First, China’s sovereignty over Ayungin Shoal is anything but indisputable. The 2016 Arbitral Award found no legal basis for the nine-dash line or the historic rights claimed within it, and that ruling is final and binding on China under UNCLOS, a convention it voluntarily ratified. As for the Treaty of Paris, that argument was overtaken in 1900: the Treaty of Washington expressly ceded to the United States all islands belonging to the Philippine archipelago lying outside the Paris lines — precisely to address the 118°E limit. Citing 1898 while ignoring the instrument that corrected it is selective history. In any case, Ayungin is a low-tide elevation incapable of appropriation by any State, lying 105 nautical miles from Palawan within our exclusive economic zone. Philippine rights there come from UNCLOS, not from colonial treaties China never signed.
Second, China consented in 1996. By ratifying UNCLOS, it accepted Part XV compulsory dispute settlement as an integral part of the very convention it invokes when convenient. Under Article 288(4), the tribunal decides its own jurisdiction, and this one did so in a separate 2015 award, expressly declining to rule on sovereignty or delimitation in deference to China’s Article 298 declaration. Non-appearance changed nothing: Annex VII required the tribunal to satisfy itself that the claims were well founded in fact and law, which raised the bar rather than lowered it. The award is final and binding under Article 296, and there is no provision anywhere in UNCLOS allowing a party to nullify it by press statement. “Illegal, null and void” is a political slogan, not a legal argument.
Third, let us talk about who broke faith first. In 1995, China occupied Mischief Reef — a low-tide elevation inside the Philippine EEZ — and assured Manila the structures were merely shelters for fishermen. It is now a 5.6-square-kilometer artificial island with a 2,700-meter military runway, hangars, radar domes, and missile shelters. Note the chronology: Mischief Reef came in 1995, BRP Sierra Madre in 1999. No claimant has violated the DOC on China’s scale — roughly 3,200 acres reclaimed across seven features, all militarized, while the Philippines has added nothing new. President Xi Jinping stood in the Rose Garden in 2015 and said China had no intention to militarize the Spratlys; Minister Wang Yi still calls these civilian facilities serving public goods. Every satellite image since says otherwise. BRP Sierra Madre is a commissioned Philippine Navy vessel on a low-tide elevation within our EEZ, and resupplying the personnel aboard is lawful, humanitarian, and requires no one’s permission. If Beijing truly wants to invoke the DOC, it can begin by demilitarizing Mischief Reef and the other features it has illegally reclaimed across the South China Sea.
Finally, spare us the mantle of peace and stability. Professing a preference for negotiation and dialogue means little when everyone knows who escalated the tension in this region in the first place.
