The viewing universe has heard enough of the volatile dispute between Beijing and Manila over boundary-cum-sovereignty issues in the South China Sea or West Philippine Sea, depending on where one stands. The stigma attached to China may have gotten totally out of proportion, courtesy of mainstream media throwing caution to the wind.

Since who controls the media controls the mind, readers have acquired a fine mastery of the rhetoric, narrative, heuristics, and pedagogy as it concerns the geopolitical dispute. Offhand, it is hardly a clear picture of one asserting maritime supremacy over weaker neighbors in the maritime frontier, much less of military hegemony to establish a balance of power in that part of the region.

In fact, it might even seem to boil down to the question of who should fish in which waters, such that Boat A must ask permission from Boat B to catch fish. Indeed, there's more than meets the eye.

In one frame, there is a China Coast Guard ship along with a number of Chinese maritime militia swarming the disputed shoal. From their end, they shoot water cannons and use lasers to pre-empt the passage of Philippine Navy and Coast Guard vessels on resupply missions to troops stationed on the BRP Sierra Madre.

In the series of events, however, there has been no death of Navy personnel, no Philippine boat got burned, no Philippine Coast Guard ship was sunk. If anything at all endangered the lives of Philippine Navy personnel or the crew of other local vessels or fishing boats, an apparent naval blockade by China Coast Guard — "dedicatedly" waterborne 24/7 — never left station.

It must be quite costly for Beijing to establish this maritime presence — with or without any other foreign vessels invoking freedom of navigation or right of passage. Only the Philippines appears to have a problem over what it claims is within its "exclusive economic zone."

By definition, an EEZ as prescribed by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea is an area of the sea over which a sovereign state has exclusive rights regarding the exploration and use of marine resources, including energy production from water and wind. On the other hand, this view collides head-on with China's claim of "historic rights" — the reason the arbitration was initiated.

Incidentally, the oft-mentioned 2016 arbitral ruling that favored the Philippine claim over disputed islands and features is a 501-page document cited as "Permanent Court of Arbitration Case No. 2013-19 in the matter of the South China Sea Arbitration" and signed in The Hague on the 12th of July 2016.  One not trained in law should be careful about articulating any attribution, for example, of "belligerent tactics" on the part of China or her "doublespeak" at ministerial talks, or China's "trampling of Philippine sovereignty," "harassment," "invasion," et cetera.