First of three parts
ONE of the biggest falsehoods propagated in the debate over the South China Sea is the claim that the 2016 arbitral ruling invalidated China’s sovereignty claims over the Spratly Islands.
This fabrication has so often been asserted by ignorant columnists and government officials, especially Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr., whose hysterical animosity against China is based on his obvious failure to read even just the first pages of the arbitral ruling and the distinction between “sovereignty” and “sovereign rights” over maritime areas.
In paragraph 5 of the tribunal’s July 12, 2016, award it states: “This Tribunal has not been asked to, and does not purport to, make any ruling as to which State enjoys sovereignty.” The same paragraph specifically identifies the Spratly Islands and Scarborough Shoal as territorial disputes outside its determination, and says its decisions imply no view on land sovereignty. This is not Beijing’s interpretation of the award. It is the tribunal’s own express limitation on what it decided.
The tribunal rejected China’s claims to historic rights over areas of the South China Sea, mainly those purportedly enclosed by the nine-dash line, insofar as these exceeded maritime entitlements, if claimed by China, permitted by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos). However, it did not reject China’s claim of sovereignty over the Spratlys, which it calls Nansha Qundao, one of three other island groups in the South China Sea it claims ownership of. The other three are Dongsha (Pratas), Xisha (Paracels) and Zhongsha (Macclesfield Bank, where Scarborough Shoal is).
While China had claimed these islands centuries ago, it officially declared these as its sovereign territory in its 1947 official map of the country, in the 1958 Declaration on the Territorial Sea, and the 1992 Law on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone.
Several island groups around the world — the Chagos Archipelago, the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, the Kuril Islands, the Falkland Islands and even the United States’ Hawaiian Islands — resemble China’s claims in that they consist of scattered islands, reefs, rocks, shoals and sometimes submerged features, over all of which sovereignty is claimed by rival claimant countries.
PD 1596
On the other hand, the Philippines through the dictator Marcos’ 1978 Presidential Decree (PD) 1596 claimed the Spratlys as its territory — naming it as the Kalayaan Island Group and a municipality of Palawan island — on the ground that no state had not declared sovereignty over it.
Marcos actually exploited both China’s weakness because of its disastrous domestic turmoil wrongly named its “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” that lasted 10 years to 1976 and the US stance to contain “communist China’s” purported attempts to export communist revolutions in Southeast Asia. Marcos was prodded by both Western and local exploration firms to occupy the Spratlys because of a UN study that claimed that the area had vast deposits of oil.
While its ratification of the Unclos in 1984 — which defined the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) as extending 200 nautical miles from a country’s base points, or its most seaward land areas — in theory meant the Philippines’ declaration of its EEZ, it officially updated tits base points only in March 2009, through Republic Act 9522.
Neither this government nor its foreign affairs department has declared whether its claims in the Spratlys are now based on the Unclos’ EEZ or on Marcos PD 1596. However, the American lawyer representing the Philippines stated in the arbitral hearings that this claim is no longer valid, as it does not comply with the Unclos’ definition of the EEZ. The likes of Teodoro have always referred only to sovereign rights, and have never invoked PD 1596.
Primer
Teodoro appears to also have not read the Philippine government’s own “West Philippine Sea Primer,” revised July 30, 2026, which explains what the arbitral ruling ruled on. On page 23, Question 8 asks: “Did the 2016 arbitral award determine who has sovereignty over the features in the South China Sea?” Its answer is unequivocal: “No.” The Primer explains that the tribunal lacked jurisdiction to decide sovereignty and did not adjudicate ownership for or against any party. It determined the legal status of features only for the purpose of assessing their maritime entitlements.
The distinction is fundamental, yet the likes of Teodoro and other anti-Chinese commentators cannot understand with their feeble minds.
Sovereignty refers to a state’s supreme authority over its territory, including its land, islands, internal waters and territorial sea. Sovereign rights in an EEZ, extending up to 200 nautical miles from a country’s territory, are much more limited: they give a coastal state exclusive rights to explore, exploit, conserve and manage natural resources, including fish, oil and gas, but not ownership of the waters themselves. “Sovereign rights” over an EEZ means only rights similar to those exercised over sovereignty territory, but not absolute sovereignty.
The bottom line is that China claims sovereignty over the Spratly Islands and their surrounding maritime areas while the Philippines claims these as within its EEZ. Teodoro and that mad Coast Guard official’s incessant claims that China has grabbed Philippine territory, which we must defend even as the defense secretary declared, “to our last drop” of blood, are melodramatically, fundamentally wrong.
Disputes
The likes of Teodoro can shout themselves hoarse that the areas are ours. The entire world, even the US, considers these as “disputed” areas, among the over 800 territorial and maritime-area disputes in the world.
The arbitral award itself is a very dubious one since the arbitral tribunal’s formation skipped the Unclos requirement that the claimant countries must first attempt negotiations to resolve the dispute. More importantly, it did not rule which of these two claims is legitimate. Unclos itself has no authority to rule on sovereignty issues, unless the country claiming that kind of ownership agrees to have an international court rule on it.
Unfortunately for us, China, whose military is nearly at par with the US, is able to enforce its claims. We merely pretend to do so, by sending hapless Coast Guard vessels to enter areas the Chinese claim, in the hope that their violent reactions such as water cannoning these or forcing them to leave the area will trigger an international outrage against China enough to pressure Beijing to surrender its claims. This has not happened nor will it happen, despite the US help in getting the foreign press to portray such incidents as proof of China’s aggression. Superpowers do not of course yield to weak, even inconsequential, states.
The most persistent source of confusion is the nine-dash line, falsely portrayed as the foundation of China’s sovereignty claims over the Spratlys. However, China’s official declarations asserting sovereignty over the South China Sea islands are not based on that line, but on its claims that it has sovereignty over the four island groups in the South China Sea. Didn’t the commonsensical question rise in Teodoro’s mind that that line is dashed or dotted, while territorial boundaries are always in solid lines, as is the case in Philippine maps that had depicted the boundaries of the Kalayaan Island Group?
Nine-dash
The nine-dash line originated in Chinese cartography in the 1940s, before Unclos was adopted in 1982. Beijing has not explained precisely what it means.
The only realistic path for the Philippines is to negotiate with China (as well as with Vietnam, which also claims the Spratlys) for an agreement to the limits of our EEZ. The most important concession we can get is to get an assurance that it will never attempt to occupy islands and other features in the Spratlys we already control, and to respect the maritime areas that these have.
These are already substantial holdings — the biggest islands in the Spratlys such as Pag-asa, Likas and Parola — as we were the first, after Chiang Kai-shek’s navy invaded the largest, Itu Aba, to occupy the features in this area, with Vietnam and China only following our invasion. I am certain that if ever war, even a limited war, breaks out between China and the US, the Chinese will invade and occupy these islands on the ground that it needs to counter the American bases in the Philippines, disguised as Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement sites.
Our resources should be focused on developing these areas, strengthening their defense not just with China in mind, but I think the more threatening Vietnam. And if we manage to get China as a partner in our overall economic development, we may have the resources to do so.
For an extended discussion on this topic, read my book “Debacle: The Aquino Regime’s Scarborough Fiasco and the South China Sea Arbitration Deception,” available at amazon.com and rigobertotiglao.com.
To be continued on Nov. 16, 2026
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