Scarborough Shoal: Phl facts vs Beijing fiction

Today is China’s deadline to answer the Philippine case against its invasion of Scarborough Shoal. Beijing’s communist despots likely will snub the U.N. International Tribunal on Law of the Sea. Days ago they blathered alibis why. One is that they hold “historic right” over Scarborough – a claim they do not substantiate to the world or to their own people. Another is that they merely are “retaking” the shoal that the Philippines “seized” in the 1970s. Third, most absurd, arbitration is a Philippine act of “pressure.”

Yet, as a Chinese proverb goes, “Paper can’t wrap up fire.” The truth will out, despite cover-ups. Prof. Jay L. Batongbacal, PhD, director of the University of the Philippines Institute of Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea, shows this in a recent lecture, “Bajo de Masinloc (Scarborough Shoal): Less Known Facts vs. Published Fiction.” Following is the first of a three-part condensation.

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Bajo de Masinloc is a triangular atoll, 10 miles wide, 124 nautical miles west of Luzon. Rocks and reefs barely protrude 0.3 to 3 meters from the surface at low tide. South Rock, highest and largest, can bear only two men, much more vegetation. Enclosed is a lagoon 9 to 13 meters deep, but with patches as shallow as 1.7.

The atoll is one of the Philippines’ oldest known fishing grounds, published in maps among its natural resources. Recent studies confirm it to be a shelter, migration path, and food source of fisheries in the South China Sea. Satellite images show chlorophyll concentrations in the water, that is, plankton, base of the marine food chain: where plankton go, fish follow. No signs of petroleum deposits. The world shares interest in Bajo de Masinloc for freedom of sea-air navigation: commerce, communication, and surveillance. It is strategic to Philippine environment, defense and food security.

The Philippines views with concern China’s blockade of Bajo de Masinloc. Though technically not a naval action, it has the same effect: China’s Coast Guard keeps a 24-hour daily presence that stops Philippine private and government ships from coming near the shoal. Filipino fishing vessels that did last year were driven away with water cannons.

Beijing asserts sovereignty over the shoal as “Huangyan Island.” It claims that Chinese explorers discovered Bajo de Masinloc in the 13th century during the Yuan Dynasty. That’s fiction, as Justice Antonio T. Carpio points out. “Huangyan Island” never appears as such in any of the ancient maps of China, even after the Yuan Dynasty. In “Hun Yi Jiang Li Dai Guo Du Zi Tu (Map of the Entire Empire and Frontier Countries),” made by Quan Jin in 1402 based on maps from the Yuan Period, the Philippines is included in the lower part. It appears only as a collection of small vague patches, the largest of which are Mindoro and parts of Palawan. Huangyan Island is not indicated at all.

In “Dong Han Hai Yi Tu (Barbarian Countries of Southeast Seas),” by Lo Hsung-Hsien, 15th century, again based on Yuan Dynasty maps, the Philippines appears as small blobs with markings for May-i (Mindoro) and Sansu (likely Calamian and Busuanga, Palawan). Again, Huangyan is nowhere to be found.

Perusal of these maps of China based on information from the Yuan Dynasty leads to certain conclusions. One, China of the Yuan period had little information of the Philippines and its largest islands in terms of location, size, or shape. Chinese cartographers did not give the Philippines as much importance as Japan, Taiwan, and Hainan. Two, China at the time did not have, accurate knowledge of the largest islands of our archipelago. If it could not determine the location, size, or shape of Luzon, then much less could it identify the infinitesimal rocks and reef of Bajo de Masinloc.

Chinese records indicate the reverse. As early as the 7th and 10th centuries, ancestors of the Filipinos established contact with China under the Tang Dynasty 700 years before the Yuan. China knew that coastal seafarers inhabited the islands of the Philippines. Chinese annals such as the “Chu Fan Chi” of Chau Ju Kuo speak in fear of the slave-raiding expeditions of the Visayans, reaching as far north as the coast of Fujian Province. It was Philippine ancestors, not Chinese, who were the masters of the Southeast Asian seas.

Chinese records also speak of lucrative trade in metals, weapons, musical instruments, and jewelry as far south as Butuan, then a major port. Port polities flourished at a time when China withdrew into itself and abandoned trade with the outside world. The profitability of that trade made Chinese traders lobby with their reclusive government to open up to Southeast Asia. Yuan Dynasty mariners came to the Philippines because they knew that our ancestors were there. Those were not journeys of discovery but trade with known peoples and places.

“Huangyan Island” was not on Chinese maps of the South China Sea until 1983. A feature is indicated for the first time in a 1935 map, included by Beijing in the original version of the 9-dashed line. That map (containing 11 dashes) gave the reef a Sinicized name for Scarborough. The very first name given for a place “discovered” in ancient times was the Chinese version of an English name, given by English cartographers. This evidences that, as late as 1947, China did not know of the shoal, and only became aware of it from British Admiralty charts.

Bajo de Masinloc did not get a Chinese designation until renamed Minzhu Reef. Problem is, it is listed as part of Nansha Qundao, or Spratly Islands, a distinct group 260 nautical miles away. It is difficult to conceive of a proper, effective naming of a place when its location does not appear to be known. Beijing did not call the place Huangyan Island until after 1983, nearly 40 years after it sent its first recorded hydrographic survey to the area without informing the Philippines.

The reason for its designation as an “island” is that it is the only feature above water in the imaginary Zhongshe Qundao that supposedly lies between the Paracels and the Philippines.

The only time Beijing attempted to exercise any kind of jurisdiction over Bajo de Masinloc was in 1994. It issued a permit to a ham radio operator to set up an amateur station on the shoal, igniting the present day dispute over it. (Full text of Dr. Batongbacal’s lecture, with photos and maps, in the website of the Institute for Maritime and Oceanic Affairs: imoa.ph.)

(Next: The Solifity of the Philippine Claim)

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