Philippine Defense Chief Reads China's Note Aloud Onstage: 'Of Course, Because You Lost'
A note rejecting the 2016 South China Sea ruling was left on Gilberto Teodoro's table as he spoke at a Seoul security forum. He answered it line by line, and Beijing hit back.
The Philippines' defense secretary turned an interruption into a public rebuke of Beijing at an international security forum in South Korea this week, reading aloud a note from Chinese military diplomats while he was still on stage and answering it line by line.
Gilberto Teodoro was taking a question about China's so-called gray-zone coercion in the South China Sea at the Seoul Defense Dialogue on Tuesday when a note from the Chinese Embassy's defense attaché office was placed on his table. The note restated China's rejection of the 2016 arbitral ruling that found Beijing's sweeping historic claims in the waterway had no legal basis. The episode, and China's angry response, lays bare how little room remains for compromise between Beijing and one of Washington's closest security partners in Asia.
What the note said
The note ran to two paragraphs. The first argued that the arbitration case brought by Manila violated fundamental principles of international law, that the tribunal's award was illegal, null and void with no binding force, and that China neither accepted nor recognized it. The second, which Teodoro did not read out, said China would safeguard its sovereignty while maintaining peace in the South China Sea through dialogue.
Teodoro read the first paragraph aloud and responded to each claim in turn. When the note said the ruling had no binding force, he suggested that was because China did not want to be bound by the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. When it said Beijing did not recognize the award, he replied: "Of course, because you lost."
He went on to criticize the way the message had been delivered, saying it showed disrespect for international law, for South Korea as the host and for the other delegates in the room. He described the tactic as coercion, bullying and aggression, and said he would keep the sheet of paper as a reminder of how desperate and ineffective he believed China's position to be.
Beijing hits back
China responded the following day. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning, in a statement circulated by the Chinese Embassy in Manila, told Teodoro to cut out what she called "provocations and theatrics" and to stop undermining relations between the two countries.
Mao repeated Beijing's position that the Philippines had unilaterally started the arbitration case and accused Manila of distorting and abusing the dispute settlement mechanisms of the Law of the Sea convention.
The clash is personal as well as political. In June, China imposed sanctions on Teodoro and members of his family, barring them from entering mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao.
Why it matters for Washington
The Philippines is the oldest U.S. treaty ally in Asia, bound to the United States by the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty. Successive U.S. administrations have said that commitment extends to armed attacks on Philippine forces, aircraft and public vessels anywhere in the South China Sea, which means confrontations between Chinese and Philippine ships carry a risk of drawing in American forces.
The 2016 ruling, issued by a tribunal in The Hague under the Law of the Sea convention, has become the legal foundation for Manila's position and for Washington's argument that China's expansive claims are unlawful. Beijing has never accepted the case, and the note in Seoul was a reminder that its position has not shifted a decade later.
Teodoro's willingness to confront Chinese officials in public also reflects a broader hardening in Manila, which has increasingly chosen to publicize incidents at sea rather than handle them quietly through diplomatic channels.
What happens next
Neither government has signaled any softening. China's sanctions on Teodoro remain in force, and Beijing's statement made clear it regards his conduct as a deliberate provocation.
For Manila and Washington, the exchange is likely to reinforce the case for closer military cooperation, while for regional governments that attended the Seoul forum, it offered an unusually direct view of how sharply the two sides' positions on the South China Sea now diverge.
Image: Philippine Department of National Defense via Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
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