Let us begin with geography, because geography does not lie. Bajo de Masinloc — Panatag Shoal — sits roughly 120 nautical miles from the coast of Zambales, well within the Philippines’ 200-nautical-mile Exclusive Economic Zone, and hundreds of nautical miles from the nearest Chinese coast. No amount of rebranding it as “Huangyan Dao” moves it one inch closer to China.
In 2016, an Arbitral Tribunal constituted under UNCLOS — the very Convention you invoke — ruled that China’s nine-dash line has no basis in international law. It further found that China acted unlawfully when its government vessels blocked Filipino fishermen from fishing there after 2012. These are not Philippine talking points. They are findings of fact and law that China remains bound by and continues to defy.
Now, the truth about 2012. The Chinese vessels at Panatag were not engaged in “normal operations.” They were caught with illegally harvested giant clams, corals, and live sharks — protected species — inside Philippine waters. What you call a “rescue of fishermen” was, in plain terms, the protection of poachers from lawful action in the Philippines’ own maritime zone.
You ask why Filipino fishermen go to these waters. The answer predates the People’s Republic itself: their fathers and grandfathers fished there. Bajo de Masinloc is their inheritance, not a “publicity stunt.” What requires explanation is not why Filipinos fish in Filipino waters — it is why China fires water cannons at them for doing so.
As for “one-way transparency”: transparency only embarrasses those with something to hide. We document what happens at sea because it happens. China can end this transparency tomorrow — simply by ceasing the acts we are forced to record.
Bajo de Masinloc is not Beijing’s to name, claim, or garrison. It belongs to the Filipino people. It always has!
