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US-China relations
OpinionAsia Opinion
Zhihua Zheng
Zhihua Zheng

Opinion | Why did US diplomat say Scarborough Shoal belonged to the Philippines?

  • Amid South China Sea tensions, Nicholas Burns’ incorrect assertion that the disputed Scarborough Shoal and Second Thomas Shoal were Philippine territory may reflect US bias at work
  • This highlights a hardening US stance against China and Beijing’s communication challenges

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Nicholas Burns, US ambassador to China, speaks at the Brookings Institution in Washington about US-China relations, in December. Photo: AP
Zhihua Zheng
Earlier this month, US ambassador to China Nicholas Burns discussed US-China relations at a seminar hosted by the East-West Centre in Hawaii. Startlingly, he claimed that Second Thomas Shoal and Scarborough Shoal were “the sovereign territory of the Philippines”.
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His baffling remark was in response to questions by East-West Centre president Suzanne Vares-Lum on South China Sea tensions between China and the Philippines. Burns said the US was “very concerned” about China’s “coercive pressure”, and referred to the “tense stand-offs” at “Second Thomas Shoal and also in Scarborough Shoal”.

He added: “The International Court of Justice, which is the relevant legal body, ruled in July 2016 decisively in favour of the Philippines. And so that that territory is the sovereign territory of the Philippines and that China’s legal claim to it has no basis in international law. All the rest of the world understands that and recognises that this is sovereign Filipino territory.”

This is not only counterfactual but also diverges from the official US position, and misrepresents the relevant international laws, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos).
First, it was not the International Court of Justice but an arbitral tribunal established under Annex VII to Unclos that made the 2016 ruling. And the ruling neither mentioned nor confirmed Scarborough Shoal and Second Thomas Shoal as Philippine territory.
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As Unclos “does not address the sovereignty of states over land territory”, the tribunal said in the ruling, it has “not been asked to, and does not purport to, make any ruling as to which state enjoys sovereignty over any land territory in the South China Sea, in particular with respect to the disputes concerning sovereignty over the Spratly Islands or Scarborough Shoal”.

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