‘NEXT CLAIM WILL BE SATURN’: Navy veteran, think tank mock China’s Batanes bid

By Francis Allan L. Angelo

MANILA — Retired Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad has mocked China’s claim to Batanes as an information-warfare stunt rather than a genuine territorial dispute, quipping that Beijing’s next target may as well be outer space.

“I call what happened in Batanes that statement as salami slicing in the information domain. And I won’t be surprised if the next claim will be Saturn, Jupiter, and Pluto,” the former Philippine Navy spokesperson said at a Stratbase Institute conference.

His remarks came days before the Stratbase Institute issued a formal condemnation of the claim by Chinese academics that Batanes belongs to China “through Taiwan,” with the institute describing the assertion as “baseless” and part of a deliberate effort by Beijing to use academic cover to manufacture legitimacy for territorial ambitions it failed to win in court.

“This assertion is, simply put, baseless — it has absolutely no basis in history, international law, or reality,” Stratbase President Victor Andres “Dindo” Manhit said in a statement.

Manhit described the claim as part of “a broader pattern of gradually expanding and normalizing Beijing’s already discredited claims through so-called ‘lawfare’ — using legal-sounding arguments, academic forums, and propaganda to manufacture legitimacy where none exists.”

The institute tied the claim to Beijing’s record in the West Philippine Sea: “Having failed to secure international acceptance of its unlawful claims in the West Philippine Sea following the landmark 2016 Arbitral Award, China now appears intent on pushing the boundaries of its revisionist narrative even further.”

Stratbase cited Batanes Lone District Representative Ciriaco B. Gato Jr., who said Batanes “is a province of the Republic of the Philippines. The Ivatans are Filipinos.”

“No academic symposium, however orchestrated, can rewrite history or alter internationally recognized boundaries. Scholarly discourse should advance truth and understanding and not serve as an instrument for advancing geopolitical ambitions,” Manhit said.

The institute called the timing of the narrative “revealing,” noting that it surfaced as the Philippines marked the 10th anniversary of the Arbitral Award, and said Beijing “increasingly employs foreign interference and malign influence alongside coercive actions at sea to pressure countries that choose to strengthen partnerships grounded in international law and the rules-based order.” It urged the Philippine government to respond “firm[ly], united[ly], and grounded in facts.”

At a Stratbase conference days earlier, Sea Light Foundation director Ray Powell described how the claim surfaced. Using ship-tracking software, he said he had been monitoring an unusual pattern since early June: Chinese vessels conducting what Beijing called “sovereignty patrols” in waters east of Batanes, well outside China’s own nine-dash — now effectively ten-dash — line, with Chinese state media tying the patrols to ongoing Philippines-Japan talks to delimit the two countries’ exclusive economic zones.

Digging into Chinese-language sources, Powell traced the justification for the patrols to a group of academics tied to Jinan University’s Philippine Studies Center, headed by a China-based scholar referred to in the discussion as “Pan Dai” or “Panday.” He noted that the university caters primarily to overseas Chinese students and has served as a recruiting ground for United Front operators, and stressed that such academic pronouncements do not happen spontaneously in China’s system.

“When they actually made their Batanas announcement, they said, we are doing it as a result of the Japan-Philippines delimitation talks… they did this to justify these sovereignty claims so that it could provide the underpinning for their maritime claim to this water,” Powell said.

Renato de Castro, a Stratbase trustee and La Salle University professor, called the episode “probably… a prelude to a possible offensive in terms of psychological warfare,” linking the claim to broader Chinese ambitions in the region and to what U.S. Indo-Pacific Command has dubbed the “Davidson Window,” the assessed timeframe for a Chinese move on Taiwan.

Powell said the public response was immediate once the claim was exposed: a single explainer he posted on the Sea Light Foundation’s Facebook page drew 3.7 million views within roughly a day of publication, evidence, he argued, that transparency itself works as a countermeasure to incremental claim-building. “People care,” he said.

The Stratbase conference marking the Arbitral Award’s 10th anniversary drew more than 30 foreign envoys, including 25 ambassadors from 10 nations, who delivered a unified message that the 2016 ruling is final, binding, and non-negotiable — and that the Philippines’ ongoing Code of Conduct (COC) talks with China must not be allowed to erode it.

In a statement issued around the anniversary, Stratbase called on the Philippine government to build “full transparency” into the COC negotiations, warning that “no provision, no formulation, and no compromise that implicitly legitimizes China’s expansive and unlawful claims should be concluded behind closed doors.”

The institute invoked its late chairman, former Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario, who argued as early as 2017 that “the Arbitral ruling should be an integral part of the Code of Conduct framework being finalized and the eventual Code of Conduct once it is concluded… our region cannot promote the rule of law while ignoring the law as it stands.”

Germany’s ambassador, Dr. Andreas Michael Pfaffernoschke, was among the most direct: “The 2016 Arbitral Award is final, and it is legally binding on all parties to the dispute. It is not a disputable opinion, it is an authoritative clarification of maritime entitlements.” He called the South China Sea “a litmus test for the global rule of law.”

Canada’s ambassador, David Hartman, said Ottawa “continue[s] to reaffirm that the 2016 Arbitral Tribunal Award is legally binding on the parties.”

The European Union’s Massimo Santoro confirmed the bloc would issue its own formal statement on the July 12 anniversary reaffirming the same position, while the United Kingdom’s ambassador, in a video message, said the award “is binding on the Philippines and China, irrespective of any protests about its legitimacy.”

Japan’s ambassador, Endo Kazuya, said Tokyo “highly welcomes and supports the steadfast commitment of the government of the Philippines, which has consistently complied with the award,” while India’s ambassador, Sri Harsh Kumar Jain, called the ruling “final and binding” and “the basis for peacefully resolving disputes between the parties.”

Several ambassadors tied that solidarity to the COC talks under the Philippines’ current ASEAN chairmanship. South Korea’s ambassador, Lee Sang-hwa, said Seoul “fully supports the Philippines’ ASEAN Chairship and its efforts to conclude a COC that we hope will be in line with international law including UNCLOS,” crediting leaders at this year’s ASEAN Summit in Cebu with “renewed commitment to conclude a substantive and effective COC.”

Pfaffernoschke echoed the point, calling the Philippines’ chairmanship “vital” to a COC that is “fair, effective, and legally binding” and “fully respects UNCLOS and the 2016 ruling.”

Both ambassadors referenced COC remarks delivered “this morning” by the Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs — comments that appear to have been made not at the Stratbase conference itself but at a separate Department of Foreign Affairs event held roughly five kilometers away on the same day. No sitting DFA official was present at the Stratbase gathering, a gap Chatham House’s Bill Hayton raised from the audience, asking whether the Philippines has “a common foreign and defense policy” at all, given that the two events tackled the identical subject in parallel. A retired ambassador on the panel offered only a general assurance that “everything is coordinated.”

France’s ambassador, Marie Fontanel, warned that the COC could become the mechanism by which the 2016 award is diluted rather than reinforced: “Legal principles alone are not enough… Defending international law requires power.”

Stratbase’s framing was blunter still — that a Code of Conduct negotiated without public visibility risks trading away, informally, what a tribunal in The Hague already settled formally a decade ago.