01/03/2025
𝐍𝐇𝐂𝐏 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐚 𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐦 𝐨𝐧 𝐏𝐚𝐥𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐧 𝐈𝐬𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐝
The National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP), the national agency mandated with promoting our country’s history and preserving our rich cultural heritage, strongly condemns and refutes the recent Chinese claims over Palawan Island as seen from a social media post circulating in Weibo and other Chinese social media platforms.
The post falsely states that the island of Palawan was once theirs and they have governed it for one thousand years, but the Philippines claims jurisdiction and has named it Palawan. The post originated from the Rednote app, an app similar to Tiktok, and adds that the island should be returned to China. In the contested claim, Palawan island was called “Zheng He Island” after the famous Chinese explorer and seafarer who travelled the seas and oceans of Asia from the 1300s to the 1400s. It is necessary to note that exploration does not equate to sovereign ownership. There exists no evidence to support the settlement of a permanent Chinese population in Palawan which has been continuously populated since 50,000 years ago through archeological data.
From a historical perspective, no accounts of Chinese settlement were seen in available documents, as early as 1521, through the accounts of Italian chronicler Antonio Pigafetta who was part of the first circumnavigation of the world. Palawan was populated by communities of similar cultural affinity with the rest of our archipelago. The head of the expedition had, in fact, made a blood compact with the chief of the community that the NHCP recognized to be in the present day Sitio Tagusao, Brooke’s Point, Palawan. This does not, however, preclude the existence of trade relations as our ancestors have, as we are at present, been trading with our neighbors for millennia.
In years since then, historical maps from various European cartographers from the 1500s to the 1800s recognized the inclusion of Palawan Island in the Philippine archipelago as administered by the Sultanate of Sulu and the Spanish Captain-Generalcy of the Philippines. Later, the 1898 Treaty of Paris, amended by the 1900 Treaty of Washington, clearly defined the areas that would become our republic’s territory in the present day.
Neither does vassalage by a predecessor nation equate to sovereign rule in the present day. Early Filipino polities in Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao were, at one point or another, closely connected to sultanates and rajahnates in other parts of Southeast Asia. However, our neighbors do not claim sovereignty over Philippine territory over baseless and inaccessible historical fiction. The historical fact clearly and convincingly shows that the Philippines and its predecessor state actors have always exercised sovereignty over our archipelago and over Palawan in particular. No other state contests this fact. Not one. This has been accepted by the international community for more than a century. In the said period, the Chinese state has flip-flopped on its claims that culminated in the infamous Nine-Dash Line which was soundly declared illegal by the Permanent Court of Arbitration through the 2016 arbitral ruling.
The NHCP stands by the policy of the rest of the Philippine Government that not one inch of Filipino sovereign territory is for sale, nor can any be claimed by states that purport to be our friends yet continue to undermine regional stability through the reprehensible use of questionable historical data. Palawan is and will always be Filipino.
Statement in PDF form HERE: https://bit.ly/NHCP-Statement-Chinese-Claims-Palawan
𝗛𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗲: 80 years ago today marks the beginning of the Liberation of Palawan during World War II. Allied forces landed in Puerto Princesa City ushering the eventual freedom of the whole province by April 1945.
