China can’t claim Batanes by proxy–anthropologist
The Ivatan residents of Batanes have a lot in common with the people of Taiwan’s Orchid Island, but China can’t lay claim to the country’s province through Taiwan, a Filipino anthropologist has said.
In a Facebook post on Sunday, cultural anthropologist Dr. Nestor Castro said the Ivatan language and the language spoken by the Tao people of Orchid Island in the Taiwan region belong to the Western Malayo-Polynesian (WMP), a subgroup of the Austronesian language family.
“The languages spoken in mainland China are not Austronesian,’’ he noted.
‘China’s logic’
For Castro, this indicates that the Tao language is linguistically more closely related to other WMP languages, including virtually all languages spoken in the Philippines, except Chavacano (Spanish-based creole), as well as languages spoken in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and even Madagascar in Africa.
“If we were to follow China’’s logic, the Philippines would actually have a stronger basis for claiming Lanyu (Orchid Island) because of its close linguistic and cultural affinity with the people of the Philippines,” he said.
Chinese researchers have recently claimed that Batanes is a geographical extension of self-governed Taiwan, which China claims as part of its territory.
Wang Yuanyuan, a research fellow at the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, cited studies by Filipino anthropologists in 2023 that she said confirmed that the elderly inhabitants of Batanes still speak the Tao language—proof that their ancestors migrated from the Taiwan region some 3,000 to 4,000 years ago, according to the Global Times.
“Anthropological evidence confirms that the roughly 10,000 Ivatan residents of Batanes share cognate languages, analogous customs and identical underground dwellings with the Tao people of Orchid Island in the Taiwan region,” she said.
Philippine officials have fiercely disputed their claims, maintaining that the province is part of the archipelago.
Meanwhile, Rear Adm. Jay Tarriela, Philippine Coast Guard spokesperson for the West Philippine Sea, slammed Chinese Embassy deputy spokesperson Guo Wei for blaming him for the disarray between the two countries.
“If China would simply adhere to international law—stop harassing ordinary Filipino fishermen, stop harassing PCG (Philippine Coast Guard) and BFAR (Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources) vessels, stop destroying the marine environment through reclamation, and abandon its illegal claim over nearly the entire South China Sea—Philippines-China relations would be in a far better place,” Tarriela said. —WITH A REPORT FROM KEITH CLORES
