KUALA LUMPUR: Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi restated Beijing’s rejection of the 2016 South China Sea arbitration ruling on Friday (Jul 11), on the eve of the ruling’s ninth anniversary, amid renewed tensions and growing speculation about a potential second legal challenge.
Calling the decision a “farce”, Wang said the case, brought by the Philippines against China’s South China Sea claims and ruled on by a tribunal of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, was “orchestrated and manipulated by external powers”.
Their purpose “was to destabilise the South China Sea for their own benefit”, Wang said during the annual East Asian Summit foreign ministers’ meeting in Kuala Lumpur.
He said China works to maintain stability in the region and has been speeding up the negotiation of a binding South China Sea code of conduct with Asean.
“All attempts to stir up trouble or sow discord will ultimately fail,” he added at the meeting attended by top diplomats of 18 countries, including the 10 ASEAN member states and the United States.
The Philippines filed the case with the court in 2013, but Beijing refused to participate.
The court, in China’s absence, ruled on Jul 12, 2016, in support of most of the Philippines’ submissions, including its contention that China’s extensive claim via the “nine-dash line” appearing on Chinese maps since 1953 was invalid under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
Additionally, the court ruled that China’s land reclamation projects in the area were environmentally harmful.
The ruling also held that no land features in the disputed Spratly Islands could be classified as “islands”, meaning that China could not claim exclusive economic zones around the reefs it occupies, while the Philippines could extend its zone from its coastline to include those reefs.
Despite having signed UNCLOS in 1982 and ratified it in 1996, China strongly rejected the ruling and improved ties with former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte by “putting aside” the ruling during his 2016-2022 term.
However, tension has escalated since the current Philippine president, Ferdinand Marcos Jnr, took office.
It has been reported that Manila is considering filing a new UN arbitration regarding the maritime conflicts.
In his remarks on Friday, Wang repeated China’s declaration of “four noes” in the case – no acceptance, no participation, no recognition and no implementation.
He contended that the case addressed the issues of territorial sovereignty and maritime delimitation, which exceed the jurisdiction of both UNCLOS and the arbitration tribunal’s authority.
China and other major world powers, he said, had excluded maritime delimitation when they joined the convention.
“The tribunal’s handling constituted an overreach, abusing the convention’s dispute resolution mechanism and undermining international maritime rule of law. They are violating the convention under the banner of the convention,” Wang said.
He added that the Philippines did not seek prior consultations with China before filing to the tribunal, and that therefore the initiation of the arbitration was legally flawed.
He also accused Manila of breaking its commitment to the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China calls for South China Sea disputes to be solved through dialogue, as well as its bilateral promises to Beijing.
Wang also condemned the tribunal’s “flawed and erroneous” decision to classify the Taiping Island (Itu Aba) of the Spratlys – a 0.5-square-kilometre island with fresh water and vegetation occupied by Taiwan – as a “rock” that could not sustain an exclusive economic zone.
“If this standard were applied globally, the international maritime order would be rewritten, potentially depriving many nations … of their maritime rights,” he said, referring to how the reefs of countries like the US and Japan would similarly lose their basis for claiming maritime rights and interests.
“Would these countries be willing to give up their claims as well?”
Besides the Philippines, three other ASEAN members – Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam – have competing claims with China in the South China Sea.
Beijing sees the self-governed island of Taiwan as a rogue province, to be reunited eventually with the mainland, by force if necessary.
This article was first published on SCMP.
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