FIRST it was their passports. Now it’s their official maps.

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) on Monday asked the Philippine Embassy in Beijing to clarify reports that China’s new official maps included disputed territories in the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea).

“We will ask our embassy in Beijing to verify the reported official map of China and the extent of its coverage in the South China Sea before making our comment on it,” Foreign Affairs spokesman Raul Hernandez said in a text message.

The contested islands and waters in the region were not featured in China’s previous maps.

Hernandez said in an interview over GMA’S News To Go that the Philippines would not hesitate to file another diplomatic protest against China if the latter insisted on including the disputed territories in their official maps.

Reports came out over the weekend that Beijing had published new official maps that highlight their “sovereignty” over the islands and waters in the West Philippine Sea that are also being claimed by the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam.

The old Chinese map only included the Paracel Islands (Xisha), Macclesfield Bank (Zhongsa) and Kalayaan (Spratly or Nansha) Islands in the contested West Philippine Sea.

According to the National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geo-information, the new vertical-format maps of China include 130 islands and islets within the West Philippine Sea.

The new maps will be made available by the end of January.

Since a two-month naval standoff last year over the resource-rich islands in the West Philippine Sea, particularly the Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal, Manila has filed over a dozen diplomatic protests against Beijing’s increasingly aggressive stance in the region.

In 2012, China roped a portion of the Panatag Shoal, established Sansha City that will administer the disputed islands, included the islands in its ePassports and approved a new Hainan rule that will allow the seizing of non-Chinese ships in the region.

The shoal, referred to as Huangyan Island by the Chinese, sits well within the Philippines’ 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone.

China, however, claims the shoal and virtually the whole region based on their nine-dash line that stretches as far as to the territories of their neighbors like the Philippines.

Beijing is also embroiled in a territorial dispute with Tokyo over uninhabited islands in East China Sea called Senkakus by Japan and Diaoyus, by China.