A 1916 Philippines Supreme Court decision over a shipwreck on Scarborough Shoal bolsters Manila's territorial claim to the reef, which China also claims, a maritime law expert says.
Dr Jay Batongbacal of the University of the Philippines College of Law yesterday said his research 'is clear evidence that we were exercising jurisdiction over the shoal and incidents on it during the American colonial period' in the Philippines.
Relations between both countries have been strained because both claim sovereignty over the shoal, which the Chinese call Huangyan Island and Filipinos Panatag Shoal.
China claims nearly all of the South China Sea, including the shoal. The Philippines says the shoal, a horseshoe-shaped outcrop, is well within its 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone.
Batongbacal also questioned Beijing's claim that it first discovered the shoal, based on a 1279 map made during the Yuan dynasty.
'At that time, China was part of the great Mongol empire. Going by the implied logic, Huangyan Island should rightfully belong to Mongolia,' Batongbacal said.
The reef was widely referred to as Scarborough after a British tea trade ship of that name sank there in the late 1800s.