An global tribunal today unanimously ruled that there is no legal basis for China’s “nine-dash line” claiming rights to much of the South China Sea.
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The Tribunal’s ruling upheld the Philippines’ claims in all critical respects.
While the findings can not reverse China’s actions, it still constitutes a rebuke, carrying with it the force of the worldwide community’s opinion.
The Philippine Embassy in China has warned its citizens to beware of personal “threats” and avoid political debates.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi labelled the case “a farce”, state news agency Xinhua reports. Equally important is the Tribunal’s ruling on the marine environment. But that can only be done with a year’s notice, allowing other nations plenty of time to file last-minute cases.
The PCA also held that fishermen from the Philippines, like those from China, had traditional fishing rights at Scarborough Shoal and that China had interfered with these rights in restricting access.
The dispute has become the centre of a tense stand-off between China and the USA, with Washington claiming that China’s increasingly aggressive behaviour in the region threatens free passage through the area’s critically important shipping lanes.
China barely masked its angry reaction to the tribunal’s decision.
Earnest spoke to reporters aboard Air Force One as President Barack Obama was flying to Dallas.
Control of the South China Sea is seen as the most divisive and potentially destructive diplomatic issue in the region.
Vietnam said it welcomed the ruling.
“We certainly would urge all parties not to use this as an opportunity to engage in escalatory or provocative action”, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters in a briefing. Some have said it may withdraw in protest from the UNCLOS treaty system.
What’s the US role in all of this?
A Department of State spokesman said the US was still studying Tuesday’s decision, and called for both parties to “avoid provocative statements or actions” and comply with the legally binding decision.
However, “China’s recent large-scale reclamation and construction of artificial islands was incompatible with the obligations on a state during dispute resolution proceedings, insofar as China has. destroyed evidence of the natural condition of features of the South China Sea that formed part of the Parties’ dispute”. “China neither accepts nor recognises it”.
China has said it has historic rights over the resource-rich sea and declared that the tribunal award “is null and void and has no binding force”.
China has argued that the tribunal has no jurisdiction and says it won’t accept the ruling.
The unilateral initiation of arbitration by the Philippines was aimed at denying “China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea”, the statement said.
Abraham Denmark, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia, said at a joint hearing of House Armed Services Committee subcommittees last week that the ruling would represent a crucial crossroads for the region.
“China opposes and will never accept any claim or action based on those awards”.
While China’s island-building will nearly certainly continue, one option would be for it to scale back on its assertive approach in the South China Sea.
“[The] Tribunal concluded that, as between the Philippines and China, there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources, in excess of the rights provided for by the Convention, within the sea areas falling within the ‘nine-dash line, ‘” the press release stated. The case was brought by the Philippines over China’s vast territorial claims and island-building in the region. Beijing has already rejected the ruling out of hand. Though the decision will not determine sovereignty of the territory in question, it could have wide-ranging implications for China’s sweeping claims in one of the world’s most important and bitterly contested waterways. A new Philippine leader who appears friendlier to Beijing could also influence the aftermath of the ruling.
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“Filipino fishermen traditionally worked these waters, and now they can’t, because Chinese coast guard boats chase them away”, he says.
