Scarborough Shoal
Scarborough Shoal, also known as Panacot, Bajo de Masinloc, Huangyan Island 'Minzhu Jiao, and Panatag Shoal, is a coral atoll/reef with an inner lagoon and several rocks above high tide, located between Macclesfield Bank to the west and Luzon to the east. Luzon is away and the nearest landmass.
The atoll is a disputed territory claimed by the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China, and the Republic of the Philippines. Since the 2012 standoff, the feature has been under de facto Chinese control, with a continuous China Coast Guard presence regulating access at the lagoon entrance; no permanent structures have been built on the feature.
In 2013, the Philippines initiated arbitration against China under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. In 2016, the tribunal ruled that China's historic rights claims within the nine-dash line were without lawful effect, held that Scarborough Shoal is a rock under Article 121, and affirmed traditional fishing rights for both Filipino and Chinese artisanal fishers; it did not rule on sovereignty.
The shoal lies within of Luzon and is described by the Philippines as within its EEZ, a characterization rejected by China, which asserts sovereignty over the feature and adjacent waters. Since 2023 the shoal has seen floating-barrier episodes and repeated water-cannon confrontations; in September 2025 China announced the Huangyan Island National Nature Reserve', prompting Philippine protests.
The shoal’s English name comes from the British civilian merchant vessel Scarborough, which grounded on one of the rocks on 12 September 1748 before sailing on to China.
Geography
Scarborough Shoal forms a triangle-shaped chain of reefs and rocks with a perimeter of. It covers an area of, including an inner lagoon. The atolls' highest point, South Rock, is above sea level at high tide. North of South Rock is a channel, about wide and deep, leading into the lagoon. Several other coral rocks encircle the lagoon, forming a large atoll.The atoll is about west of Subic Bay. The deep Manila Trench lies between the atoll and Luzon to the east. The nearest land is in Palauig, Zambales, on Luzon, due east.
International laws
The doctrine of intertemporal law was established after the Island of Palmas Case ruling. Under the doctrine, treaty rights are assessed under the laws in force at the time the treaty is made, not at the time a dispute takes place. "Were any island within those described bounds ascertained to belong in fact to Japan, China, Great Britain or Holland, the United States could derive no valid title from its ostensible inclusion in the Spanish cession."International law on claims differ depending on whether the territory is inhabited. In the 1928 Island of Palmas case, for inhabited territories, the court ruled that "although continuous in principle, sovereignty cannot be exercised in fact at every moment on every point of a territory. The intermittence and discontinuity compatible with the maintenance of the right necessarily differ according as inhabited or inhabited regions are involved, or region enclosed within territories in which sovereignty is incontestably displayed or again regions accessible from, for instance, the high seas." For uninhabited territories, the 1931 Clipperton Island case ruled that "if a territory, by virtue of the fact it was completely uninhabited, is, from the first moment when the occupying state makes its appearance there, at the absolute and undisputed disposition of that state, from the moment the taking of possession must be considered as accomplished, and the occupation is thereby completed. he fact that has not exercised her authority there in a positive manner does not imply the forfeiture of an acquisition already definitely perfected." The ruling was affirmed in the 1933 Eastern Greenland case.
In the Eastern Greenland Case between Norway and Denmark, the critical date doctrine was established. It was ruled by the Permanent Court of International Justice that the Norwegian proclamation on 10 July 1931, annexing Eastern Greenland was the "critical date" in that case.
Under the principle of uti possidetis juris, all states must respect former colonies' boundaries. This was established after the Frontier Dispute case between Burkina Faso and Mali. The ICJ ruled that uti possidetis juris is a "general principle, which is logically connected with the phenomenon of the obtaining of independence, wherever it occurs. Its obvious purpose is to prevent the independence and stability of new States being endangered by fratricidal struggles provoked by the challenging of frontiers following the withdrawal of the administering power…Its purpose, at the time of the achievement of independence by the former Spanish colonies of America, was to scotch any designs which non-American colonizing powers might have on regions which had been assigned by the former metropolitan State to one division or another, but which were still uninhabited or unexplored."
In international law, maps cannot establish title to territory unless attached to a treaty. Moreover, maps unilaterally produced by a state, even if not attached to a treaty, can bind the producing state if it is "adverse to its interest". This was established in the 2002 Delimitation of the Border between the State of Eritrea and Ethiopia case, and was affirmed in the Pedra Blanca arbitration between Malaysia and Singapore in 2008, when the ICJ ruled: "The map still stands as a statement of geographical fact, especially when the State adversely affected has itself produced and disseminated it, even against its own interest."
History
Scarborough Shoal is named in English after the British civilian merchant ship Scarborough which grounded on the feature on 12 September 1748.The Philippines believes that it refers to one of the three islands, Galit, Panacot, and Lumbay, shown off the coast of Central Luzon in the 1734 Velarde map, amid other maps depicting Scarborough Shoal, Galit, Panacot and Lumbay published in the same timeframe.
