The Philippines brought its long-simmering disputes with China in the South China Sea to worldwide arbitration in January 2013 after Beijing took control of disputed Scarborough Shoal following a standoff.
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President Rodrigo R. Duterte said he is willing to talk to China if the United Nations arbitral tribunal would issue a ruling in favor of the Philippines in its case against Beijing over the West Philippine Sea.
China has said it would reject the ruling and refused to recognise the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s jurisdiction over the issue.
All claimants – bar Brunei – have stationed military troops in their territories in the vast area, said to be sitting atop huge oil and gas deposits.
China should prepare itself for military confrontation in the South China Sea, an influential Chinese paper has reported, a week ahead of a decision by an global court on a dispute between China and the Philippines.
China sees the ruling, which is due to be announced on July 12, as “posing more threat to the integrity of China’s maritime and territorial sovereignty”, the newspaper stated, claiming that “the arbitration becomes nothing but a farce”. “This is common sense in worldwide relations”.
The China Daily, Beijing’s English language mouthpiece, said those in the United States who saw the tribunal as a way of invalidating its territorial claims had “underestimated China’s determination to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity”.
Dai Bingguo, a former State Councillor and top diplomat in Washington, also said China would not be intimidated even if the USA sent 10 aircraft carriers to patrol in the disputed waters.
China strongly criticised Japan over a scramble of military aircraft from the two countries on Monday amid a dispute over islands in the East China Sea.
The Aquino administration argued that China’s claims to most of the South China Sea and its massive island-building program in the disputed waters violated worldwide law.
China is boycotting the case before The Hague-based court and says it will not accept the verdict.
Bateman wrote in a recent article that the brinkmanship in the South China Sea is risky, and that “the countries that are taking China to the brink are extra-regional players with often overstated interests in the South China Sea”.
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“Close to a million people in Vietnam rely on the fishing industry in the South China Sea, numerous countries have important claims on oil and gas reserves in the area, and it’s an incredibly important crossroads for maritime, oceanic trade from the Middle East and Europe towards East Asia”. “In the meantime, we are just hopeful”, he said.
