China’s Foreign Ministry said on its website Wednesday that Executive Vice Minister Zhang Yesui told Max Baucus that the USA had acted in defiance of repeated Chinese objections and had threatened China’s sovereignty and security.
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Manila filed the case in 2013 to seek a ruling on its right to exploit the South China Sea waters in its 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone as allowed under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
A U.S. Navy warship sailed inside the 12-nautical-mile limit of an artificial island built by China in the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea last week to demonstrate the right of freedom of navigation in global waters.
Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) is holding a joint drill with the US Navy in the South China Sea, it has been learned.
While the ROC is not a party to the court case, and the Philippines did not mention Taiwan-controlled Taiping Island in the Spratlys, the Cabinet said it did not expect any decision on the islet when the court of arbitration makes substantive rulings.
A high-ranking Chinese foreign ministry official said Friday that China has not changed its position, asserting that its sovereignty “would not be undermined”.
Tensions have mounted since China transformed reefs in the area into small islands capable of supporting military facilities, a move the United States says threatens freedom of navigation.
“We are cautiously confident because they said [that] there are seven other issues [and] that they will consider the jurisdictional issue in tandem with the merits”.
“China has indisputable sovereignty over the South China Sea Islands and the adjacent waters”.
Malcolm Cook, senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, said that outside of China, many maritime law experts feel the Philippines has a strong case and are skeptical of the legal basis for China’s expansive claims, which it says are rooted in history. The Law of the Sea Treaty (which, unfortunately, the U.S. Senate has never ratified) holds that countries that create artificial islands do not gain the usual right to 12? miles of territorial waters around them.
Carter said discussions at an upcoming defence summit in Malaysia would include developments in the South China Sea, “the most notable of which in the previous year has been the unprecedented rate of dredging and military activity by China”.
The Philippines and China are among the 117 member nations of the UN tribunal which was established in the Netherlands in 1899 to encourage peaceful resolution of disputes between countries, organisations and private individuals. Among those represented will be China, Vietnam and the Philippines, who are now locked in a dispute over the South China Sea.
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Earlier this year, the Philippines staged a string of stunts to generate publicity and rake up support for its South China Sea claim, at the cost of Manila-Beijing ties and regional stability.
