China Claims Palawan Island As Its Own, Raises More Concerns In The Philippines – OpEd

With the growing military strength with submarines, nuclear arms, fighter jets, drones, missiles and aircraft carriers, China’s harassment, coercion and aggressiveness is becoming limitless and has become a major threat to several Asian countries. It has occupied Tibet in 1951 and has border problems with India. It has overlapping maritime claims with the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Taiwan and Japan.

According to the Lowy Institute, China is now targeting Australia and New Zealand.

China’s recent live-fire exercise in the Tasman Sea raised concerns in Australia and New Zealand. It was suspected that about the prospect of a nuclear-powered submarine trailing secretly under the surface.

China’s ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, has made it clear that Australia should expect more deployments like this in the future, so it’s important to ensure that information about China’s growing fleet is well understood.

The flotilla that passed down the east coast and south across Australia was composed of a Type-055 Renhai-class destroyer, a Type-054A Jiangkai II-class frigate, a replenishment vessel, and possibly a nuclear-powered attack submarine – likely a Shang/Shang II-class SSN.

China now falsely claims that Palawan once belonged to China, the Cebu Daily News newspaper reported.

Palawan island is the largest island of the province of Palawan in the Philippines. 

Former Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares said that China’s claim, which is spreading on Chinese social media platform Rednote, “delusional.”

According to the social media post, the Philippines should return Palawan to China, claiming that its original name was “Zheng He Island” after the famous 14th-century Chinese explorer.

“These claims are not just historically inaccurate but represent a dangerous pattern of territorial aggression masked as historical rights … We must increase Philippine Coast Guard patrols in the area as well as joint patrols with other claimants in the West Philippine Sea,” the Cebu Daily News reported quoting  Colmenares as saying.

“The Chinese government is once again showing mania in claiming that Palawan used to belong to them. This is not just a distortion of history—it is a territorial claim disguised as historical fact,” he added.

The National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) has also debunked China’s claim on Palawan. 

According to Colmenares, China’s claim does not match the established historical and archaeological evidence, and the NHCP “already confirmed that Palawan has been continuously inhabited for 50,000 years.”

“There is zero evidence of any permanent Chinese settlement or governance. Palawan is Filipino territory, plain and simple,” he added. 

Beijing’s continued aggression was based on its assertion of sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea, as it continues to reject a July 2016 Arbitral Award that effectively dismissed its claims and ruled in favor of Manila.

The landmark ruling stemmed from a case filed by Manila in 2013, a year after its tense standoff with Beijing over the Panatag Shoal, which China now controls.

The country’s historical body recently denounced the false claim circulating in Chinese social media Rednote that the island of Palawan once belonged to China, the Inquirer.net website reported. 

A post from Rednote falsely claimed that the province was once a Chinese territory and that it had governed it for about a millennium, the NHCP said.

“The historical fact clearly and convincingly shows that the Philippines and its predecessor state actors have always exercised sovereignty over our archipelago and over Palawan in particular,” the NHCP said in a statement.

“No other state contests this fact,” the commission stressed. “Not one.”

NHCP also noted that there exists no evidence to support the settlement of a permanent Chinese population in Palawan which has been continuously populated since 50,000 years ago through archeological data.

Even if the post claims were to be true, the commission stressed that “exploration does not equate to sovereign ownership.”

“Neither does vassalage by a predecessor nation equate to sovereign rule in the present day,” the Inquirer.net reported quoting NHCP as saying.

Likewise, NHCP said early Filipino polities nationwide were, at one point or another, closely connected to sultanates and rajahnates in other parts of Southeast Asia. 

“However, our neighbors do not claim sovereignty over Philippine territory over baseless and inaccessible historical fiction,” it said.

Such outright false claims were made amid the rising tensions between Manila and Beijing in the West Philippine Sea, the body of water inside of the country’s exclusive economic zone west of Palawan.

Beijing asserts sovereignty in almost the entire South China Sea, including most of the West Philippine Sea.

In 2012, Manila and Beijing had a tense standoff over Panatag Shoal, with the former withdrawing its ships from the shoal that led to the latter having an effective control of its lagoon to date. 

A year later, Manila lodged an arbitration case against Beijing after this standoff which led to a historic 2016 arbitral award that effectively rejected the latter’s sweeping claims in the West Philippine Sea through its nine-dash line, now ten-dash-line after the inclusion of another line in the eastern section of Taiwan in 2023.

“The Chinese state has flip-flopped on its claims that culminated in the infamous Nine-Dash Line which was soundly declared illegal,” the NHCP noted.

It included in its baseless ten-dash-line the areas of Kalayaan Island Group, where the Kalayaan municipality of Palawan is located.

“Palawan is and will always be Filipino,” the NHCP said.

China’s claim of Palawan island is not acceptable and stop claiming it as Chinese territory.