If the Philippines decided to set up an environmental monitoring station on Panatag or Scarborough Shoal, to preserve endangered giant clams and sharks from poachers, how would Beijing react? The United Nations-backed Permanent Arbitration Court in The Hague had declared in its landmark ruling last year that Panatag is a common fishing ground and China had violated the Philippines’ sovereign rights when it occupied and shooed away Filipino fishermen from the shoal. The same historic ruling invalidated China’s entire nine-dash-line territorial claim over nearly all of the South China Sea

Friends in deed?. (2017, March 20). The Philippine Star, p. 14.