Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said on Wednesday (July 13) the ruling by an global arbitral tribunal on China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea has “severely damaged” Taiwan’s rights in the waterway.
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In a statement issued on July 12, Malaysia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that it is important to maintain peace, security and stability by exercising self-restraint in activities in the East Sea (internationally known as the South China Sea) and avoid the use of force that could complicate the dispute and escalate tensions.
China has accused the Philippines of having “deliberately mischaracterized” disputes in the South China Sea, after an worldwide tribunal ruled that Beijing’s claims to areas of the resource-rich sea have no basis.
Calling the initiation of the arbitration as unilateral and out of bad faith, China said “China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea shall under no circumstances be affected by those awards”.
Former Philippine President Benigno Aquino III, who brought the case against China in 2013, said the decision brought clarity to the disputes 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”.
A new ADIZ in the South China Sea could provoke a similar response.
China however emphatically rejected the verdict questioning the legality of the tribunal. “We do not recognise or implement the award”.
Both the US and China are already showing military prowess in the region.
China had boycotted the hearings, saying the tribunal did not have jurisdiction to decide on the matter. It handed a diplomatic rebuke to China’s efforts to assert control over nearly 85 percent of the South China Sea demarcated by the nine-dash-line on Chinese maps, saying that there is no historical basis for that claim.
Liu said that China hoped the Philippine government would see the ruling as “a piece of scrap paper” and called for bilateral negotiations to resume over the issue.
The tribunal’s ruling on Tuesday was a damning repudiation of Chinese behavior in the South China Sea, which ruled that China has no historic rights to the area and had acted illegally with large scale land reclamation.
Testifying before the same committee, Colin Willett, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Multilateral Affairs Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, also praised India for peacefully resolving its maritime dispute with Bangladesh.
The Hague-based court said that China violated the Philippines’ sovereign rights.
In the wake of the dispute, an article called “War in the South China Sea starts tonight” received more than 100,000 views, before being deleted by the authorities.
Similarly, the publication of the official Communist Party said Wednesday that “the tribunal is a lackey of outside forces & will be remembered as laughing stock in human history”.
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In a statement issued just hours before the Hague panel announced its decision, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry said it would not accept “any so-called material” from the court.
