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<img src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-22/marcos-sr-troops.avif" alt="Ferdinand Marcos Sr.'s troops occupy Pag-asa and five other islands in 1970 to 1971" loading="lazy"/>
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(Ferdinand Marcos Sr.'s troops occupy Pag-asa and five other islands in 1970 to 1971 after learning that oil exploration firms that the nearby Reed Bank had substantial natural gas deposits. Marcos would formally annex the Spratly Islands only in 1978 through a presidential decree. From the <a href="https://rigobertotiglao.com/debacle/" class="news_link" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">Rigoberto Tiglaos's book</a>, Debacle: The Aquino regime’s scarborough fiasco and the south china sea arbitration deception)
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<p>
I consider China's claim to own 90 percent of the South China Sea as preposterous. I agree that we should defend the islands we now occupy. And if we can afford it without begging for US intervention, we should fortify the ones we claim but have left unguarded.
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<p>
What I deplore is the mishandling of our relations with China and our traditional reliance on the United States for our own security. Demonizing China and inciting jingoism among our people will only encourage the hardliners in the Chinese leadership and provoke the People's Liberation Army to seize what we are too weak to defend, as happened in Scarborough.
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<h4>
Background
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<p>
The South China Sea covers an area of 3.5 million square kilometers where more than 250 islets, shoals, atolls, cays, reefs and sandbars are clustered in two archipelagos. The Paracels are contested by China, Taiwan and Vietnam. The Spratlys are likewise claimed by the three, but parts are claimed also by the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei. These islands are small, and most remain uninhabited; many are submerged at high tide. None is capable of sustaining human life, unless basic necessities are supplied from outside.
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<p>
These geographic formations were ignored until 1968 when China's Ministry of Geology and Mineral Resources stumbled upon traces of petroleum and natural gas. The Chinese survey estimated the oil deposit at 17.7 billion tons. If validated, it will be the fourth-largest reserve bed in the world. But succeeding surveys conducted by other countries give lower estimates. The actual volume remains a subject of conjecture.
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<p>
Yet the conjecture was enough to spur a flurry of island-grabbing.
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<p>
Taiwan grabbed the largest island, consisting of 46 hectares. At least nine other islands are now occupied by China, 28 by Vietnam, 11 by the Philippines and seven by Malaysia. Brunei does not hold any of the islands it claims to own.
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<p>
China and Taiwan cite ancient maps, chronicles of Chinese navigators and miscellaneous pieces of discarded Chinaware. On this basis, the Kuomintang government (before its expulsion from the mainland) drew an 11-dash line to demarcate China's sovereign jurisdiction.
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<p>
The communist government inherited the 11-dash line from the Kuomintang but reduced it to nine as a friendly gesture to Vietnam when Vietnam was in the forefront of the struggle against US imperialism. Now that China and Vietnam are no longer the best of friends, China infuriates Vietnam and the other claimants by insisting on the nine-dash line.
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<p>
The nine-dash line is not recognized by the international community. Physical occupancy is the only ground for claiming sovereignty, not ancient maps, diaries and broken pottery. The Chinese cannot claim a territory just because they had been there centuries ago. Since they did not establish permanent settlements in these tiny islands, the Spratlys and the Paracels properly belong to the public domain or the "world's commons."
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<h4>
Bones of contention
</h4>
<p>
What made these godforsaken islands a focus of international conflict today?
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<p>
As noted earlier, the oil and gas reserves are still conjectural. What the numerous drillings have found so far is not worth a war. The Spratlys are rich in marine life; but a country need not own an area for its citizens to go there for fishing. Filipino, Chinese, Vietnamese and Taiwanese fishermen have been fishing in the Spratlys since time immemorial without bothering about sovereign rights.
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<p>
The main value of the South China Sea today is strategic. Some 300 ships cross it every day, making it the busiest sea-lane in the world; busier than the Suez and Panama canals combined. A mischievous nation that gains control of this maritime route can endow itself with authority to grant or deny passage to foreign ships.
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<p>
China dreads the prospect of America policing the area. This is not a mere product of Chinese imagination. Still fresh in the memory of the Chinese is the US "containment" strategy during the Cold War when mainland China was encircled with hostile military bases, including Subic and Clark. At that time, however, the encirclement did not pose as grave a threat to China because its foreign trade then was negligible.
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<p>
But China today is a major industrial power. Foreign trade is now crucial to its economic life. Its trade with Southeast Asia, South Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe goes through the South China Sea. Freedom of navigation in this trade route is therefore a matter of survival for today's China. Understandably, China regards Barack Obama's strategy of "Pivot to Asia" a potential menace to its security. From Beijing's perspective, "Pivot to Asia" is a revival of containment.
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<h4>
Jingoistic
</h4>
<p>
Who is aggressive?
</p>
<p>
Jingoistic Filipinos assert as indisputable truth that the current tensions in the South China Sea are due to China's aggressiveness. But if we examine the sequence of events, China's muscle flexing is a response to a US challenge, not the trigger of discord. China started demanding recognition of the nine-dash line only in 2009, a year after Obama unveiled the "Pivot to Asia" strategy. Previously, China showed willingness to compromise.
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<p>
For example, China signed the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which recognized the exclusive economic zones of the coastal states around the South China Sea. (Incidentally, America refused to sign the UNCLOS.) Under this covenant, Scarborough and the Kalayaan islands fall within our exclusive economic zone. China did not question this until "Pivot to Asia" threatened its national security.
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<p>
In 2002, China also signed an agreement with the 10 ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) member states that designated the South China Sea as a zone of peace and neutrality. In the "Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea"  - as the agreement was called  - China and the ASEAN reaffirmed their commitment to UNCLOS and to freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.
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Fishing for Trouble in the South China Sea