And we won because President Noynoy Aquino had the foresight and the courage to take China to court.
That point should not be forgotten. At a time when Chinese encroachment in the West Philippine Sea was becoming more aggressive, PNoy did not respond with empty machismo or performative chest-beating. He chose the harder, quieter, more serious path. He invoked the law. He went to the international community. He put the Philippine case before a tribunal and secured a ruling that gave our position legitimacy before the nations of the world.
Unfortunately, the ruling came out after the election of Rodrigo Duterte, the same man who had loudly promised during the campaign to personally defend Philippine sovereignty on a jet ski.
Once in office, however, the swagger vanished. Duterte repeatedly minimized the arbitral victory. He said he would “set aside” the ruling. Later, he dismissed it as just a piece of paper that he would throw into the wastebasket. All that bravado, it turned out, was reserved for campaign rallies, not Beijing.
And while Duterte bent over backward to appease China, Chinese vessels continued to swarm Philippine waters, harass Filipino fishermen and press their presence in our own exclusive economic zone.
The Whitsun Reef incident in 2021, involving hundreds of Chinese vessels, should have shattered the fantasy that friendship with Beijing would moderate its behavior. It did not. Like the bully it is, China pocketed the appeasement offered up by Duterte and kept pushing.
Ten years after our arbitral victory, the lesson should be clear. The arbitral ruling is not a relic. It is not a framed certificate to be admired once a year. It is a living legal weapon, a foundation for diplomacy, alliances, education and national pride.
It should be taught in schools. Every Filipino should know what we won, why we won, and why it matters. Because sovereignty is not defended only by ships and soldiers; it is also defended by memory, law, history and legitimacy.
The recent absurd claim by Chinese scholars that Batanes somehow belongs to China because it is supposedly a natural extension of Taiwan shows exactly why this matters. Territorial aggression does not always begin with ships appearing on the horizon. Sometimes it begins with a theory, a self-serving map, a fake historical narrative, repeated until people start treating nonsense as a legal claim.
That is why legitimacy matters. China may have the bigger fleet. It may make the louder threats. But in this fight, the law is on our side. The nations of the world stand with us. The ruling gave us that decisively.
We should honor that. Teach it. Use it. Build alliances around it.
And most of all, we should never again allow any president to treat one of our greatest national victories as a mere piece of paper.
