A note interrupted Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. while he was speaking at the Seoul Defense Dialogue. Its message rejected the 2016 arbitral ruling on the South China Sea. I found Teodoro’s sharp reply justified, because persistent intimidation should never be mistaken for diplomacy.
“Because you lost,” he said after reading China’s familiar refusal to recognize the ruling. It was a short answer, but it stripped away the ceremonial language surrounding the dispute. I liked its bluntness. For years, Beijing has treated repetition as though it could rewrite law: reject the decision often enough, speak loudly enough, send enough ships, and perhaps the world will forget what the tribunal decided. But a legal defeat does not disappear simply because the losing party refuses to look at it.
China called the Philippines a troublemaker, yet I cannot accept that defending lawful maritime rights amounts to “stirring up trouble.” The Philippines initiated arbitration after the 2012 Scarborough Shoal standoff, and the tribunal constituted under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea ruled in 2016 that China’s sweeping claims had no legal basis. China declined to participate and later rejected the award. To me, that resembles a player refusing the referee, ignoring the score, occupying the court, and then accusing the other team of making a scene.
What disturbed me most was the reported delivery of the note while Teodoro was addressing an international defense forum. Whoever sent it apparently wanted China’s rejection placed directly before him, but the gesture achieved the opposite effect: it gave him a stage on which to expose the weakness of Beijing’s position. Teodoro kept the paper as a “memento.” I would keep it, too—not as a trophy, but as a small exhibit of how a great power can possess enormous ships and still arrive at a legal argument carrying only a scrap of denial.
Still, words matter only because Filipino lives and livelihoods stand behind them. The South China Sea is not an abstract blue patch on a diplomatic map. Filipino sailors, troops, fishers, and coast guard personnel face dangerous encounters there. When water cannons, ramming, blocking maneuvers, and physical assaults enter the picture, the dispute leaves the polished conference hall and lands on human skin. I feel anger when those incidents are later wrapped in official statements that make the aggressor sound aggrieved.
I also resist the notion that a smaller country must speak softly simply because a larger neighbor dislikes criticism. Courtesy is valuable in diplomacy, but courtesy without self-respect becomes submission in a better suit. The Philippines should not insult China or seek war; neither should it whisper while its rights are being pressed beneath the hulls of foreign vessels. Teodoro’s language was unusually cutting, and some may consider it undiplomatic, but China’s conduct at sea has been far harsher than any sentence delivered from a lectern.
There is also something almost comic in Beijing accusing Manila of seeking attention after an unidentified person reportedly carried China’s own position onto the stage. The note itself attracted the attention that Chinese officials later condemned. Yet the humor ends quickly. China’s pressure is sustained, organized, and backed by immense maritime power, while the Philippines must defend its rights carefully, without letting one reckless encounter ignite a wider conflict. I admire courage, but I value disciplined courage even more.
The country’s best answer, then, cannot rest on clever retorts alone. I want the Philippines to keep invoking the arbitral award, documenting every encounter, strengthening its maritime capabilities, protecting its personnel, working with responsible partners, and leaving diplomatic channels open without trading away sovereign rights. Teodoro may keep the note, but the nation must keep something far more important: its composure, its legal position, and its refusal to be bullied into silence.
