The maritime monitoring group SeaLight has reported that Jinan University in China took down a symposium paper asserting Chinese ownership of the Batanes Islands, though the institution offered no retraction, correction, or public explanation for the removal.
While the university’s own site no longer carries the material, SeaLight pointed out that identical content is still accessible through several Chinese state-linked outlets, among them the Global Times, GDToday, and the National Institute for South China Sea Studies.
The paper had called on Beijing to “claim sovereignty” over Batanes while stepping up China Coast Guard presence and pursuing military countermeasures “at opportune moments.” According to SeaLight, the document was crafted to build a legal foundation for the sovereignty patrols China launched east of the island group on June 1, tying an assertion of territorial ownership to Beijing’s operations in nearby waters.
“The Jinan symposium dutifully supplied it by providing the land claim to justify the sea claim and NISCSS and the state media apparatus amplified it,” the group said.
SeaLight assessed that Beijing has so far declined to either reject or affirm what the scholars concluded, a stance the group reads as an attempt to keep the underlying narrative alive without formally staking a claim to populated Philippine territory.
The reaction inside the Philippines, according to the group, ran strongly against the paper, drawing pointed statements from ranking officials and ultimately pushing the university toward deletion.
Foreign Affairs Secretary Theresa Lazaro had taken a measured view of the matter, telling reporters that Manila places far greater weight on formal government positions than on scholarly commentary. Speaking on the margins of the event marking ten years since the 2016 South China Sea Arbitral Award, she reaffirmed the government’s adherence to that ruling and to established policy.
“Sometimes the academics really, well, they are academics. So we listen to the government, so that’s only what we can say,” Lazaro said.
SeaLight cautioned that the Chinese patrols operating east of Batanes, interrupted for now by recent typhoons, may pick up again once the weather clears.
