The Korean government, which has tried to remain neutral, cautiously stated on Wednesday it took note of the ruling on Tuesday by the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), which was overwhelmingly in favor of the Philippines’ case against China and determined Beijing had no legal basis for a historical claim over the waters or its resources.
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“Secretary Yasay will discuss… the Philippines’ peaceful and rules-based approach on the South China Sea”, the foreign affairs department said in a statement.
U.S. Congresswoman Madeleine Z. Bordallo has issued the following statement regarding the International Tribunal’s decision in the case of The Republic of the Philippines vs. the People’s Republic of China.
Liu said China has the right to declare South China Sea region as its air defence zone and control the movement of flights because the area belonged to it. China had earlier declared an area in the East China Sea as its air defence zone following disputes with Japan.
An air defence zone in the area would mean civilian aircraft flying over the waters would have to identify themselves to military controllers in order to safely pass through. The government on Wednesday released a policy paper on its dispute with the Philippines over the South China Sea, in which Beijing reiterated its position that the sea’s islands are “China’s inherent territory”.
America then responded by sending two B52 bombers through the ADIZ, without identifying themselves to China.
China’s claims to the waters have resulted over the years in frequent military brushes between Beijing and its Asian neighbors-the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan-which circle the waters that are believed to hold untapped oil and gas reserves, certainly a major factor in the dispute.
But US officials warned that Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte remains “somewhat of an unknown quantity”, according to Reuters.
It said China had violated the Philippines’ sovereign rights and caused “severe harm to the coral reef environment” by building artificial islands.
Mayor Arsenia Lim of the northwestern town of Masinloc, where the fishermen live, said they sailed to Scarborough to test China’s compliance with the ruling.
Staff hang up copies of maps dating from the Qing Dynasty purporting to back up China’s claims to vast parts of the South China Sea, in Hong Kong Thursday, July. China has refused to honour the ruling.
The move to set up the zone could drastically escalate tensions in the region, but China’s foreign minister Liu Zhenmin said the country would assess “the level of threat against it” before making a decision.
But China appears to be in the minority – Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also said Thursday as he left for Mongolia that he wanted to discuss the South China Sea at the summit.
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Yesterday, an global arbitration tribunal’s ruled against China’s claims over the South China Sea, dismissing it as “null and void”.
