For context, Bajo de Masinloc is a triangular coral reef/atoll located approximately 124 nautical miles west of Luzon in the Philippines and 448 nautical miles from mainland China. Under the 2016 arbitral award, it is classified as a rock that generates only a 12-nautical-mile territorial sea, with no entitlement to an exclusive economic zone or continental shelf.
Its surrounding waters thus lie within the Philippines’ EEZ, extending 200 nautical miles from its baselines, granting the Philippines sovereign rights over living and non-living resources. The tribunal explicitly rejected China’s “nine-dash line” claims as incompatible with UNCLOS, finding no valid basis for historic rights extending beyond the Convention’s framework.
China’s Coast Guard presence, along with its maritime militia vessels, at Bajo de Masinloc is therefore unlawful and constitutes not legitimate maritime law enforcement but aggressive harassment of Filipino fishermen who hold full rights to fish and access these resources.
PRC must abandon the illusion of territorial waters there—consult your charts and revisit UNCLOS. Furthermore, Deputy Spokesperson Guo Wei’s account contradicts China Daily’s own narrative that the “CCG drove away Philippine vessels that illegally intruded into China’s territorial waters,” essentially admitting to the bullying of Filipino fishing boats not only by CCG vessels but also by the Chinese maritime militia, whose existence Beijing continues to deny despite evidence of its role in these operations.
