Philippines questions authenticity of China-circulated letter on Scarborough Shoal claim

The Philippines rejects a China-circulated letter questioning its Scarborough Shoal claim in the South China Sea dispute. Read more at straitstimes.com.

MANILA – The Philippines has questioned the authenticity of a 1990 diplomatic letter recently circulated by the Chinese Embassy that appears to suggest Manila once acknowledged Scarborough Shoal was outside Philippine territorial sovereignty, as the long-running dispute over the South China Sea feature flared again.

Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) spokesman for maritime affairs Rogelio Villanueva Jr on March 16 said the Philippines would not “engage in conjecture or speculation over a document of uncertain origin and authenticity”, after the Chinese Embassy posted on Facebook on March 14 what it said was a letter from the Philippine Embassy in Bonn, Germany, dated Feb 2, 1990.

Both China and the Philippines claim Scarborough Shoal, but sovereignty remains unresolved. China took control in 2012 after a stand-off and has since stationed its coast guard and fishing vessels there.

Scarborough lies about 222km west of Zambales, well within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ) – an area of the sea stretching 200 nautical miles from a country’s coastline over which the country has sovereign rights, including to exploit the natural resources in the area – but it is also claimed by China, whose nearest island province of Hainan is 650km away.

The document, which appears to bear the signature of then-Philippine ambassador Bienvenido Tan Jr and addressed to German HAM radio operator Dieter Loffler, states that Scarborough Shoal “does not fall within the territorial sovereignty of the Philippines” but lies within the country’s EEZ.

The letter also says the shoal – known in the Philippines as Bajo de Masinloc and in China as Huangyan Island – lies about 10 miles outside the line drawn under the Treaty of Paris (1898), which defined the colonial-era boundaries of the Philippine archipelago after Spain ceded the islands to the US.