By Felipe F. Salvosa II, Leigh Jenessen San Diego, and John Hurt Allauigan
PressOne.PH

 

First of two parts.

Why this story matters: The historically challenged claim that the Batanes group of islands belongs to China followed a clear path: from an academic symposium to provincial state media, then national state media, before spreading into the online information ecosystem and prompting an official response from the Philippines.

 

GRAPHICS BY NIKKO BALBEDINA

June 30 symposium: Jinan University’s Institute for Area Studies and Philippine Studies Center convened an academic symposium in Guangzhou, China to discuss ownership of the Philippines’s northern islands, an apparent reaction to the announcement of maritime delimitation talks between Manila and Tokyo.

  • More than 10 scholars from universities and research institutes, including the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, Nanjing University, Xiamen University, Ocean University of China and Jinan University, participated.
  • The symposium argued that Batanes legally belonged to China through Taiwan and challenged Philippine sovereignty using geographical, historical, anthropological and treaty-based arguments.
  • Taiwan, officially the Republic of China, is treated by Beijing as a renegade province that will ultimately be reunified with the mainland. Formerly known as Formosa, Taiwan had been occupied by Spain and Japan.
  • The Nationalist government led by Chiang Kai-shek fled to the island in 1949 after their defeat by communist forces under Mao Zedong.

‘Exclusive’ to Guangdong portal: The first known English-language news report appeared on July 2 in Newsgd, Guangdong’s official English-language news portal.

  • The article, labeled “Exclusive,” was written by reporter Xie Hongzhou and intern Fu Rong, and carried photographs supplied by Jinan University.
  • It stated that scholars had “unanimously concluded” that sovereignty over the Batanes islands belonged to China and declared the Japan-Philippines maritime delimitation negotiations “illegal and invalid.”
  • The report also called on the international community to recognize China’s sovereignty claim.

Official summary: Jinan University, the state-funded institution based in Guangzhou, did not publish its own official account of the symposium on its website until July 7.

  • Rather than presenting the viewpoints of individual participants, the communist party-backed institution summarized the proceedings of the event and said the scholars had arrived at a collective position.
  • The university said the symposium had provided “solid academic support for safeguarding China’s maritime rights and interests” and demonstrated academia’s stance on border and maritime issues.
  • On July 16, Ray Powell, director of the Sealight maritime transparency advocacy, said on the Sealight Facebook page that the official summary had reported that the Chinese scholars “unanimously concluded” China’s ownership of Batanes, but the word “unanimously” was later deleted.
  • The site also deleted a reference to China’s “major national strategic needs,” he said. Powell said Beijing seemed to be seeking “legal justification” for its patrols near Batanes that began on June 1.

National amplification: Two days later, on July 9, Beijing’s Global Times elevated the story to a national and even international audience.

  • While repeating many of the Jinan symposium’s legal, historical and anthropological arguments, the communist party mouthpiece adopted noticeably stronger language.
  • Global Times’s headline blared: “Action required to safeguard China’s sovereignty of Batanes Islands.”
  • The online report quoted participants calling on China to strengthen its legal positions, conduct regular coast guard patrols and scale up military countermeasures “at opportune moments.”

Story jumps to social media: Following the charged Global Times report, the narrative spread rapidly across X and other social media platforms.

  • Many posts dropped the symposium’s legal framing, reducing the issue to categorical assertions that “Batanes belongs to China” or that the Philippines had no historical claim over the islands.
  • Some accounts coupled the territorial claim with insults directed at the Philippines and its leaders, while others repeated treaty arguments first raised during the symposium.
  • The Philippine military responded on July 10, with Armed Forces of the Philippines spokesperson Roy Vincent Trinidad dismissing the claim as “baseless” and describing it as another example of “salami slicing in the information domain.”

PressOne.PH monitoring: Our review showed a progression: the academic symposium provided the arguments, then state media strengthened the language, and finally, online platforms transformed a scholarly discussion into a geopolitically loaded claim.

  • While some Chinese-language websites had raised the Batanes claim before, the June 30 symposium became the reference point for nearly every subsequent report advancing the claim.
  • The earliest English-language media report appeared on Newsgd on July 2. Five days later, Jinan University published an official summary.
  • Global Times subsequently amplified the narrative, using stronger language and shifting from scholarly arguments to recommendations for state action.
  • On social media, which favors simplified messaging, the nuance of academic discourse disappeared, facilitating the spread of the dubious territorial claim.