Analysts and policymakers worldwide continue decrying China’s mid-September 2025 announcement of a purported national nature preserve at the contested Scarborough Shoal.
They have exposed China’s ploy as another example of lawfare designed to reinforce its excessive and illegal claims of sovereignty across portions of the South China Sea also claimed by nations including the Philippines. Scarborough Shoal, which China seized in 2012, is within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.
China is attempting to establish a false legal precedent to support its claims at the expense of other nations, experts contend. In 2016, an international tribunal invalidated China’s claim of historic sovereign rights to the shoal and other Philippine territory.
“This is part of a long-term strategy to establish facts on the sea. We call it ‘lawfare,’” Stephen Nagy, an international studies professor at International Christian University in Tokyo, told the Stars and Stripes newspaper.
“It falls into a pattern of China trying to establish administrative justifications for things it’s already done with military force,” Greg Poling, a South China Sea expert at the United States-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, told The Associated Press.
The Philippines “strongly rejected” China’s designation of a preserve, which would include 8,700 acres on the shoal’s northeast side. Marshall Louis Alferez, foreign affairs assistant secretary for maritime and ocean affairs, “reaffirmed the shoal as an integral part of Philippine territory over which the country exercises sovereignty and jurisdiction,” a mid-September news release stated. The Philippines has “exclusive authority to establish environmental protection areas” over its territory.
China’s attempt to designate a preserve could backfire, analysts say. This “will only demonstrate — one more time — that every move China makes is intentional,” Benjamin Blandin, a nonresident research fellow at the Korea Institute for Maritime Strategy, told Stars and Stripes.
Moreover, the announcement highlights Beijing’s hypocrisy: China is the region’s worst environmental offender.
“In the present case, it might even be to their [China’s] detriment as it was [they] who destroyed the corals and fauna (giant clams) with total disregard for the environment,” Blandin said. The 2016 ruling also found that China degraded the environment by building artificial islands.
China has caused irreparable damage to more than 19 square kilometers of coral reef in the South China Sea since 2013, the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative reported in January 2025. Using satellite imagery, the U.S.-based research group determined China was responsible for 65% of the 32 square kilometers of reef destruction.
Analysts expect China’s designation of a preserve to increase skirmishes in the resource-rich sea, a vital global trade route. Within six days of the announcement, China Coast Guard ships fired water cannons at a Philippine vessel lawfully engaged in a resupply mission at Scarborough Shoal, damaging the ship and injuring a crew member.
China had already recently escalated tensions with the Philippines in August through reckless activities that resulted in a Chinese navy vessel colliding with a China Coast Guard ship while they were harassing a Philippine patrol boat near Scarborough Shoal.
Allies and Partners including Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom and the U.S. called on Beijing to honor the tribunal ruling and cease gray-zone activities that threaten regional stability.
“Beijing claiming Scarborough [Shoal] as a nature preserve is yet another coercive attempt to advance sweeping territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea at the expense of its neighbors, including by preventing Filipino fishermen from accessing these traditional fishing grounds,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated.
