Fortunate? Tell that to Panatag fishermen

Last Thursday, at a forum in Quezon City, China’s ambassador to Manila, Jing Quan, told Filipino reporters that we should feel fortunate to have a neighbor like China. Then came the line now circulating in every group chat in the country: “If we want to use force, we may easily win.” He quickly added that China loves peace and will not use force.

Read that again, slowly. A diplomat, a guest in our country, reminded his hosts that his government could beat them in a war, then asked to be thanked for not doing it.

The Department of Foreign Affairs called it a poor choice of words and a thinly veiled threat. President Marcos said it sounded very much like a threat and wants the ambassador to explain himself. Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said the remark exposed what Beijing really wants in the West Philippine Sea. They are right, and every Filipino deserves to understand why.

Start with what happened at sea, because most of it is on video.

On 8 October, a China Coast Guard ship used its water cannon while our Coast Guard was evacuating an ailing Navy serviceman from the BRP Sierra Madre at Ayungin Shoal. A transfer that should take a few hours took nearly 10. That was a medical evacuation. A sick man was waiting.

In July, Chinese vessels water-cannoned our fisheries and coast guard boats near Bajo de Masinloc for two straight days. Their offense was bringing fuel and food to Filipino fishermen.

That same month, our military reported that Chinese personnel clubbed a Filipino sailor with a baton at Ayungin. In September, a Chinese coast guard ship rammed a BFAR boat in the Spratlys, and Beijing said our boat bore full responsibility. Earlier this month, a Chinese J-16 fighter jet harassed a small Philippine patrol plane near Scarborough, or Panatag, Shoal.

This is what “we love peace” looks like on the water.

Now the law. In 2016, an arbitral tribunal under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea ruled that China’s sweeping claim had no legal basis and recognized Scarborough as the traditional fishing ground of Filipinos. China signed and ratified that convention. It simply refuses to honor the ruling. A country that follows only the rules it likes is not a neighbor. It is a landlord who never bought the land.

Here is the playbook in plain words. Beijing does not need to fire a single missile. It sends coast guard ships, militia boats posing as fishing vessels, water cannons and lasers. Each incident is small enough to deny. Together, they push our fishermen out inch by inch, until one day China can claim the waters were always theirs.

PCG spokesperson Jay Tarriela called it exactly what it is: coercion by other means.

The ambassador’s line belongs to the same game. Intimidation is cheaper than invasion. If Filipinos come to believe resistance is pointless, China wins without a war.

So what do we do? We refuse to be frightened into silence. We keep documenting every incident and showing it to the world, as the Coast Guard has done. We stand behind our fishermen, the first Filipinos on the front line, who ask only to fish where their grandfathers fished. And we stop treating this as a Manila story. The West Philippine Sea feeds us. What happens to a fisherman in Masinloc eventually reaches the palengke in Cubao.

Size has never been the measure of a nation’s rights. Our Katipuneros understood that.

Ambassador Jing, we are a peaceful people too. But peace is not a favor you grant us. It is what you owe us under the law you signed.