The statement was the strongest response from the Philippines to Tuesday’s verdict by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague declaring that China’s claims to the resource-rich and strategically vital South China Sea had no legal basis.
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USA officials have said say they fear China may declare an air defense identification zone in the South China Sea, as it did in the East China Sea in 2013, or step up its building and fortification of artificial islands.
Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay said that over the next few days, the government will take steps to ensure that the tribunal’s ruling is “peacefully implemented”.
Apart from China, the South China Sea is also claimed in full or parts by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.
“We will try to assert our fishing rights, so we can see if China will honour the rule of law”, said Ms Arsenia Lim. “This would depend on our overall assessment”, Mr Liu said in a briefing.
“We can not expect, you know, a sudden upsurge of unity among claimant countries to sort of gang up on China”, said Wilfrido Villacorta a Manila-based analyst who had served as ASEAN’s deputy secretary-general.
USA officials have previously said they feared China may respond to the ruling by declaring an air defence identification zone in the sea, as it did in the East China Sea in 2013, or by stepping up its building and fortification of artificial islands. “In contrast, just several countries, mainly the United States and its close allies, have publicly supported the Philippines and called for observing the ruling as legally binding”, according to the text displayed above the map.
He also reiterated China’s position that the Arbitral Tribunal has no legitimacy. Singapore’s foreign Minister, Vivian Balakrishnan, said that China has agreed to explore ways of limiting risks of armed encounters in the disputed area.
In Wednesday’s report, the bureau said the government’s efforts to safeguard the country’s sovereignty over Taiping and the surrounding marine ecology will receive greater attention from around the world.
China rejected the decision describing it as fictitious and that it may act more aggressively after this to maintain its sovereignty and maritime interests. But it remains unclear what, if any, impact the ruling will have, given that the tribunal doesn’t have any way to enforce it. Its claim derives from a map drawn in the 1940s that shows a line stretching south from China and encircling nearly all of the sea.
Former Philippine President Benigno Aquino III, who initiated the case, said the ruling brought clarity that “now establishes better conditions that enable countries to engage each other, bearing in mind their duties and rights within a context that espouses equality and amity”.
Cooperation, however, would remain elusive if conflicts over claims persist, he said.
The dispute over the South China Sea involves the Spratly and the Paracel Islands.
Earnest also urged the parties not to use the ruling as an opportunity to engage in escalatory or provocative actions.
Lin said that had always been the view of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office and the office had been trumpeting it both before and since the ruling, but so far the cross-strait hotline has not rung.
China now has three airfields – the other on Yongshu, or Fiery Cross, Reef – “accessible to commercial airliners” on the Nansha Islands, also named the Spratly Islands. “China neither accepts nor recognizes it”, the Foreign Ministry said.
That gambit plunged Manila’s ties with China to a historic low but paid off in a monumental way Tuesday when an global arbitration tribunal declared China’s sprawling territorial claims and assertive actions in the South China Sea were invalid under a 1982 United Nations treaty governing the world’s oceans.
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Do 2,000 years of so-called “historical rights” over large swathes of the South China Sea-China has claimed that in a white paper-supersede current geo-political realities?
