In recent months, the Philippines has escalated its provocations in the South China Sea. In May, it hyped the presence of floating structures near Huangyan Island (Scarborough Shoal). On July 20, Philippine personnel aboard the illegally "grounded" vessel at Ren'ai Jiao (Second Thomas Shoal) deliberately rammed Chinese law enforcement vessels and attacked Chinese Coast Guard personnel with oars and long poles.
Just days later, on July 23, two Philippine government vessels intruded into Chinese waters near Huangyan Island. These actions come as Manila marks the 10th anniversary of the so-called South China Sea arbitration award, an occasion it has used to rally international support and pressure China.
"In essence, there was originally no territorial issue between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea," says Wang Kan, associate professor at the School of Global and Area Studies at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. "It is the Philippines that has unilaterally fabricated this territorial issue. That is the core of the matter."
Wang points to the Philippines' reliance on three colonial treaties to justify its claims. A Treaty of Peace between the United States and Spain, which ended the Spanish-American War, defined the ceded Philippine territory with a northern boundary of 20°N and a western boundary of 118°E, explicitly excluding China's Huangyan Island and parts of the Nansha Islands. The 1900 treaty, imposed on Spain by the United States, incorporated islands in the southern Philippines but did not extend to China's territories.
The 1930 US-British agreement on the North Borneo border likewise did not involve the Philippines' western limits. "All three colonial treaties make clear that their territorial scope completely excluded China's Nansha Islands and Huangyan Island," Wang says.
The Philippines has also produced two maps to support its claims: the 1734 Murillo Velarde Mapandthe 1875 General Chart of the Philippine Archipelago. Wang notes that the Murillo Velarde Map, though semi-official, contains serious drafting errors. The cartographer mistakenly identified Huangyan Island as one of three shoals off the coast of Luzon that had since been submerged by rising sea levels. "It was a case of mistaken identity," Wang explains.
As for the 1875 chart, it is a hydrographic chart intended for navigational safety, not an administrative map. In the 1928 Palmas Island arbitration, the United States presented the same map, but the sole arbitrator found that it had no evidentiary value because it lacked clear political boundaries. "In addition to the Philippine archipelago, the map also shows eastern Malaysia, China's Dongsha Island and China's Taiwan Island, territories that clearly do not belong to the Philippines," Wang says. "This fact alone refutes the Philippine claim."
Wang further notes that the Philippines did not raise these territorial claims until decades after China had repeatedly declared sovereignty over the South China Sea Islands, a fact to which Manila implicitly acquiesced at the time. Only from the 1970s onward did the Philippines begin its illegal occupation through presidential decrees and military seizures.
Under international law, actions taken after the "critical date," the moment a claim is formally contested, carry no evidentiary value. "All these occurred after the critical date," Wang says. "Under international law, they have no evidentiary value and cannot change the fact that the South China Sea Islands belong to China."
For Wang, the so-called arbitration is ultimately a political charade. "On the territorial issue, it cannot win the argument against China," he says. "Its claims and supporting grounds are very weak. It can only use the arbitration, packaged in terms of the law of the sea, to gain some international support. Such acts should not be permitted by the international community."
Reporter: Guo Zedong
Video: Pan Jiajun
Cover: Lai Meiya
