By Jing Ge
Chinese scholars have opened a new front in the South China Sea sovereignty debate by asserting that the Philippines’ Batanes Islands legally belong to China, a claim presented at a recent academic seminar at Jinan University (China) that is likely to deepen concerns in Manila over Beijing’s expanding maritime narrative.
These scholars cited the islands’ geographical and cultural ties with Taiwan, the 1898 Treaty of Paris, and records of historical administration to support their claim. The argument has attracted particular attention because it emerged as the Batanes Islands were becoming increasingly important to U.S.-Philippine military deployments and as Japan and the Philippines pursued maritime delimitation talks. Currently, the Chinese government has not formally endorsed these scholars’ sovereignty claim. In response, Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro dismissed the argument as “baseless” and “ludicrous,” warning that it reflected a broader Chinese attempt to expand its influence in the Pacific region.
Batanes Fills a Gap in the First Island Chain
The Batanes Islands are located between Taiwan and Luzon, dividing the Luzon Strait into the Bashi Channel to the north and the Balintang Channel to the south. The South China Sea is to the west, while the Philippine Sea and the western Pacific are to the east.
If the Chinese navy wants to transit from the South China Sea into the western Pacific, the Luzon Strait is one of the broadest and most militarily valuable passages. It accommodates large surface warships and submarines, and Chinese carrier groups have used it to reach waters east of Taiwan and farther into the Pacific many times.
The U.S. and its allies could also use the Philippine Sea to conduct military operations near Taiwan. The Batanes Islands allow the Philippines to position sensors and shore-based systems roughly 160 kilometers north of Luzon, facing the Bashi Channel more directly. If Japan monitored the Miyako Strait from the north and the Philippines monitored the Luzon Strait from the south, their capabilities could complement one another. Although they could not completely prevent the Chinese navy from entering the Pacific, they could raise the costs of reconnaissance, escort operations, and attempts to break through. This helps explain why U.S.-Philippine deployments of mobile systems in Batanes are likely to concern Beijing. Hence, the Luzon Strait is both an outlet for the Chinese navy and a route through which outside forces can approach waters south and east of Taiwan.
How Batanes Is Reshaping Regional Security Planning
On the Philippines’s side, the Batanes Islands serve both as an early-warning outpost and a crisis transit hub. The Philippines has built a coast guard station on Itbayat Island to strengthen monitoring of the Luzon Strait. If a conflict erupts in the Taiwan Strait, the evacuation of Filipino citizens in Taiwan could also pass through the islands. However, Batanes has a population of only about 20,000 and two small runways; therefore, it cannot become the final destination for a large-scale evacuation and can function only as a temporary transit point between Taiwan and Luzon. This means that ports, airfields, communications systems, and fuel facilities are both civilian emergency assets and military logistics nodes. Although these facilities strengthen the Philippines’ crisis-response capacity, they also make Batanes vulnerable to becoming a target of disruption or suppression in the early stages of a conflict.
For Taiwan, if equipped with surveillance and coastal-defence systems, the Batanes Islands could complicate a Chinese attempt to blockade Taiwan’s southern approaches. Surveillance systems on the islands could provide earlier warning of vessels deploying from the South China Sea toward eastern Taiwan, but their airfields and ports have limited support for evacuation, resupply, and maritime rescue. For countries such as Japan, the U.S., and Australia, Batanes functions more as a connecting node: Japan’s southwestern islands and the northern Philippines belong to separate national defense systems, but intelligence sharing and coordinated patrols could reduce the surveillance gap between them.
The U.S. Marine Corps has airlifted the Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) to the Philippines’ Batanes Islands as part of exercises testing the rapid deployment of shore-based anti-ship missiles across remote island chains. The system is designed to support expeditionary operations by enabling small, mobile units to target hostile surface vessels.
Military analysts say that if deployed operationally, NMESIS would strengthen U.S.-Philippine sea denial capabilities across the strategically important Luzon Strait. Positioned in the Batanes Islands, the missile system could help hold at risk naval vessels transiting parts of the Bashi Channel and nearby waters south of Taiwan, one of the principal maritime gateways linking the South China Sea with the western Pacific.
Whoever can effectively use the Batanes Islands can gain surveillance, deployment, and potential sea-denial capabilities along one of the most important passages between China’s near seas and the western Pacific.
Jing Ge is a Research Associate at the South China Sea NewsWire and a Policy Analyst at the Global Security & Economic Policy Think Tank. She is currently a PhD candidate in International Relations and an instructor at Florida International University. Her research fields include International Organizations and International Law, Indo-Pacific regional security, and emerging technology. She has written for The Diplomat, The National Interest, 9DASHLINE, East Asia Forum, The Interpreter, Australia Outlook, and American Purpose. Her academic work has also been published in many international peer-reviewed journals.
