State-linked Chinese scholars claim Philippine Batanes belong to China

Batanes overlook Bashi Channel, where U.S. has deployed missile systems

State-linked Chinese academics and state media earlier this year floated claims that the Philippine Batanes Islands belong to Beijing, arguing that the island chain is a geographic extension of Taiwan and that a treaty that gave the U.S. control of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War did not include the islands. The Philippine defense minister called the claim “ludicrous,” and the country’s National Historical Commission issued a detailed rebuttal. Analysts describe the sovereignty argument as the latest maneuver in a “gray zone” campaign by Beijing to project power in the Pacific and beyond.

At a June seminar in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, the academics concluded that the Batanes were a geographic extension of Taiwan, making the islands part of China, according to a statement published by a school at Jinan University. The scholars also said the treaty that gave the U.S. control of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War did not include the islands, and they highlighted cultural ties between the local people in the Batanes and Taiwan’s indigenous population. The local Ivatan people speak a similar language to the Tao indigenous community on Orchid Island, an outlying island of Taiwan. Chinese state media amplified the claim.

The islands have been part of the Philippines since colonial times, and the reaction in Manila was swift. The National Historical Commission of the Philippines, a government agency, said the islands are part of a continuous shelf extending from northern Luzon, the main Philippine island; that there was no trace of Chinese governance when a British explorer arrived in the 1600s; that Spain, the former colonial ruler of the Philippines, formally claimed them in 1783; and that the Batanes have been represented in every Philippine national legislature since the late 1800s.

The Batanes Islands sit just south of Taiwan on a channel the Chinese would likely need to control for an attack on the island. Beijing has promised to take self-ruled Taiwan by force, if necessary. What’s not in dispute is the islands’ strategic location: just 100 miles southeast of Taiwan, the islands overlook a stretch of water, the Bashi Channel, that China would need to control if it wanted to encircle Taiwan in a conflict or blockade. The U.S. has helped lead military exercises aimed at preparing for a conflict with China on and around the islands, and it recently deployed mobile missile systems to the Batanes, from where they would be able to hit Chinese vessels in the channel.

“This is a pattern that’s been used before,” said Hunter Marston, Southeast Asia program director at the Australia-based Lowy Institute think tank, noting that Chinese scholars are increasingly speaking in line with government views. “The idea that this is just some academics floating this…is not exactly the case,” he said. China has long sought to widen its sway on its neighborhood, often employing tactics that stop short of physical occupation or conflict: its coast guard controls access to disputed features in the South China Sea, its warplanes probe the airspace around Taiwan, and Beijing has been building settlements in disputed areas in the Himalayas.

For Beijing, even innocuous-sounding academic discussions are a useful tool, because they give officials a chance to gauge the international response to new arguments. Chinese academics have previously questioned Japan’s hold on the Ryukyu Islands, which include Okinawa, and the Senkaku Islands, an uninhabited group to the northeast of Taiwan. Though no Chinese officials have formally backed a claim on the Batanes, the academic discussion came after the Philippines and Japan began talks about their maritime boundary in the waters east of Taiwan, an area that Beijing also views as its own.

Analysts said the Batanes claim gives Beijing further justification for its vessels to operate beyond the chain of islands known as the First Island Chain, which stretches from Japan through the Philippines and would be a key U.S. line of defense in any conflict in the Pacific. Earlier this year, China’s coast guard stepped up patrols east of Taiwan. “The law, sometimes we think it doesn’t matter to China, but it does,” said Ray Powell, executive director at the SeaLight Foundation, which tracks Chinese activities around the South China Sea. “They want to be able to have a rationale even if nobody outside of China really buys it.”

Over the past year and a half, the Philippines has spotted several Chinese coast guard and research vessels operating near the islands, where there are key undersea cables. In recent days, the Philippine coast guard sent one of its largest ships and an aircraft to the Batanes to chase away a Chinese marine-survey ship, which got backup from the Chinese coast guard. The Philippines said the vessel was well within its exclusive economic zone and that China didn’t ask for permission to operate there. The Chinese embassy in the Philippines said the vessel was “operating in waters under China’s jurisdiction” and that the Philippines should “cease interfering with and hyping up China’s normal navigation and scientific research activities.”

The Philippines has been expanding its military presence in the Batanes, including a new forward operating base that opened last year. Rommel Jude Ong, a retired rear admiral in the Philippine navy now with the Manila-based Stratbase Institute think tank, said the Philippines should do more to fortify the area. “Perhaps that will throw off the calculations of China on Taiwan,” he said, “and if not prevent, at least delay, any crazy ideas coming from China on invading Taiwan.”

The Batanes, the smallest by population of the Philippines’ 82 provinces, are home to some 19,000 people. Some visitors liken the landscape to the Scottish highlands, despite its tropical climate. Some locals worry about what would happen to the islands in a conflict with China. “We know very well that Batanes is ours,” said Joseph Cultura, the mayor of Itbayat, the island chain’s northernmost municipality. “Batanes is not a part of China.” “Hopefully they respect the boundaries that we have,” said Mark Anthony Castillo, a 34-year-old tour guide in Basco, the Batanes’ capital. “We just want a simple and normal life here.”