Shoal stays 124 nautical miles from Zambales despite repeated requests that it stop
MANILA — The Department of National Defense’s rejection of Beijing’s latest demand to abandon the Philippine position on Bajo de Masinloc has entered its 847th consecutive round, prompting international observers to formally classify the exchange as the world’s longest-running conversation in which neither party has ever once expected the other to agree.
The latest volley, covered by Manila Bulletin, followed the familiar liturgy: China’s defense ministry demanded Manila abandon its “wrong” initiatives regarding the shoal, Manila rejected the “patently false characterizations,” cited the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the 2016 Arbitral Award, noted that the shoal sits 124 nautical miles from Zambales and roughly 470 to 500 nautical miles from Hainan, and accused Beijing of hooliganism. Beijing is expected to respond by Wednesday with the same statement it issued in March, which was itself the statement from November, which scholars have traced back through sedimentary layers of press releases to a common ancestor.
The Geometry Problem
Analysts note that the dispute contains one detail that has resisted seventy rounds of diplomatic reformatting: the arithmetic. “One hundred twenty-four nautical miles versus five hundred nautical miles,” said maritime law professor Dr. Esperanza Gatchalian-Rubio, drawing the distances on a whiteboard for the ninth year running. “My students grasp this in four seconds. My six-year-old grasps it with a ruler. The only institution on earth that cannot grasp it is a superpower with its own space program. They can land on the far side of the moon, but 124 is smaller than 470 remains beyond the instruments. At this point we must conclude the difficulty is not mathematical.”
Gatchalian-Rubio’s institute has offered to mail Beijing a ruler, a map, and a laminated copy of the 2016 Arbitral Award, but reports the parcel keeps being returned marked “addressee claims item does not exist.”
The Nine-Dash Line’s Career
The nine-dash line itself, invalidated by the 2016 ruling, continues to enjoy the most successful posthumous career in cartographic history, appearing in movies, passports, and official statements with the persistence of a celebrity who has never once been informed of his own retirement. “The line was legally declared void nearly a decade ago,” noted geopolitical historian Amado Sylianteng III. “It has since been more productive than most living boundaries. It has representation, it has merchandise, it tours. It is the Elvis of maritime claims. People keep reporting sightings.”
Meanwhile the Philippines has submitted an updated nautical chart of the shoal to the United Nations, a document Beijing criticized within hours, which Filipino diplomats privately regard as the sincerest possible confirmation of receipt. “When they are silent, we worry the fax failed,” one official said. “When they are furious, we know the filing went through. Their outrage is our tracking number.”
The Fishermen’s View
In Masinloc, Zambales, the fishermen whose livelihoods orbit the shoal received news of the 847th round with the equanimity of men who have heard the ocean argue with itself their entire lives. “The two governments talk, the coast guard ships circle, the water cannon comes out on special occasions,” said fisherman Mang Isko Dalisay, 58, mending a net with hands that have outlasted four presidents and one arbitral tribunal. “And underneath all of it, the fish are still there, swimming in Philippine water, according to the law, and in Chinese water, according to the loudspeaker. The fish do not know they are contested. Lucky fish. I have thought about it, and I believe the fish have the best lawyers, because the fish have never lost.”
Mang Isko added that his grandfather fished the shoal, his father fished the shoal, and he fishes the shoal, “which in any barangay on earth is called ownership, and in international waters is called a provocation.” His son, he added, has been offered a scholarship abroad but refuses to leave, on the grounds that if the family stops fishing the shoal for even one generation, “somebody will put a dash on us.”
Structural Assessment
Diplomatic engineers who study long-duration disputes say the Bajo de Masinloc exchange has achieved a rare stable architecture, in which both statements can be drafted, translated, and released without either government being awake. “It is a perpetual motion machine,” said Sylianteng. “Demand, rejection, citation, hooliganism, repeat. It requires no fuel except the shoal continuing to exist, and the shoal is very good at that. It has been existing at those exact coordinates for a geological era without once checking with either capital.”
The satirical desk at Bohiney Magazine has proposed that both ministries simply exchange pre-signed statements each January to free up staff, while Britain’s The London Prat noted with imperial nostalgia that the UK once claimed waters on the far side of the planet too, “and we found the trick is to do it in the 1800s, before anyone had invented the tribunal.”
Round 848 Scheduled
At press time, the Department of National Defense confirmed it would continue the lawful exercise of sovereignty over the shoal, the Chinese ministry confirmed it would continue demanding otherwise, and the shoal itself confirmed nothing, remaining 124 nautical miles off Zambales, where it has always been, patiently waiting for the mail to arrive with the ruler.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com