“I expect that the tribunal ruling may escalate actions and reactions, so we should be watchful”, he said.
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A statement from its foreign ministry insisted, “the Chinese government’s non-acceptance of and non-participation in the arbitration are solidly founded in worldwide law”. The court postponed a decision in 2015 on whether it would rule on the issue.
“But the bottom-line question is what will happen if the decision is in our favor”, Yasay said, adding that China could potentially “dig in and put us to a test”. “We do not know, we don’t care, in fact, when this arbitration decision will be made, because no matter what kind of decision this tribunal is going to make, we think it is totally wrong”, China’s ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, told Reuters at a recent lunch in London. In a document issued in December 2014, China’s Foreign Ministry said the sovereignty over some islands and reefs mentioned in the case was beyond the scope of UNCLOS and thus they were not applicable to the United Nations convention’s articles.
The Philippines brought a case before the Permanent Court of Arbitration against China’s “excessive” claim to the waters. “Using the ruling as a condition for resuming diplomatic consultations will not be viable”, Li said.
Li Guoqiang, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of Chinese Borderland Studies, said in disputes concerning the South China Sea, “negotiation is the only choice and the only viable approach”.
Reichler, who heads Manila’s legal team in the 3-1/2-year-old case, said he was not privy to the ruling and did not expect to be informed until the last minute.
It said the exercises would be held in an area east of Hainan Island and encompassing the Paracels, which are controlled by Beijing but also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan.
China routinely carries out military exercises in the South China Sea which is partly claimed by a number of countries. China has refused to be part of the arbitration since it was launched in 2013, partly because it says the issues raised by Manila are related to sovereignty and maritime delimitation, which are beyond the tribunal’s jurisdiction.
If most of the countries accept the manner in which the Philippines has handled its maritime dispute with China, then it might become the norm for settling all maritime disputes between or among countries－and that would be extremely detrimental to the worldwide maritime order.
China says it has the right to do both, but hasn’t declared any specific plans for either.
China reaffirmed on Thursday that it will not accept a third party dispute settlement or any solution imposed on China over South China Sea dispute.
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Other claimants are Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. He said, “It may be that in time … the Chinese will come to realise that they have mre to lose than to gain from creating a chaotic, lawless situation”.
