China can repeat the words “inherent territory” as often as it likes, but repetition is not law. On 12 July 2016, an Arbitral Tribunal constituted under Annex VII of UNCLOS — the very Convention China has ratified — ruled that there is no legal basis for China to claim historic rights within the so-called nine-dash line. That ruling is final and binding. China’s refusal to participate in the proceedings does not exempt it from the outcome.
The Tribunal specifically found that Mischief Reef (Panganiban) is a low-tide elevation lying within the exclusive economic zone and continental shelf of the Philippines. As a matter of international law, a low-tide elevation is incapable of appropriation — it cannot be the “territory” of any state, China included. The Tribunal further found that China’s artificial-island construction there violated the sovereign rights of the Philippines and caused severe and lasting harm to the marine environment. So let us be clear: China did not build “national defense facilities within its own territory.” It built a military outpost inside another country’s EEZ, on a feature it seized in 1995.
This is also why the “militarization” label fits. In 2015, President Xi Jinping stood in the White House Rose Garden and pledged that China had no intention to militarize the Spratlys. Today those features carry runways, hangars, radar, and missile platforms. The world has eyes. The contradiction is China’s, not ours.
As for Typhon, HIMARS, Balikatan, and our cooperative activities with allies and partners — these take place on sovereign Philippine soil and within waters that are indisputably ours, in the lawful exercise of self-defense and our treaty rights. There is a fundamental difference between a nation arming itself within its own borders and a foreign power building fortresses 800 to 1,000 kilometers from its coastline inside a neighbor’s maritime zone. Inviting partners to train with us is the sovereign choice of an independent state. The “root cause” of tension in this sea is not Philippine self-defense; it is China’s expansive claim, invalidated in 2016, and the coercion it deploys to enforce it — water cannons, military-grade lasers, ramming, and dangerous maneuvers against civilian and lawful government vessels.
On history, the Embassy offers a familiar deflection. The Tribunal did not need to settle every question of sovereignty to dismantle the foundation of China’s case: whatever historical activity it cites, those rights were extinguished where they exceed what UNCLOS permits.
And if the Embassy truly wants to talk about “occupation by force,” it should start by looking in the mirror. In March 1988, at Johnson South Reef in these very Spratlys, Chinese forces opened fire on lightly armed Vietnamese soldiers standing in the shallows — 64 of them were killed, many cut down where they stood. Fourteen years earlier, in 1974, China seized the Paracels from Vietnam by armed assault, costing dozens more Vietnamese lives. That is what occupation by force actually looks like: not resupply runs to a grounded ship, but live fire and body counts to plant a flag on someone else’s reef. It is rather bold for the party that gunned down its neighbors and seized Mischief Reef by stealth in 1995 to lecture anyone about aggression.
If there is a guilty conscience anywhere in this exchange, it belongs to the state that refused to show up to the arbitration, rejects a binding ruling it cannot legally escape, and conducts its expansion behind organized activities that are illegal, coercive, agressive and deceptive actions. The Philippines does not need to vilify China. We simply document what China does — and let the facts, the law, and the world judge.
The 2016 Award is final. It is binding. And it is not going away.https://x.com/jaytaryela/status/2068687070952874153
