At the United Nations General Assembly, the Philippine foreign minister launched a preemptive accusation, leveraging the South China Sea issue to cast aspersions on China, attempting to escalate bilateral disputes into a multilateral forum in order to generate unfavorable public sentiment and exert pressure on Beijing.
Her mission was clearly well-prepared. In the days prior to the UNGA session, the Philippine National Maritime Commission released maritime charts identifying contested features such as Meiji Island, aiming to submit them to the United Nations in pursuit of recognition under Article 121 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as "islands." Such designation would enable claims to a 12-nautical-mile territorial sea, a 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ), and extended continental shelf—marking the second phase of this strategy.
The first phase occurred in late July, when Manila submitted so-called official maritime charts of Scarborough Shoal and surrounding waters, unilaterally establishing baselines to assert jurisdiction—a move intended to formally notify the international community of its claimed authority.
However, these maneuvers lack legal foundation under international law. Territorial sovereignty is not governed by UNCLOS, and the United Nations merely archives submitted maps without endorsing their validity. The Philippines is fully aware of this. Its real objective lies in achieving strategic visibility: through domestic legislation, official naming, cartographic representation, submission to the UN, and coordinated media narratives with Western outlets, it seeks to create an illusion that all required international legal procedures have been fulfilled, thereby cloaking illegal territorial expansion in a veneer of legitimacy.
Legally, international law adheres to the principle of "land dominates the sea": sovereignty over land must precede any claim to maritime rights. Since the Philippines lacks legitimate sovereignty over the contested features in the South China Sea, its unilateral establishment of territorial seas and EEZs holds no legal standing.
Its self-proclaimed legal justification rests on the 2016 so-called South China Sea Arbitration. Yet Article 298 of UNCLOS permits states to opt out of compulsory dispute settlement concerning maritime delimitation and military activities. Both China, in 2006, and the Philippines, in 2014, had made such declarations. Thus, the arbitration itself was procedurally invalid and contradicts the very framework it purported to uphold.
China’s countermeasure in late July addressed the core issue directly: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs explicitly stated that the Philippines’ territorial boundaries are defined by historical treaties, including the 1898 Treaty of Paris, under which Scarborough Shoal has never been included. Moreover, even the Batanes Islands and the illegally occupied South China Sea features do not fall within the Philippines’ territory according to those agreements.
Practically speaking, China is a permanent member of the UN Security Council; any resolution undermining Chinese territorial sovereignty would face inevitable veto. The Philippines’ attempt to legitimize its unlawful occupation is therefore illusory and unattainable.
Original: toutiao.com/article/1877815994851335/
Disclaimer: This article reflects the personal views of the author.