China asserts sovereignty over nearly all of the resource-rich strategic waterway despite rival claims from Southeast Asian neighbours – raising tensions with the United States, which has key defence treaties with many allies in the region.
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China’s plan to hold military drills around Vietnam’s Hoang Sa (Paracel) in the East Sea has once again seriously violated Vietnam’s sovereignty over the archipelago, the Vietnamese foreign ministry said Monday.
US officials have expressed concern that the Hague court ruling could prompt Beijing to declare an air defense identification zone, or ADIZ, as it did over the East China Sea in 2013.
Beijing has boycotted the hearings and is engaged in a major diplomatic and publicity drive to try to delegitimise the process.
Regardless of the court’s decision, G-7 countries plan to ask China to act based on global law by demonstrating the importance of settling disputes through legal means, the sources said.
“The timing of the exercises in the South China Sea is subtle, but it’s not necessarily linked to the arbitration as the exercise is a routine activity that was planned long time ago”, the official said.
The state-run China Daily cited anonymous sources “close to the issues between the two countries” as saying that Beijing is ready to begin talks on matters such as joint development and cooperation in scientific research if Manila first disregards the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling due July 12.
The newspaper, which is published by the government, added: “It is naive to expect China to swallow the bitter pill of humiliation”.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte salutes during a visit to the Armed Forces of the Philippines on July 1, 2016.
Experts say it is only common sense for the Philippines to play smart in the contest with a superpower like China.
The arbitration comes after China built several military installations on a small group of islands hotly contested by both Indonesia and the Philippines.
Paul S. Reichler is a Philippine lawyer. Fearing that the arbitration won’t go its way, China is now boycotting the decision and questioning the court’s jurisdiction.
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The Philippines sought unilateral arbitral proceedings under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in 2013. Recently, Xinhua News announced a new supporter in Vojtech Filip, vice speaker of the Parliament of the Czech Republic and leader of the Czech Communist Party, who said that the Philippines’ position is self-contradictory in the case.
