Philippines Rejects Chinese Claim to ‘Sovereign Rights’ Over Waters Around Batanes

The Philippine government today rejected China’s assertion that it has sovereign rights and jurisdiction over waters off Batanes, the country’s northernmost province, a day after the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) drove away a Chinese research vessel operating in the area.

The PCG said yesterday that it had deployed its largest vessel and an aircraft to challenge the Jia Ha Ke 7, a Chinese research ship, that had been “loitering” around 37 nautical miles northwest of Batanes for the past four days. During the confrontation, PCG spokesperson Jay Tarriela said that a China Coast Guard vessel also moved in and “repeatedly tried to shield the research vessel and block the PCG ship.”

The Philippine operation nonetheless “successfully disrupted the unauthorized marine scientific research” being conducted by the Jia He Ke 7 and “compelled it to leave the position it had held off Itbayat, Batanes, for four days.”

China’s embassy in Manila responded by claiming that the Chinese research vessel was “conducting normal operations in waters under China’s jurisdiction in accordance with international law.” It urged the Philippines to “genuinely respect China’s sovereign rights and jurisdiction in the relevant waters,” and to cease its “provocative interference with China’s normal scientific research activities.”

In a statement today, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said it “firmly and strongly rejects” the Chinese claims of sovereignty over the waters around Batanes, a group of islands lying midway between Taiwan and the Philippines’ Luzon island. It argued that the Chinese research vessel was operating well within the country’s 200-nautical-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), where, according to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), marine scientific research can only be conducted “with the consent of the coastal State.”

The Chinese activities around Batanes represent the opening of a new front in the maritime struggle between Beijing and Manila, which has manifested at different features in the South China Sea, particularly at Scarborough Shoal and at various parts of the Spratly Islands.

In late June, at a symposium at Jinan University in Guangzhou, Chinese scholars from several institutions argued that China enjoyed sovereignty over Batanes. According to a report by Jinan University, which was later published by the Guangdong-based news outlet Newsgd, participants described the Batanes Islands as a “natural geographical extension” of Taiwan, and said that they therefore belonged to China.

Philippine Defense Minister Gilberto Teodoro subsequently dismissed the claims, describing them as “baseless” and “ludicrous.” “So this is concerning, and it is something that must be challenged,” he added.

This week’s events seem to validate the warnings of observers who said at the time that the scholars’ remarks might open the way to official claims by Beijing. Collin Koh, a scholar at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, argued that the claims about Batanes were little more than the “territorial wet dreams” of Beijing-aligned scholars, but that such ideas “could potentially seep into official discourse if they fit ethno-nationalist agendas.”

While Manila does not view its South China Sea possessions any differently from its “home islands” – it considers all to be inalienable parts of the Philippines – it has reason to be  concerned about this latest development. Batanes is both the smallest and least populated of the Philippines’ 82 provinces, and is home to 18,937 people, as per the 2024 Philippine census. This nonetheless compares to just 406 for the Kalayaan Island Group, as Manila refers to its nine occupied features in the Spratlys.

The extension of Chinese gray zone tactics to “core” Philippine islands over which Manila’s sovereignty has never seriously been challenged could mark a considerable escalation of the maritime dispute between the two nations.