Manila: Foreign Affairs Secretary Ma. Theresa Lazaro on Friday dismissed claims by supposed Chinese scholars saying Batanes is part of China through Taiwan, adding that the Philippines only listens to official positions of a government. '[T]he academics really- well, they are academics... We only listen to government. So that's only what we can say,' she said in an interview on the sidelines of a conference commemorating the 10th anniversary of the 2016 Arbitral Award in the South China Sea.

According to Philippines News Agency, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) stated that the Philippines' sovereignty over Batanes is not up for debate and that the country would not entertain any revisionist claims over its territory. A news report by Guangdong-based media Newsgd earlier cited Chinese scholars from different Chinese universities as 'unanimously' concluding that the 'Batan Islands constitute a natural geographical extension of Taiwan, with sovereignty belonging to China.'

In a separate statement, the National Historical Commission of the Philippines expressed strong condemnation and refutation of these claims, asserting that they have 'no rational basis in substantive research and operate from evident bad faith.' The commission highlighted that the earliest known extensive documentation of the Batanes Islands, by British explorer William Dampier in 1687, found no trace of Chinese governance over the islands.

It further stated that the natives of Batanes, the Ivatan people, lived in protected communities and traded with other maritime trading nations, which is evident in the archaeological and historical evidence produced by more than a hundred years of research. The Philippine government and its legal predecessors, since 1783, have maintained continuous and undisputed sovereignty over Batanes.