Palawan was never part of China – NHCP

MANILA, Philippines — The country’s historical body on Friday denounced the false claim circulating in Chinese social media Rednote that the island of Palawan once belonged to China.

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 National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) said.

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

“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 NHCP said.

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.