Japan said the ruling was legally binding and final.
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The global Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague ruled that China has “no legal basis” to claim almost all of the South China Sea as its territory.
The dispute centres on waters through which an estimated five trillion U.S. dollars (£3.85 trillion) in global trade passes through each year and are home to rich fishing stocks and a potential wealth of oil, gas and other resources.
The finding from the tribunal denies this claim.
India keenly watched the proceedings at The Hague. “We support efforts to resolve territorial and maritime disputes in the South China Sea peacefully, including through arbitration”, he said.
Duterte has spoken of having friendlier relations with China and said last week his government stood ready to talk to Beijing if it got a favorable ruling.
The United States has not taken sides in the South China Sea disputes but has worked to ensure freedom of navigation and overflight in the region are maintained.
Tuesday’s judgment comes against the backdrop of frequent military brushes between China and its Asian neighbors the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan, which ring the waters believed to hold untapped oil and gas reserves.
Nine-dash lineChina says it follows a historical precedent set by the “nine-dash line” that Beijing drew in 1947 following the surrender of Japan.
The tribunal also said China had violated its obligations to refrain from aggravating the dispute while the settlement process was ongoing and also ruled that China’s large-scale land reclamation and construction of artificial islands that destroyed coral reefs and the natural condition of the disputed areas. That would raise the stakes with the USA, which has flown military aircraft over China-claimed parts of the sea in recent months.
The matter was brought to the notice of the arbitration tribunal under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea by Philippines in 2013.
Outgoing Senate President Franklin Drilon called on other nations to respect the ruling and the rule of law, urging the government to carefully study its next moves toward a peaceful resolution.
China claims nearly all of the South China Sea, including reefs and islands also claimed by others.
2012: China takes effective control of Scarborough Shoal after a tense standoff between Chinese coast guard ships and a Philippine naval vessel that had stopped a Chinese fishing boat to inspect it. The islands are controlled by various neighboring countries, together with some other reefs and rocks.
A panel of five judges at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in the Netherlands also noted that no maritime feature claimed by China along the Spratly Islands constitute a fully entitled island, and therefore can not generate an exclusive economic zone or a continental shelf.
Because China had no rights to the area as an Exclusive Economic Zone, the tribunal found that some of its activities in the region were in breach of the Philippines’ sovereign rights.
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Chinese fisherman had also killed endangered sea turtles and giant clams “on a substantial scale” – with the full knowledge of China, the tribunal found. It decided that Beijing can not claim exclusive economic zone in the Spratlys, Dow Jones reported. The court ruled in 2015 that it did have jurisdiction.
