The U.N.’s arbitration court will announce its decision Tuesday on a maritime dispute between China and the Philippines that could challenge Beijing’s claims of sovereignty over the strategic South China Sea.
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A UN-backed tribunal is on Tuesday expected to deliver a verdict on a Philippine challenge to China’s claims to most of the South China Sea.
China has insisted that the court lacks jurisdiction over the case as it involves sovereignty and maritime delimitation – issues which Beijing says are not subject to third-party arbitration.
Manila also contests China’s effective control of the Scarborough Shoal, a scattering of rocks off the coast of the Philippines’ Luzon island, seeking a ruling that would show it sits within the Philippines’ EEZ.
The United States and China often conduct military exercises in the area and regularly accuse each other of militarizing the region.
China has boycotted the hearings at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, saying it does not have jurisdiction to decide on the matter.
“Beijing doesn’t want to be framed as an global rule breaker, which is why it has tried to build a coalition of nations that support its view”, said Ashley Townshend, a research fellow at the University of Sydney and a visiting fellow at Fudan University in Shanghai.
“Escalated US military provocations can not be ruled out in the wake of the arbitration ruling should it be able to claim that the ruling “justifies” them”.
Apart from China and the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Vietnam also have overlapping claims to the South China Sea, a key shipping lane believed to be rich in mineral and marine resources.
Feelings were running high on both sides of the dispute Tuesday.
“China, get out of Philippine territory!” The topic was also the most widely discussed on Chinese social network Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, with hundreds of thousands of users sharing a map of China with its nine-dash line and the caption “China can’t be one dash less”.
Chinese analysts say the South China Sea will only grow in importance for Beijing, particularly as its submarine base on Hainan Island will be crucial to China’s future nuclear deterrent.
There are a wide range of territorial specifications in the UNCLOS, but most relevant to the South China Sea are the Exclusive Economic Zones that extend up to 200 nautical miles from the shoreline. China’s recent massive artificial island-building does not change the situation.
However, if the ruling favours the Philippines, China could risk reputational damage and be portrayed as a country that ignores worldwide law, perhaps leading to greater tensions between China and the Philippines, or the United States, which has sent significant military assets to the area.
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Harry Kazianis, a Senior Fellow for Defense Policy at the Center for the National Interest, recently told VOA that China could take three options in response to the ruling: it could simply continue with its present course of action, declare an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) over the South China Sea, or “go rogue”, meaning that Chinese President Xi Jinping could exert additional pressure in the region.
