Analyst: ‘Trespassing’ rule may backfire

FILE PHOTO: A China Coast Guard (CCG) ship fires its water cannon at Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) vessels escorting supply boats chartered by the Armed Forces of the Philippines in August 2023. On Tuesday, March 5, 2024, the CCG again water cannon-attacked Philippine vessels on a mission to bring supplies to troops in the grounded BRP Sierra Madre in the West Philippine Sea. —videograb from PCG Facebook page
MANILA, Philippines — China may need to rethink its plan of enforcing its “trespassing” rule in the West Philippine Sea without facing the prospect of global condemnation that may affect its economy, according to an analyst.
Froilan Calilung, director of the Local Government Development Institute, said the government should also closely watch the impact of China’s implementation of its rule on the livelihood of Filipino fishers.
“We are aware that all these things—politics, security and economics—are actually correlated, especially because we are living in a highly globalized world right now,” he said in the government television program “Bagong Pilipinas Ngayon” on Monday.
READ: Fear not, AFP chief tells fishers facing China ‘trespassing’ rule
“So, we know that if China will continue to do this, one way or another it would have a backlash effect on its economy, which China wouldn’t want to happen, also because the might of China right now that it is actually projecting… is actually conditioned or premised on the fact that they have a very strong economy,” he added.
Article continues after this advertisement“And I think there should be a more international condemnation on this part of the West Philippine Sea and show to all the freedom-loving countries of the world that what China is doing is totally unacceptable,” Calilung said.
Article continues after this advertisement‘Not a very good scenario’
Beijing had earlier issued new rules authorizing its coast guard to detain for up to 60 days “foreigners” illegally entering “Chinese waters.”
“I firmly believe that China—though we are aware that this country has this bully complex—still has an international image that somehow it’s also trying to protect, not only from a political and military standpoint but more importantly from [an] economic perspective,” Calilung said.
He cited how other claimant countries in the South China Sea, such as Vietnam and Indonesia, have defied China’s activities in the disputed waters.
Calilung conceded that Filipino fisherfolk have ample reason to worry given that they are “going up against a country like China [that] does not adhere to any kind of rules-based engagement.”
“We need to look into the effect of this rule, whether our fishermen would be threatened whenever they would head into their traditional fishing grounds like Bajo de Masinloc and other sea features within our 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ),” he said.
‘No legal justification’
However, a situation where China detains so-called intruders would not be a very good scenario, according to Calilung.
“First of all, this will be a deprivation—whether this is just a temporary thing—this is still tantamount to deprivation [of] their right not only to livelihood but to liberty. And if we argue that the West Philippine Sea is part of our [EEZ], then our human rights, which are grounded on the economic context, are actually being trampled here,” he said.
China’s “antitrespassing” rule has “no legal justification whatsoever,” Calilung said because it is against the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the 2016 arbitral ruling, which invalidated its nine-dash line claim.
“This [rule] is also against the freedom of navigation particularly because the West Philippine Sea is considered a high sea or a part of the international water. So, again from a legal standpoint, this really has no justification, whatsoever,” he said.
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