Beijing’s claims to a vast swathe of the South China Sea are invalid, an international tribunal ruled yesterday, dealing a devastating diplomatic blow to its ambitions in one of the world’s most important flashpoints.
China, which boycotted the proceedings at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague, rejected the ruling, calling it “null and void”. But analysts said it was a “huge win” for the Philippines, which brought the case.
The resource-rich, strategically vital waters of the South China Sea are disputed between the Asian giant — which claims almost all of them on the basis of a “nine-dash line” that first appeared on Chinese maps in the 1940s — and several other countries including the Philippines.
The row has embroiled the United States, which has deployed aircraft carriers and a host of other vessels to assert freedom of navigation in waters through which one-third of the global oil trade passes.
China says that its fishermen have visited the area for centuries, but the PCA tribunal said that under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos), Beijing had not had exclusive control of it.
Any historic rights were “extinguished” when it signed up to Unclos, it said, and there was “no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the ‘nine-dash line’,” it said.
Crucially, it ruled that none of the Spratlys, a chain of outcrops in the south of the sea, were “islands” under the meaning of Unclos, meaning that whoever had sovereignty over them — an issue it did not address — they were not entitled to 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of their own.
Some sea areas were therefore definitely in the Philippines’ EEZ, it said, as they were “not overlapped by any possible entitlement of China”.
China had violated the Philippines’ sovereign rights in its EEZ and the artificial islands Beijing has been furiously building in recent years — reshaping facts in the water in an effort to bolster its claim — have inflicted severe environmental damage, it added. The damning decision was “as unfavourable to China as it can be”, said Yanmei Xie, China analyst for the International Crisis Group.
The award by the five-member panel — chaired by a Ghanaian — “overwhelmingly favours the Philippines — a huge win,” said M Taylor Fravel of MIT.
Manila welcomed the decision but Beijing reacted furiously, saying it “neither accepts nor recognises” the ruling.
“The award is null and void and has no binding force,” China’s foreign ministry said on its website, reiterating its territorial claims.
The official news agency Xinhua cited President Xi Jinping as saying the islands have been Chinese territory since ancient times, and Beijing will not accept any action based on the decision.
China has consistently said the tribunal does not have jurisdiction on the issue — declaring the support of multiple countries for its stance, many of them poor but with significant trading relationships with it — and Xinhua reported the ruling under the headline: “Law-abusing tribunal issues ill-founded award”.
In Washington, the State Department said the ruling was an “important contribution” to resolving regional disputes and should be seen as “final and legally binding”.
China is a permanent member of the UN Security Council and has been seeking a greater role on the global diplomatic stage, and will not want to be seen as a violator of international law.
But how the decision could be enforced remains open to question.
Richard Heydarian, a political analyst at De La Salle University in Manila, said: “China has been branded as an outlaw in unequivocal terms. US, Japan and other major powers should now focus on enforcing this binding verdict if China fails to comply.”
In the short term, the decision was likely to escalate the “war of words” but would not immediately change the geopolitical dynamics in the sea, said Xie of the International Crisis Group.
“We’re going to see a continuation of the chest thumping we’ve seen, especially from the China side.”
Beijing has held naval drills between the Paracels and the southern Chinese island of Hainan in recent days, while US Pacific Command said on Twitter that the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan had launched flight operations to support “security, stability” in the South China Sea.
Bonnie Glaser of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies said: “I expect a very tough reaction from China since it has lost on almost every point.”
China could choose to withdraw from Unclos, or begin building on Scarborough Shoal, which it seized from the Philippines in 2012 — which Washington would view as a provocation.
Beijing could also declare an air defence identification zone over the South China Sea, claiming the right to interrogate aircraft passing through the airspace, or try to remove a ship grounded by Manila on Second Thomas Shoal for use as a base.
Xu Tiebing, international relations professor at Communication University of China, said that Chinese would see the PCA decision as evidence of international opposition to their country.
“These international organisations were not absolutely neutral, and in fact they are still subject to the manipulation and influence of big powers,” he said.
The Philippines, which had lodged the suit in 2013, welcomed the “milestone decision”, and foreign secretary Perfecto Yasay said: “We call on all those concerned to exercise restraint and sobriety.”
Activists who travelled to disputed Scarborough Shoal and were blocked by Chinese coastguard a few months ago, react after a ruling on the disputed South China Sea by an arbitration court in Hague in favour of Philippines, at a restaurant in Manila yesterday.
Activists who travelled to disputed Scarborough Shoal and were blocked by Chinese coastguard a few months ago, react after a ruling on the disputed South China Sea by an arbitration court in Hague in favour of Philippines, at a restaurant in Manila yesterday.
