CHINA’s new ambassador to the Philippines Jin Quang was reported to have begun his tour of duty by committing himself to a sustained diplomatic dialogue with the Marcos government over the two countries’ territorial dispute. This is a much needed and welcome move. As the ambassador himself reportedly put it, Manila and Beijing have the “ability and wisdom” to manage their differences. It is not in their interest to see their relationship deteriorate to the point of an unwanted armed conflict. Their common interest is to work together for peace and in peace.
This, however, is not how everybody else sees it. There is a strong hawkish element that sees peace between China and its neighbors as inimical to its view of the world and its self-interests, and will try to shoot down any initiative that tries to promote peace. So, before the Secretary of Foreign Affairs could respond to Jin Quang’s friendly overture, and before the ambassador could initiate his first move at friendly dialogue, the forces that seem responsible for the conduct of bilateral relations in the South China Sea accused China of increasing its illegal presence near Bajo de Masinloc in Zambales.
This reportedly includes vessels of the People’s Liberation Navy, the China Coast Guard, and the Chinese maritime militia openly operating in gross contempt of Philippine laws. In reply to this accusation, the Chinese embassy asserted that Bajo de Masinloc (Huangyan Dao in Chinese) is an integral part of China’s territory, so Chinese maritime vessels have been operating there freely, pursuant to Chinese domestic law and international maritime law, including the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos), of which both the Philippines and China are members.
On the other hand, the Philippine government insists Bajo de Masinloc (or Scarborough Shoal) is part of the traditional fishing ground of Filipinos, within the country’s 12 nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ). As far as the government is concerned, China has been conducting illegal patrols within it, driving away Filipino fishermen from their traditional domain. The closest recorded approach, according to the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) report, was on April 8, 2025, when a Chinese coast guard vessel was detected 23 nautical miles off the coast of Dasol town in Pangasinan. Until 2014, Chinese vessels normally operated within a radius of 10 to 15 nautical miles from Bajo de Masinloc, the PCG said.
The Philippine EEZ status is incontestable, but since China claims it as well, an impartial international authority should probably rule on its ultimate ownership. The only known such body is the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the judicial organ of the UN at The Hague, otherwise known as the World Court. But for the court to settle any territorial dispute, the contending parties must mutually agree to bring their dispute before it. Many UN member-states, including Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia, have submitted their territorial disputes to this process.
In 2013, the Philippine government initiated an arbitral proceeding against China before the UN-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration. China declined to participate in the process, but the arbitration continued nevertheless. In 2016, the arbitral tribunal ruled in favor of the Philippines, upholding many of its submissions. It did not rule on any territorial question, but it declared, among other things, that China’s so-called nine-dash line had no legal basis. China refused to recognize the ruling; nonetheless, Philippine officials continue to quote the arbitral ruling as a legally binding international document.
Aside from being a territorial claimant of what it now calls the “West Philippine Sea,” the Philippines finds itself ranged against China as a close ally of the US in its superpower competition for sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific. The Philippines was a US colony from 1898 to 1946 and hosted two of the world’s largest US military bases — Clark Air Base and Subic Naval Base — until 1991, when the rent-free Military Bases Agreement between the two countries expired. Since 2014, under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), an executive agreement outside the Constitution, the Philippines has granted the US nine operational sites in which to pre-position its forces against China inside Philippine military bases. These obviously constitute real provocations to China, but ironically China has ended up being pictured as the aggressor in all the water cannoning incidents with the PCG.
Ambassador Jin Quang deserves a timely and positive response from the Philippine government, if necessary, from the president himself. For the Philippines and China to have peace, they must together work hard for it. We cannot afford to shun peace. But for our two countries to have peace, they must first agree at the highest level, not at the level of the coast guard, that they are not destined to destroy each other in war or conflict, but to live with each other in mutual understanding, cooperation, prosperity and peace.
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