AS PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte flies today to Beijing on a four-day mission in the lair of the Red Dragon, we join the Filipino nation’s prayer for his safety and success.

This observer’s expectation is that the President will bring home China’s assurance that Filipinos will have access to Panatag (Scarborough) shoal once again. That would be success enough.

With Panatag fisheries in Duterte’s balikbayan box upon his return, the value of the accompanying Chinese economic package bulging with trade and investments will be enhanced.

In the excitement of Panatag’s reopening, even the award last July of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague striking down China’s “nine-dash line” claim over 90 percent of the South China Sea, including some Philippine areas, could be momentarily set aside.

But if President Duterte fails – we hope not — to convince China’s leaders to open up Panatag, even a flood of promised investments, loans and grants may not be able to drown out cries of a sellout.

Note that Panatag shoal (Huangyan Dao to the Chinese) would provide both countries the face-saving key they need to look good and normalize relations gone sour under the previous administration that “lost” the fishing area in 2012.

Duterte can use Panatag to rationalize his left-turn to communist China away from the Philippines’ allies of long standing. For its part, China will be able to show, however grudgingly, some compliance with the arbitration ruling without actually citing it.

• Panatag access is based on tradition

GRANTING practically all the 15 submissions of the Philippines, the arbitral court ruled that China’s barring Filipino fishermen from Panatag violated the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to which both parties are signatories.

China and the Philippines could dress up an open-Panatag regime. They could set ground rules for its common use touching on protocol, conservation, mutual assistance and safety, joint security, and other concerns.

An interesting twist would be if Vietnam demands equal time and space. Remember that the tribunal ruled that no single nation owns Panatag, which means it should be open to other nationals, such as Vietnamese, who also traditionally fish there.

Joint access can be based on tradition and the historical commerce between Chinese and the natives of the islands long before Spain “discovered” them and three centuries before American neo-colonizers came around.

As the tribunal has no power to resolve sovereignty disputes, it was silent in its 479-page award on who owns Panatag. That was a crucial missing point since ownership equates to sovereignty.

The court classified Panatag as “high-tide features” (rocks), which generate only a 12-nautical mile territorial sea — not a 200-nm EEZ, or a more extensive continental shelf.

• Why Panatag isn’t Phl territory

IF PROXIMITY were the only criterion (it is not), Filipinos should have prior right to Panatag. The shoal is only 120 nm west of Zambales, well within the Philippines’ EEZ — but 530 nm east of Hainan island, the nearest China landmass in the South China Sea.

But under UNCLOS, “rocks” that cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own are not entitled to an EEZ or continental shelf. However, they do count for territorial claims, i.e. claims of up to 12 nm of territorial waters.

A country can only claim sovereignty over its land and up to 12 nautical miles of sea perpendicular to its coastline (base line). Panatag lies beyond the 12-nm limit from the Luzon coast.

On Page 232 of its award, the tribunal said “Scarborough (Panatag) shoal includes five to seven rocks that are exposed at high tide and is accordingly a high-tide feature. That those protrusions are composed of coral is immaterial to their classification.

“The protrusions above high tide at Scarborough shoal are minuscule. This is confirmed by photographs in the record. They obviously could not sustain human habitation in their naturally formed state; they have no fresh water, vegetation, or living space and are remote from any feature possessing such features.

“Scarborough shoal has traditionally been used as a fishing ground by fishermen from different states, but the tribunal recalls that economic activity in the surrounding waters must have some tangible link to the high-tide feature itself before it could begin to constitute the economic life of the feature.”

• Thoughts of Duterte on China issues

WE GET an inkling of President Duterte’s state of mind from these remarks he made last Sunday in Davao City before flying to Brunei for a three-day visit before he proceeds to China:

“We will stick to our claim. We do not bargain anything. We will continue to insist what is ours. I will be very careful not to bargain anything, for after all, I cannot give what is not mine and which I am not empowered to do by any stretch of imagination.

“When you go there, you want to talk. Remember there are only two options: we go to trouble or we talk. We can choose the path there in-between.

“The (tribunal) decision will be taken up, but there will be no hard impositions. We will talk, we will maybe paraphrase everything in the judgment and set the limits of our territories, the special economic zones.”

The Philippines, according to the tribunal, has sovereign rights over the Panganiban (Mischief) reef, Ayungin (Second Thomas) shoal, and Recto (Reed) bank, areas near Palawan included by China in its nine-dash line.