China says refurbishing our post at Ayungin Shoal is a violation of their sovereignty and int’l law. We know China is lying when it claims sovereignty over Ayungin Shoal because Ayungin is neither an island susceptible of a terrestrial claim nor anywhere near China to be claimed as part of its exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Ayungin is a marine feature below low tide elevation and well within our EEZ.
Besides, if Ayungin is truly a part of China, they won’t waste time issuing public releases about their claim of sovereignty. They will just use outright force to oust us like they would with any real territory of China, say like Hainan.
The fact that China is not treating Ayungin as it would Hainan, i.e, with an outright expulsion of Philippine forces and the destruction of BRP Sierra Madre, only means that they know that they have no right to do so under international law simply because Ayungin is not Chinese territory like Hainan, Hongkong, Fujian, Guangzhao, or Beijing.
Ayungin, like the rest of the West Philippine Sea, is only a Chinese territorial CLAIM, and a bogus one at that, without any basis whatsoever under international law or in terms of historical precedence. It is a fake claim, as fake as a Louis Vuitton bag or a Rolex watch made by Chinese counterfeiters.
The entire world knows this, and only China is living in this make-believe world where it supposedly has a historical claim over the South China Sea (SCS) as a result of its naval conquests, when in fact its pretensions at being a naval power historically ended when their imperial predecessors burned Admiral Zheng He’s treasure fleet in 1433.
From then on, China did not have so much as a flotilla of Chinese junks for it to be able to credibly stake a claim over the SCS until the communist naval build-up in the 1990s, or more than five and a half centuries after Zheng He.
No amount of self-serving propaganda can change this historical fact of China being a non-entity as a naval power in the South China Sea until only recently.
Mere Chinese fishermen, junk traders, and pirates that traversed the SCS since the burning of the Chinese imperial fleet in 1433 do not represent the Chinese state for it to now make a claim over the whole of it.
China only has itself to blame for the historical disaster of emasculating its own rising naval power over the SCS during the 15th century, which was eventually dominated by the European powers and Japan, but never, never China.
The SCS never belonged to China like it once did to the Europeans and Japan. And no matter how China lies and pretends today, it also never will. Only China believes in its own lies and propaganda.