Chinese objection means RP is right
That China is objecting to the baselines bill in Congress is a helpful sign for RP. It means the House of Reps is on the right track in defining once and for all RP’s western archipelagic boundary facing the South China Sea. Rep. Antonio Cuenco has all the reasons to bellow, “Full steam ahead and damn the torpedoes,” in pushing for his bill’s passage. Weak-kneed foreign affairs officials, shaking in their booties from China’s protests, must stand aside.The bill would set 135 base points to draw RP’s outermost limits. The primary data are the same base points in the Treaty of Paris by which Spain ceded the archipelago in 1898 to the rising US naval power. It dumps the old RP claim to Sabah, now Malaysia’s state of North Borneo. But added are Scarborough Shoal off Zambales, and the Kalayaan Isles at the edge of the Spratlys west of Palawan.
Long occupation of Scarborough and the seven islets of Kalayaan, now a municipality of Palawan, is RP’s basis for territorial claim. Since the American Regime, Luzon fishermen have been using Scarborough, 135 miles west, for rest and repairs. As for Kalayaan, Filipino mariner Tomas Cloma discovered and laid claim to the isles in the early ’50s. RP in the ’70s dispatched soldiers to inhabit the islets. Civilians from Palawan and Luzon soon populated the biggest one, Pag-asa.
More than that, RP’s claim is geological. Earth science is the requisite, under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, for a coastal or archipelagic state to declare its borders. Specifically, UNCLOS entitles such a state to a continental shelf that geologically exists as an extension, albeit submerged, of its land territory. A shelf is officially defined as “the seabed and subsoil of the submarine areas that extend beyond its territorial sea throughout the natural prolongation of its land territory to the outer edge of the continental margin, or to a distance of 200 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured where the outer edge of the continental margin does not extend up to that distance.” The area 200 miles from its baselines is that state’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
Dr. Jose Antonio Socrates, Palawan’s provincial health officer, has been explaining for two decades the geological basis to claim Kalayaan. Also a geologist, Socrates cites studies by the University of London on how Earth’s land formations evolved. Based on limestone and other evidence, it appears that Palawan once was a part of mainland Asia. Just that, a mighty earthquake, millions of years ago before man, flung the elongated island onto the Pacific Ocean. The split created between Palawan and Asia a water channel now called the South China Sea. And with Palawan pushing the ocean floor eastward along with volcanic eruptions, islands of the RP and Indonesian archipelagoes later sprouted.
The cited study goes on: as it drifted farther from Asia, Palawan grew its own continental shelf, stretching all the way to Kalayaan Isles near what is now the Spratlys. That shelf ends where it begins to slope steeply into the sea bottom, 50 miles west of Pag-asa.
From the evidence, Cuenco’s baselines bill draws RP’s 200-mile EEZ to commence westward from Scarborough and Kalayaan. Once enacted, RP must submit the baselines for UNCLOS verification. Thence, only RP may fish or mine its EEZ, and can enjoy UN shield against poaching or illegal passage of, say, vessels laden with nuke waste.
China protests because RP’s baselines bill goes against its own claims. Invoking false “historic rights”, China in 1992 arbitrarily drew baselines to cover not just Kalayaan and Scarborough but more. Roped in were Mischief Reef, Commodore Reef and Sabina Shoal, all closer to Palawan, in defiance of scientific evidence required by UNCLOS. On this basis, China built in 1995 “fishermen’s shelters” on Mischief that actually are naval and air force facilities. During monsoons when RP’s puny naval craft can hardly patrol the coast, China attempts to plant buoys on Commodore and Sabina. If China’s baselines were to be accepted, its 200-mile EEZ would encompass Palawan and RP’s internal Sulu Sea. China routinely barges into territories it dreams to own. Breaching international treaties in the ’90s, Chinese navy ships docked on Antarctica and machine-gunned penguins.
