The US never ratified the UNCLOS, so how can you expect China to respect it? Republicans like Jim Inhofe keep blocking its ratification, so if the US, which is one of the most influential countries on Earth, doesn't respect it, how can anyone respect it too? It's just like the Kyoto Protocol against global warming, which the US Congress also did not ratify.

Instead, you have to remember what US Senator Albert Beverige said in a speech to convince President McKinley to colonize the Philippines:

"Mr. President, the times call for candor. The Philippines are ours forever. . . . And just beyond the Philippines are China's illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either. . . .

"The Pacific is our ocean. . . . Where shall we turn for consumers of our surplus? Geography answers the question. China is our natural customer. . . . The Philippines give us a base at the door of all the East. . . .

"No land in America surpasses in fertility the plains and valleys of Luzon. Rice and coffee, sugar and cocoanuts, hemp and tobacco. . . . The wood of the Philippines can supply the furniture of the world for a century to come. At Cebu the best informed man on the island told me that 40 miles of Cebu's mountain chain are practically mountains of coal. . . .

"I have a nugget of pure gold picked up in its present form on the banks of a Philippine creek. . . .

"My own belief is that there are not 100 men among them who comprehend what Anglo-Saxon self-government even means, and there are over 5,000,000 people to be governed.

"It has been charged that our conduct of the war has been cruel. Senators, it has been the reverse. . . . Senators must remember that we are not dealing with Americans or Europeans. We are dealing with Orientals.

Rudyard Kipling explained how to deal with "Orientals" through his poem "White Man's Burden: The United States and the Philippine Islands" by calling Filipinos "half devil half child." Kipling claimed that it was the white man's burden to civilize "orientals."

In contrast, China possesses ancient maps of South China Sea dating back to the time when the Philippines was mostly occupied by Aetas and indigenous tribes like Mangyans. The Hindu-Buddhist kingdom of Butuan in Mindanao was also the most prominent area in the Philippines, having ties with China. Luzon was an outpost for pirates, and Mangyans ruled Palawan.

So if China has proof of their claims, how can you dispute it in an international court? Even European explorers like the Portuguese said in their journals that Chinese Buddhist monks occupied the Spratlys prior to European intervention.

Even the Philippines has a Lina Law which decriminalizes squatters and even rewards them whenever they steal land from others. Aetas, Mangyans and other indigenous people have lost all their land when ancient Indonesians and Borneans, who now compose the majority of Filipinos, invaded and stole their land. Indigenous tribes are even called people "with tails," so if they cannot be respected by Filipinos, how can you expect foreigners to respect Filipino land?

Indeed, if you bring this case to international courts, it's really a losing case, and PH will just end up like the Nigerian Delta, where oil spills occur frequently and where Nigerians have become worse off because of oil.

PH is better off thinking like its neighbors like Indonesia who are positioning and preparing themselves economically with China as the US falls.