A Chinese navy warship recently entered a strip of water just outside Japanese-claimed waters in the area.
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Jurisdictional seas covered by the interpretation include contiguous zones, exclusive economic zones and continental shelves, it added.
Defense minister Chang Wanquan told a reception on Sunday that China would firmly safeguard its “state sovereignty, national security and development interests”.
China’s sweeping claims over the South China Sea, where it has built a series of artificial islands capable of supporting military operations despite overlapping claims from other nations, have stoked worldwide alarm.
While Vietnam aims to settle its South China Sea dispute with China through bilateral negotiations, it doesn’t rule out applying global laws, the country’s deputy foreign minister said.
Chen Chang, head of an observation and research station of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, said that before the interpretation, Chinese law had difficulty in effectively restraining illegal fishing by neighboring countries, such as Vietnam.
The article said Australia had “double standards” and mocked the nation as a “paper cat” whose power means “nothing compared to the security of China”.
Those that “illegally enter” Chinese waters a couple of times in a year or refuse to leave the waters will be subject to fines and up to a year in jail, a post on the court’s website said.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague ruled last month, in the case Philippines v. China, that the Chinese government did not have the right to construct artificial islands in the Spratly and Paracel Island chains or the Scarborough Shoal, and the waters around these disputed territories were not Chinese.
However, Chang also said China would “definitely cherish peace”, an indication that the world’s most populous nation was open to dialogue on its territorial claims.
China’s defense minister has urged preparations for a “people’s war at sea” to counter offshore security threats and safeguard sovereignty, state media reported Tuesday.
The SPC move is seen as an attempt to provide legal cover to China’s maritime claims over nearly all of the South China Sea in the backdrop of the July 12 judgement of the tribunal appointed by the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) quashing China’s nine-dash-line claim over the SCS.
The court also ruled that many purported islands controlled by China are not in fact islands but instead reefs or rocks, which do not generate territorial rights.
An arbitral tribunal in The Hague had invalidated China’s historic claims over a large part of the South China Sea.
As any war progressed, the report said China’s defensive capabilities would have the effect of lessening its losses, increasing the United States losses and denying any outright victory.
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But Sino-US relations expert Shen Dingli of Fudan University in Shanghai said the possibility is low.