A number of countries have made historic claims of the use of Scarborough Shoal. In April 1800 it was named Maroona Shoal, after being surveyed by the Santa Lucia, a Spanish frigate, and this name was used on a chart in 1808, but later replaced in the Philippines by the name Bajo de Masinglo. The name "Maroona Shoal" was still in dual use on marine charts in English in 1889.
In 1734, the Spanish colonial government published the first edition of the Velarde map, showing locations included in the territory of the Philippines. According to the Philippines, the map shows actual sovereignty over Scarborough Shoal, and the Spratly Islands, and is the earliest map which shows sovereignty over the said territories. The atolls' present name in English was chosen by Captain Philippe D'Auvergne, whose East India Company East Indiaman Scarborough briefly grounded on one of the rocks on 12 September 1748, before sailing on to China.
There are Qing Dynasty maps based on 1767 work that show multiple islands in the South China Sea. The farthest are near the coast of Hainan Island and mainland China, rather than the islands near the Spratly Islands or Scarborough Shoal.
In 1771, Jean-Baptiste Nicolas Denis d'Après de Mannevillette published a map of the China Sea which includes Scarborough Shoal, along with three unnamed shoals which are close to the Luzon coast. The Spanish colonial government of the Captaincy General of the Philippines launched an initial survey of Scarborough Shoal on 4 May 1792. The survey, Plano de la Navigación, was taken by Alejandro Malaspina aboard the ship Santa Lucía, with Filipino comrades. A chart published in 1794, shows Scarborough Shoal in some detail with the date of the grounding incident indicated, while showing Galit, Panacot, and Lumbay only as dotted outlines. In 1808, the Spanish colonial government published the 1808 Carta General del Archipiélago Filipino, showing its sovereign territory of the Philippines, which included Scarborough Shoal and the Spratlys, as recognized by the international community. In 1875, a more complete edition of the Carta General del Archipiélago Filipino was published by the Spanish colonial government to define the official territory of the Philippines.
After the Spanish-American War, Spain in 1898 ceded the Philippines to the United States of America through the Treaty of Paris, and it had maps as annexes.The map clearly shows that the treaty's definition of Philippine territory did not include Scarborough Shoal. Because parts of Tawi-Tawi remained under Spanish control as these were outside treaty lines. This led to the signing of the Treaty of Washington, which according to the Philippines retroactively ceded Scarborough Shoal, the Spratlys, and the remainder of Tawi-Tawi to the United States as part of Philippine territory. But some analysts believe that the 1900 Treaty of Washington concerned only the islands of Sibutu and Cagayan de Sulu, and not Scarborough Shoal. In the Islas Palmas case, the United States, as representative of the territory of the Philippines, reiterated in a memorandum that the 1875 Carta General del Archipiélago Filipino "is both an American official and a Spanish official map" of Philippine territory. According to the Philippines, this bound the United States on its recognition of the Scarborough Shoal and the Spratly Islands as Philippine territory. From 1899 to 1902, the United States war department in the territory of the Philippines republished and reissued four more times the 1875 Carta General del Archipiélago Filipino, with updated features like military telegraph and cable lines, Eastern Cable Company lines, and military department boundaries. The maps included Scarborough Shoal as part of Philippine territory, according to the Philippines.
In 1909, Qing China led an expedition to the Paracels, and for the first time formally declared its claim.
International salvage litigation resulting from the wreck of the Swedish ship Nippon on 8 May 1913, on Scarborough Shoal, was heard and recognised by claimants in the Philippines.
In the 1930s, the Republic of China and the Insular Government of the Philippines Islands, each without the knowledge of the other, pursued actions relevant to their respective claims on Scarborough Shoal. China published a map including Scarborough Shoal in its territory in April 1935.
In 1935, the Commonwealth of the Philippines was inaugurated under the 1935 Constitution, which reiterated the territorial claims of the Philippines as per the 1898 Treaty of Paris, the 1900 Treaty of Washington, and the 1930 US-UK Treaty.
In 1938, the Commonwealth asked the United States Department of State to determine ownership of Scarborough Shoal, but there was no documentary evidence of an official Philippine claim over Scarborough Shoal.
In 1943, China published "China Handbook " during the Second Sino-Japanese War, which defined the southernmost point of the country was "Triton Island of the Paracel Group". China revised the content in 1947, claiming the Spratlys as their southernmost territory for the first time in history. In the 1947 China Handbook, China specifically recognized the Spratlys are contested among China, the Philippines, and French Indochina.
The Philippine government conducted an oceanographic survey in 1957, and in 1965, the Philippine flag was raised on the shoal.
In an article from 18 February 1980, the Beijing Review confirmed that astronomer Guo Shoujing built an observatory in the Paracel Islands, and not Scarborough Shoal.
When the People’s Republic of China built facilities on Mischief Reef within the Philippine EEZ in 1995, then-National Security Advisor Jose T. Almonte pushed for the construction of a lighthouse on Scarborough Shoal to bolster the Philippine claim. Parts of the lighthouse had been pre-fabricated on the mainland Philippines but, according to Almonte, the project was halted for internal political reasons and to avoid antagonizing China.