Why an Unofficial Claim to Batanes Still Matters

In late June 2026, Chinese scholars meeting at Jinan University argued that Batanes, the Philippines’ northernmost province, belongs to China through Taiwan. The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) replied that Philippine sovereignty over Batanes “is settled and not up for debate”, and Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro dismissed the claim as “disinformation” and “outlandish narratives”. Beijing has not officially adopted the position of the Chinese scholars.

It would be a mistake to dismiss the episode as an eccentric academic exercise. A territorial claim can be very weak in law yet politically useful. Its purpose is less to prove ownership than to suggest that a long-settled question is open to debate.

The Jinan scholars cited Batanes’ geological continuity with Taiwan, Austronesian ties between the Ivatan people (a group indigenous to the northern Philippines) and Taiwan’s indigenous communities, and its supposed administration by the Ming and Qing dynasties. They also cited the boundary line set in the 1898 Treaty of Paris, by which Spain ceded the Philippines to the US.

Legally, the case does not hold up. Proximity and kinship do not confer sovereignty. In its 1975 Western Sahara advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice held that historical ties of allegiance between the Sultan of Morocco and some local tribes did not amount to territorial sovereignty. What counts is the actual exercise of state authority. The 1928 Island of Palmas arbitration, over an island off Mindanao, shows this: the tribunal awarded it to the Netherlands, not the US, because peaceful, continuous Dutch administration outweighed Spain’s earlier discovery and island’s proximity to the Philippines.

On that test, the record is one-sided. The Ivatan traded with communities across the Bashi Channel for millennia, but there is no record of any Chinese dynasty governing them. The Ivatans took part in the Malolos Congress of the First Philippine Republic (1898–1899). Apart from Japan’s occupation in 1941–45, Spanish, American and Philippine governments have administered the islands for almost 250 years. As the DFA has pointed out, even the consular district of China’s own consulate in Laoag includes Batanes.

The treaty argument fares no better. Article III of the 1898 Treaty of Paris defined the ceded territory by lines of latitude and longitude. Its northern limit ran “along or near the twentieth parallel” and “through the middle of the navigable channel of Bachi”, today’s Bashi Channel between Batanes and Taiwan. The two references point in different directions: the 20th parallel passes south of Batanes, while the Bashi Channel lies north of it (see Map 1). The wording thus left Batanes’ position ambiguous. The 1900 Treaty of Washington removed any doubt. Spain relinquished “all title and claim of title” to “any and all islands belonging to the Philippine Archipelago, lying outside the lines” of 1898. The treaty named outlying islands in the south, notably Cagayan de Sulu (today’s Mapun) and Sibutu, but its wording is general and covers Batanes.

Map 1. Philippines Claim to Batanes Beyond Dispute

The timing matters more than the history. The symposium occurred a month after Japan and the Philippines opened negotiations to delimit their overlapping maritime zones east of Taiwan. Beijing had denounced the talks as illegal, and the China Coast Guard announced patrols east of Taiwan in response. The Batanes claim fits this broader pattern of Beijing pushing back against maritime arrangements it regards as contrary to its interests, and the law of the sea explains why. Maritime zones flow from land: “the land dominates the sea”, as the International Court of Justice put it in 1969. Batanes is the territory from which Manila derives its entitlements in these waters. Casting doubt on Batanes is therefore an indirect way of contesting the sea around it.

Jinan University later removed the report from its website after the backlash. But the retreat is incomplete, as the same language reportedly remained on other Chinese state-linked channels. The episode also shows why unofficial claims are useful: they can be floated, amplified or quietly withdrawn at little cost, while leaving traces that can be cited as proof that the issue has long been contested.

International law does not grant title through repetition, but political narratives work differently. Repeated often enough, a weak claim can create the impression of a real dispute. The result is a process of narrative accretion, in which scholarly papers, media commentary, diplomatic protests and coast guard deployments gradually build into what appears to be a supporting record, even though none of them constitutes a formal claim. The sequence here is telling. Two days after the symposium, an institute under China’s Ministry of Natural Resources published a report declaring the Japan–Philippines talks unlawful.

The episode also shows why unofficial claims are useful: they can be floated, amplified or quietly withdrawn at little cost, while leaving traces that can be cited as proof that the issue has long been contested.

This is why the academic channel matters. Teodoro has called for closer oversight of China-linked education programmes, after reports that Jinan University is a leading training destination for Chinese-language teachers in Chinese-Filipino schools. He did not oppose engagement, but warned of possible “ulterior motives”. The risk is that Chinese framing gains credibility when Philippine voices echo it. Critics, including the head of Jinan’s Center for Philippine Studies, argue that Manila is stretching the definition of national security too far, treating Chinese-language education as a risk without sufficient evidence. The answer to both concerns is transparency about funding and affiliations, not exclusion.

Can Manila afford to push back, given its caution over the Philippines becoming embroiled in a conflict over the Taiwan Strait? President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has said no attacks would be launched from Philippine territory in such a conflict. But defending the title to Batanes is a different matter, and is not belligerence. It is a low-cost, rules-based response consistent with his priority of defending Philippine territory. Proximity to Taiwan makes legal clarity more important, not less. This is about sovereignty, not taking sides in a Taiwan conflict.

Manila has so far struck the right balance: declining to treat the symposium as an official claim while rebutting it clearly in public. Batanes does not become disputed territory because a symposium says so. Should Beijing decide to make an official claim, a record of Philippine silence could be cited as acquiescence; a prompt rebuttal forecloses that argument. The best defence is legal precision and historical rigour, coupled with a refusal to let assertions harden, through neglect, into an apparent dispute.

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