More PH voices scoff at China scholars’ claim on Batanes

Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr.–INQUIRER PHOTO / NIÑO JESUS ORBETA

More Philippine officials—from security, legislative and historical bodies—are pushing back against the assertion reportedly made by some Chinese scholars that Batanes, the country’s northernmost province near Taiwan, should be considered Chinese territory.

But the most biting remark again came from Defense Secretary Gilberto “Gibo” Teodoro Jr., who said in jest that the scholars came up with the idea probably after taking “medicine from China,” the kind that he said should not be exported to the Philippines.

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They better have themselves examined, perhaps by the Philippine health secretary himself, he said.

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‘’Regarding the people who did that, I think we should bring (them) to Secretary (Teodoro) Herbosa to see what’s wrong with them,” the defense chief told reporters on the sidelines of a forum on Friday.

On a more serious note, Teodoro, who the previous day dismissed the scholars’ claim as “a joke” for lacking any basis, said “We have to be really strong in our pushback.”

To say that Batanes is Chinese territory since it is supposedly part of Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a renegade province, is “not only contrary to international law and the Philippine Constitution, but also to normal human thinking,” he said.

‘Manufactured ambiguity’

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Teodoro was a guest at an event held by the think tank Stratbase Institute to mark the 10th anniversary of the 2016 arbitral ruling that voided China’s sweeping claims in the South China Sea, including the waters within the Philippine exclusive economic zone.

He was joined on Friday by other Philippine officials in assailing the reported contention of Chinese academics that the Philippines had no historical or legal basis to govern the Batanes islands since they are supposedly a “natural geographical extension” of Taiwan.

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In a statement, National Security Adviser Eduardo Oban Jr. said the scholars’ statements had “no merit” but should not be taken lightly.

“From a national security perspective, we cannot ignore how false narratives can be repeated to manufacture ambiguity where none exists,” Oban stated.

The commemoration of the arbitral ruling, he said, “reminds us of what is at stake when baseless narratives are allowed to harden into claims, claims are used to justify presence, and presence is used to normalize coercion.”

Historical, geological basis

The government should not allow “manufactured history to become manufactured rights or a fabricated dispute,” Oban said, adding:

“Batanes is, and will always remain, an integral and indivisible part of the Republic of the Philippines. There is no dispute to settle, no claim to negotiate, and no ambiguity to resolve.”

The National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) also weighed in the issue, saying such claims “would never stand under scrutiny in academic discourse outside China.”

The NHCP said the conclusions made by “so-called” scholars—reportedly from Jinan University, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Nanjing University and other research institutions—“have no rational basis in substantive research and operate from evident bad faith.”

“Current satellite and oceanographic data by the Philippines and other nations clearly show a continuous shelf extending from northern Luzon through the Babuyan and Batanes Islands, and into parts of the Taiwan archipelago,” it said.

“The Philippines claims a greater right over the subject territories from this perspective,” the commission added.

The NHCP noted that the dean of Jinan University’s School for International Studies had claimed that the Batanes Islands were “under the jurisdiction of Taiwan Prefecture during the Ming and Qing Dynasties,” which existed around the 1360s up to the 1900s.

Earliest documentation

But according to the commission, the “earliest known extensive documentation” of Batanes was made by British explorer Willian Dampier in 1687 and showed “no trace of Chinese governance.”

“The natives of Batanes, the Ivatan people, lived in protected communities and traded with other maritime trading nations. This is clear in the archeological and historical evidence produced by more than a hundred years of research,” the NHCP said.

In 1783, the NHCP said, Batanes was formally claimed by Spain as part of Cagayan province. During the 1896 Philippine Revolution and the First Philippine Republic, the islands were “already recognized as an integral part of our country’s territory.”

The Ivatan people also joined the struggle against Spanish rule, through an uprising led by local chieftain Aman Dangat from 1785 to 1791, and were later “represented in the Malolos Congress and every subsequent iterations” of the Philippine legislature as part of a government “recognized by the whole world as Filipino,” it said.

The commission also refuted the claim that Batanes was among the territories that Japan seized from China at the turn of the 20th century and must be returned under international treaties formed after World War II.

“Japan cannot give to China what clearly belongs to the Philippines,” said the NHCP. “No amount of fabrication will erase the truths of our past.”

Backed by treaties

Former senator and now Labor Secretary Francis Tolentino said the Chinese scholars were engaging in “historical revisionism.”

Sovereignty “is not decided in a conference room,” said Tolentino, the principal author of the Philippine Maritime Zones Act (Republic Act No. 12064) and the Archipelagic Sea Lanes Act (Republic Act No. 12065).

“Sovereignty is proven by effectivités—the continuous, peaceful, effective exercise of state authority. The Philippines has shown this for generations: governance, public services, courts, elections, and investment in the Ivatan people,” he added.

The 1935 Constitution fixed Batanes’ northern boundaries, which had been based on the 1898 Treaty of Paris, the 1900 Treaty of Washington, and the 1930s United States-United Kingdom Convention.

Spain formally attached the islands to the Philippine archipelago in 1783 under Governor General José Basco y Vargas, Tolentino added.

In July 2025, the Chinese government barred Tolentino from entering mainland China, Macao, and Hong Kong for his stance on the country’s maritime dispute with the Asian economic giant.

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Beijing announced the same travel ban on Defense Secretary Teodoro early last month. —With reports from Holly Bacay, Dianne Sampang and Marc Andre Esguerra