superior to claims of EEZ which is merely a maritime zone over whose resources a country exercises certain exclusive rights but not sovereignty.
Worse, the Aquino III administration in 2012 handed over Scarborough in its entirety to China when it believed US assistant secretary Kurt Campbell’s lie that the Chinese had agreed to withdraw from the area, simultaneously with the Philippine vessels. There was no such agreement, but Aquino III ordered our two vessels to leave. The Chinese stayed. When the Philippine Coast Guard tried to go back to the shoal years later, they were blocked by the China Coast Guard, as they had physical possession of the shoal without firing a single shot, a mode of establishing sovereignty allowed by international law.
Why did the US fool Aquino III and del Rosario? As the standoff lasted for weeks, the Americans became worried that they would order Philippine ships to ram the Chinese vessels, resulting in an armed conflict. This would have forced the Americans to come to their aid under the Mutual Defense Pact of 1952. But with the US midterm elections scheduled for November that year, Obama gave the order to his State Department to end the conflict ASAP, even at the expense of the Philippines. “The f—ck do I want a shooting war before elections,” Obama reportedly said.
For the Chinese and for most of the world now (except the US and its European minions), it is the Philippines that is the aggressor when it recklessly orders its coast guard to enter what has been indisputably established as Chinese territory.
Mahiya kayo! Marcos, our military establishment and Tarriela are hoping that Filipino ships are sunk by the Chinese, and Filipino sailors drown in an attempt to enter Scarborough so there would be national and international outrage against China.
Refused
The Chinese though have refused to be provoked in such a manner, shooing away our vessels with water cannons and maneuvering their ships away from Scarborough.
For all the patriotic noise about defending Scarborough Shoal, the Department of Foreign Affairs has — perhaps without realizing it — already admitted that China has achieved effective occupation of Scarborough Shoal since 2012.
The official DFA statement on our Scarborough Shoal, issued in 2008 and never changed is as follows:
“The basis of Philippine over Bajo de Masinloc is not premised on the cession by Spain of the Philippine archipelago to the United States under the Treaty of Paris. Nor is the basis premised on proximity or the fact that the rocks are within its EEZ. We have sovereignty over the shoal since the Philippines has exercised both effective occupation and effective jurisdiction over Bajo de Masinloc since its independence.”
However, those claims that do not really stand up to the facts. Although there were occasional visits by Filipinos to the shoal, and Filipino fishermen treated the area as their fishing grounds, the shoal was mainly used by US fighter jets from Subic Bay as a bombing and impact range, especially during the Vietnam War. That is hardly convincing proof of sovereignty, since all Philippine maps showed it outside the Treaty of Pairs limits. Even current school maps based on official maps that have been withdrawn from circulation show Scarborough as outside Philippine territory, which is shown in the accompanying image.
A school map I bought recently from a book store. Scarborough Shoal is outside the dashed-line legend says represents the Philippines’ territorial limits.
A school map I bought recently from a bookstore. Scarborough Shoal is outside the dashed-line that legend says represents the Philippines’ territorial limits.
One may concede that the dictator Marcos officially claimed it as Philippine its territory in his 1987 Presidential Decree 1596, with the 2009 Baselines Law reiterating this claim as one of our two “Regime of Islands” (the other being the Kalayaan Island Group).
Occupation
However, if DFA’s argument is correct that it is ours because of the principle of effective occupation, a valid claim for sovereignty under international law, the same standard compels us to now accept Chinese sovereignty: We have lost effective occupation over it since 2012, or 13 years go.
No Philippine vessel has been able to approach the shoal, and the Chinese coast guard remains unchallenged. International law honors possession, not pronouncements. A title you cannot enforce is a title you no longer hold.
The DFA’s public statements since 2012 only reinforce China’s case. In 245 notes verbales, the DFA has protested Chinese “blocking” of fishermen and “harassment” of resupply boats — but it never asserted achieving physical control. Each note admits, implicitly, that Philippine vessels are being excluded by Chinese forces. That is a confession of loss of possession.
The most damaging admission came quietly but in public. In 2020, then-Foreign secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr., replying to questions in Congress, said the Philippines “has not re-established control” over Scarborough Shoal since 2012, but “we continue to assert our rights diplomatically.” That is saying that China holds the ground while we hold the paperwork
Some Filipino officials still comfort themselves with the idea that our fishermen are “allowed” to return. In reality, they enter only with Chinese permission. Beijing issues access passes, sometimes confiscates catches, sometimes drives boats away. That is not shared use; that is a landlord granting charity to a tenant. The DFA’s acceptance of this arrangement, while calling it “diplomatic accommodation,” cements the Chinese claim of sovereignty.
The Aquino III administration made a fatal mistake in 2012 when it rushed to sue China in an international venue. It called the move “arbitration,” even if China didn’t participate in an illogical one-party arbitration. For the Chinese though, it was a declaration of hostilities, in the form of what has been called warfare through “lawfare,” and meant that the Philippines has junked bilateral negotiations to settle its territorial and maritime disputes with China.
That resulted in a debacle, for us and the US: the Chinese response to the “arbitration” was to transform their seven reefs in the Spratlys into artificial islands, on which facilities were built — airstrips and ports among others — that could transform these into military bases overnight. While occupying only reefs before 2012, the Chinese now have a chain of military bases that refuel and rearm its flotillas of warships and fleets of warplanes. That was such a tectonic shift in the balance of military power in the South China Sea — which has given the Chinese the edge in a war with the US.
Except for the US and its European Union minions out to prevent China from being a world superpower, we are the only country in the world hostile to this emerging superpower. Isn’t that so, so stupid?
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