A ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague on the Philippines’ 2013 complaint about Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea is just weeks away, and parties in and outside the region are busy reiterating their positions — or in the case of Philippine president-elect Rodrigo Duterte, waffling.
Beijing, which has long said that it would not recognize the court’s ruling, has been stepping up its rhetoric almost daily — including claims of support from 47 nations, even though only eight have been willing to be named — and the Chinese media have been firing off harsh attacks on efforts by the US and others to ensure that international rights of passage in the South China Sea are upheld.
There was also a lot of coverage of a newly established Hong Kong-based institute that submitted a friend of the court brief arguing that international legal experts agree the dispute lies outside the court’s jurisdiction. That the Asia Pacific Institute of International Law echoes Beijing’s stance should come as no surprise, as its chairman is a Hong Kong barrister who is a national delegate to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
As for Washington, a senior US Department of State official, speaking on condition of anonymity, this week urged China and other claimants to exercise restraint when the court ruling is issued. Yet a week ago, the USS John C. Stennis and the USS Ronald Reagan took part in exercises in the Philippine Sea, following the Stennis’ earlier drills with Japanese and Indian naval forces in the western Pacific and the South China Sea.
While the US Pacific Fleet spoke of “a national interest in maintaining security and … adherence to freedom of navigation and overflight throughout the shared domains of the Indo-Asia-Pacific,” an anonymous US official said the timing of the warships’ trip was a clear message.
In the Philippines, Duterte said he saw the benefits of friendly relations with Beijing, including a Chinese offer to finance local railway projects, and was willing to accept China’s goodwill.
However, even if he is less fervent than Philippine President Benigno Aquino III, other nations are showing a greater inclination to resist Beijing’s ambitions, as highlighted by Indonesia’s actions in the wake of last week’s confrontation near the Natuna Islands between its navy boats and Chinese boats allegedly fishing illegally.
A senior Indonesian admiral on Tuesday said the issue needed to be resolved or else China would make a one-sided claim to the waters, while Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Thursday held a Cabinet meeting aboard a warship off the Natuna Islands and asserted sovereignty over waters in the southern reaches of the South China Sea.
While Beijing said there were some “overlapping claims on maritime rights and interests and it hoped Indonesia could meet China halfway, the problem is that China has never shown a willingness to meet anyone halfway on any issue; it always insists on its own way. This is why the Philippines, Vietnam and other nations are not interested in Beijing’s push to discuss territorial disputes solely in bilateral talks.
While former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) claim that Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island, 太平島) is an island, and therefore entitled to an economic zone under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, pushed Taiwan perilously close to siding with China in the South China Sea dispute, President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) government should steer clear of Beijing’s talk about the responsibility of “Chinese people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait … to jointly protect the ancestral property of the Chinese people.”
Taiwan is a maritime nation and its first interest should be on maintaining the South China Sea as an international waterway.
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