“We hope that other countries will not take this opportunity to threaten China and (instead) work with China to protect the peace and stability of the South China Sea, and not let it become the origin of a war”, he said.
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It argued that arbitration bodies under the UNCLOS have no mandate to adjudicate the South China Sea disputes.
Chinese dredging vessels in the waters around Mischief Reef in the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea in this still image from video taken by a P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft provided by the United States Navy May 21, 2015.
China announced Monday that it will close off part of the South China Sea for military drills this week, just days after an worldwide arbitration court ruled that Beijing’s disputed claims to the strategic waterway are invalid.
China warned against threatening its security in the South China Sea after an worldwide tribunal handed the Philippines a victory by saying Beijing had no legal basis for its expansive claims there. Vietnam, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines all claim portions of the waterway, which is rich in fish and believed to hold significant underwater mineral resources.
“They said if you will insist on the ruling, discussing it along those lines, then we might be headed for a confrontation”, Yasay said during an interview with the news channel of broadcaster ABS-CBN.
Yang said that if foreign warships want to “make trouble out of nothing” in the South China Sea, then “of course we have ways to deal with it”.
China pressured countries in the ASEAN bloc of Southeast Asian nations not to issue a joint statement on the ruling, diplomats said.
Beijing refused to participate in the arbitration, and so far has rejected the worldwide tribunal’s decision and authority.
AUSTRALIA would be unwise to conduct a very provocative freedom of navigation exercise in the South China Sea, an adviser to China’s government says.
The survey, which polled 1,200 adults nationwide and has a margin of error of ±3 percentage points, was conducted about two weeks before the Arbitral Tribunal in The Hague ruled on July 12 in favor of the Philippines against China.
“The Philippines will not sacrifice what we have obtained from this decision but we will also pursue diplomatic means hopefully to convince China that we can co-exist peacefully”, he said.
Reiterating China’s stand that freedom of navigation in the South China Sea has never been affected, he said there won’t be a problem in future “as long as nobody plays tricks”.
According to reports, the United States government is anxious that such legal maneuvers would feed into what Washington deems a distorted narrative that the U.S.is the main party responsible if other claimants pursue such an avenue.
Scores of activists were detained in Vietnam’s capital on Sunday as they gathered to protest against China after it rejected a recent worldwide ruling that dismissed its claims to much of the South China Sea.
Terming China as the biggest beneficiary of freedom of navigation in the South China Sea he was quoted as saying at a meeting here that Beijing won’t let anybody damage it.
Beijing held military drills in the South China Sea just days before the global arbitration court ruling, state media reported.
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Meanwhile, two supply ships serving long-range missions – the Honghu and Luomahu – officially joined the service in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province, on Friday, according to the PLA’s Southern Theater Command, which covers the South China Sea.
