United States officials said they hoped the USA diplomatic initiative would be more successful in Indonesia, which wants to send hundreds of fishermen to the Natuna Islands to assert its sovereignty over nearby areas of the South China Sea to which China says it also has claims, and in the Philippines, whose fishermen have been harassed by Chinese coast guard and naval vessels.
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On Wednesday, Liu Zhenmin, the vice foreign minister, said: “If our security is being threatened, of course we have the right to demarcate a [air defence identification] zone”.
According to the document, the Philippines’ territorial claim over part of Nansha Qundao is groundless from the perspectives of either history or global law.
Liu said China’s sovereignty claims are unaffected by the ruling.
The Chinese Premier says the DOC has helped maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea over the past years.
At the briefing, Liu said that “Chinese navy ships operating in the South China Sea is normal, because it is our sea”. The UN arbitration tribunal ruled in favor of the Philippines and said that the biggest feature in the Spratly Islands – Taiwanese-controlled Taiping or Itu Aba – is not an island but a rock, and therefore not entitled to more than 12 nautical miles of territorial waters.
China was “the first to have discovered, named, and explored and exploited” islands in the sea and their surrounding waters, the document said.
China faced a piquant situation as the PCA tribunal completely struck down its claims over 90% of the South China Sea based on historic rights and upheld the Philippines’ maritime right to have Exclusive Economic Zone.
China, which has long insisted that the court lacks jurisdiction over issues of sovereignty and maritime delimitation, declared the award “null and void”.
But Beijing also extended an olive branch to the new Philippine government, saying the South-East Asian nation would benefit from cooperating with China.
China refuses to accept the tribunal’s authority to rule on the dispute over the strategically vital region, and has already held several naval drills between the Paracels and the southern Chinese island of Hainan in recent days.
In a statement issued, the Foreign Ministry said Malaysia took note of Tuesday’s decision by the Arbitral Tribunal under Annex VIII to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982 UNCLOS), which ruled in favour of the Philippines’ case over China.
He is open to direct talks with China aimed at achieving a long-awaited code of conduct among rival claimants for the sea.
The Philippines, which launched the legal challenge, had initially refrained from asking China to abide by the ruling.
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Chinese state-run broadsheet the China Daily called the ruling an “inherently biased and unjust “piece of paper”. “Until our fishers and our flag dominate the West Philippine Sea, this is far from over”, France said.
