A leading maritime law expert has called on the Philippines to adopt a more assertive stance by actively disrupting China’s unauthorized marine scientific research within the country’s waters.
Jay Batongbacal, director of the University of the Philippines’ Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea, said in a television interview on Monday that Manila must employ lawful but firm measures to safeguard its maritime interests.
He backed recent strategies proposed by the Philippine Coast Guard to block unauthorized missions from gathering data.
“For now… what (Coast Guard) Commodore (Jay) Tarriela announced is one of the things that you can do. Interfere with that research, prevent it from being able to acquire the data and information.”
Batongbacal cautioned that these Chinese operations are rarely purely academic, describing them instead as strategic precursors to exploiting seabed minerals and energy reserves—resources that rightfully belong to the Filipino people.
He emphasized that such activities violate the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which requires foreign states to secure explicit consent before conducting research within a nation’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
To counter these incursions, Batongbacal proposed a two-pronged approach: operational interference and global diplomatic pressure.
“We can also bring this issue to the world court as well, the world opinion, to the world’s public opinion, because they’ve also been doing similar unilateral activities in the (economic zones) of other nations.”
He noted that China has carried out similar unilateral actions in the waters of other countries, presenting the Philippines with an opportunity to spearhead a coordinated international response.
“We have to be able to create a global consensus to keep them from continuing these types of illegal activities.”