China’s expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea (SCS) may ultimately determine the relevance of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), retired Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio said on Wednesday, even as an artificial intelligence (AI) firm bared that around 29 features within the Philippine maritime zone are still waiting to be occupied by the country.
Carpio, who keynoted a virtual forum of the Stratbase Albert Del Rosario Institute about the maritime order in the SCS, said that if an assertive China illegally foisting its might as a right were to succeed in making the regional water as its “own lake” may lead not only to the collapse of the UNCLOS but even its demise.
The former magistrate, who helped the country secure the UN ruling against China’s maritime claims over the Philippines’s territorial waters in the West Philippine Sea (WPS) and Kalayaan Island Group (KIG) in July 2016, issued the warning as the National Task Force on the West Philippine Sea (NTF-WPS) reported that at least 240 Chinese vessels, including military ships are still in the waters that Beijing claims.
At least nine of the vessels identified as that of China’s maritime militias are still moored at the Whitsun Reef, or Julian Felipe Reef, where at least 222 ships were spotted to have moored on March 7, although most had dispersed three weeks later and redeployed in various parts of the WPS and KIG.
Carpio warned that if Beijing were to succeed in transforming and occupying the SCS as its own, then the UNCLOS may cease to exist, and as a result, would usher in an era of “perpetual chaos” and trigger a naval arms race among countries.
“South China Sea is the battle ground. It will determine if rules-based order remains,” he said.
At the same forum, maritime law expert Jay Batongbacal said that there are least 29 instances of attacks, intimidation and harassments that have been carried out by China’s Coast Guard against Filipino fishermen within the country’s maritime territory which Beijing disputes.
The incidents, including attacks with the use of water cannon and ramming, confiscation of fishing gears, intimidations where Chinese armed men uses small boats, interference in navigation and “shadowing approach” were committed from 2014 up to the first quarter of 2021, and were mostly carried out at the Ayungin and Scarborough Shoals.
Batongbacal said China has maintained regular patrol in these features and their surrounding waters that it has occupied against the Philippines, with two up to four Coast Guard ships at Scarborough and one ship at Ayungin on any given day.
The NTF-WPS, which is monitoring the situation, said on Tuesday that 136 Chinese ships, including from Beijing’s Coast Guard and maritime militia, and even Chinese fishing vessels, are at the Gaven Reef; nine are at the Julian Felipe Reef; six at Panganiban Reef; three at Zamora Reef; four at Pagasa Islands; one at Likas Island; five at Kota Island and 11 at the Ayungin Shoal.
While the country, through the military, has maintained that it has claimed or even occupied nine features in the WPS and KIG, it appeared that there are other features in those areas that the government is yet to take control of physically.
Liz Derr, founder and chief executive officer of a US-based an AI company that had also mapped the SCS, said at least 29 features located within the Philippines’s EEZ have not been occupied yet.
She encouraged the government to at least build outposts on these features. Otherwise, it may be taken by other states, Derr said.
She added that the country must protect and secure its EEZ, noting China’s activities, which destroyed reefs aside from giving way to artificial islands that host Chinese military bases.
Image credits: National Task Force-West Philippine Sea via AP
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