Manila: The Philippine government will patiently await a response from China regarding a complaint about three Chinese vessels near Benham Rise, a 13 million-hectare bio-diversified area in the Pacific Ocean that the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf granted to the Philippines in 2012.
“We will await the response of the Chinese side to our Note Verbale [regarding this complaint which was sent] through official channels [on March 7],” Foreign Affairs spokesman Charles Jose said on Saturday.
“They [Chinese envoys] are trying to wear us down to [a point that we might give up] that persistence, so that later on, maybe after a couple of year, or after one generation of Filipinos, [the Chinese officials might think] we [Filipinos] will [eventually] accept that China is the owner of Benham Rise. So we’ll keep on protesting [the passage of Chinese vessels near Benham Rise off northeast Luzon],” Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said earlier,
“We cannot drive them away. We do not have the armaments or the might to dislodge them from those areas, but we keep on protesting. Even if they ignore the protest, we will still protest,” Lorenzana vowed.
In response, Geng Shuang, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, admitted that China’s research and survey ships passed through Benham Rise for several months in 2016, but added the Chinese vessels followed the term of reference of “normal freedom of navigation and right of innocent passage”.
The Chinese ships were not involved in “so-called other activities or operations,” Geng said, adding, “Comments from individuals in the Philippines on this [passage] do not accord with the facts.”
The Benham Rise is a coveted 13 million-hectare bio-diversified Continental Shelf off Philippines’ eastern seaboard.
The country’s sovereignty over Benham Rise was sealed in 2012, when the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf granted the Philippines’ request in 2009 that it should be considered an extension of the country’s continental shelf 350 nautical miles from its eastern shores.
In comparison, the Philippines’ sovereign claims in the South China Sea, on its western seaboard, have remained uneasy.
In response to the Philippines’ complaint against China in 2013, The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) ruled in 2016 that China’s claim of the entire South China Sea and its enhancement of seven rocks and shoals into islands for military use were illegal. PCA also ruled that China should open the Scarborough Shoal, 120 kilometres west of Zambales, northern Luzon, as a common fishing ground for claimants in the South China Sea.
China took over the Scarborough Shoal in 2012, after a standoff between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Scarborough is within Philippines’ 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone in the disputed sea-lane, based on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
After holding bilateral talks with China in October 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte succeeded in his request that Filipino fishermen from northern Luzon should be allowed to fish in Scarborough Shoal. Analysts said this helped implement one of PCA’s rulings.
But other analysts have mistakenly assessed Duterte’s option for bilateral talks with China, the world’s second-biggest economy, as giving boost to China’s sovereignty in the South China Sea.
China, Vietnam, and Taiwan claim the whole of the South China Sea. Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines claim their respective 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone, from their shores, in the disputed sea lane — this is based on the provision of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
