It described the ruling as a “piece of waste paper”.
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The ad hoc tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration, which was unilaterally initiated by the Aquino III administration, issued its final ruling on July 12.
In the meeting, Wu said China would not stop building reefs and islands in the sea, state-owned Xinhua news agency reported, with that construction also a part of China’s efforts to bolster its claims.
“They said that if you will insist on the ruling and discussing it along those lines, then we might be headed for a confrontation”, he said.
“It is very helpful for us to strengthen communication between us and build confidence”. However, the 88-year-old former leader cited his age and other commitments in suggesting he may not be up for the job.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force has conducted a combat air patrol with long range bombers in the South China Sea recently, which will become “a regular practice” in the future, a military spokesperson said.
Navy chief Adm. Wu Shengli told his visiting U.S. counterpart, Adm. John Richardson, that construction work in areas disputed by other countries will proceed, the Wall Street Journal reports. But China now finds itself in a much bigger court, the court of world opinion, saying, “If China wants to be seen and be respected as a regional, as a rising power, even a superpower, it has to be seen as someone that is adhering to worldwide practice, global law, and that it’s there to respect other countries rights and other countries sovereignty”. “The door to settling the issue through dialogue and negotiation has never been closed”, Lu said.
Yasay said he asked that Filipinos be allowed to fish in the Scarborough Shoal, where Chinese coast guard ships have blocked and turned away fishing boats since effectively seizing the disputed fishing area after a tense standoff with Philippine government ships in 2012. China’s navy and coast guard operate extensively throughout the South China Sea and regularly stage live firing exercises in the area. Such a move would be seen as a threat to freedom of navigation, which the U.S. has promised to uphold.
“In this case we might say that it is right prevailing over might, because countries big or small will have an equal share, or fair chance of pursuing its interests”. “This would depend on our overall assessment”, China’s Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin said.
China rejected the tribunal’s ruling and refused to take part in the arbitration.
State media also reported the head of China’s navy saying on Monday that China will not halt the construction of islands and reefs in the South China Sea. The U.S. called upon China to respect other countries’ sovereign claims in the South China Sea, which include the Philippines, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
Roughly $5 trillion in shipping trade passes through the waterway annually.
Beijing lays claim to nearly all of the South China Sea, despite conflicting partial claims of Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan, and the Philippines.
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“This kind of military freedom of navigation is damaging to freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, and it could even play out in a disastrous way”, Adm. Sun Jianguo said at a Tsinghua University on Saturday, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. Any dispute in the South China Sea should be resolved by the parties concerned directly.
