The US yesterday called on rivals in the disputed South China Sea to back up territorial claims with legal evidence — a challenge to China’s declaration of sovereignty over vast stretches of the region.
“We also call on all parties to clarify their claims in the South China Sea in terms consistent with customary international law,” US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said at Asia’s largest security conference.
“Claims to maritime space in the South China Sea should be derived solely from legitimate claims to land features,” she said.
The South China Sea row has taken center stage at this week’s meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum on the Indonesian island of Bali, where the US, China and Southeast Asian nations have discussed the future of the potentially resource-rich region.
Taiwan, China and four ASEAN members — the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam — all claim territory in the South China Sea, while Washington has irritated Beijing by declaring it also has a national interest at stake in ensuring freedom of navigation and trade.
China’s claim is the biggest and Beijing says it has had indisputable sovereignty over the South China Sea since ancient times.
Beijing on Thursday agreed to take preliminary steps with its Southeast Asian neighbors to establish a “code of conduct” for the South China Sea, a step Clinton said could ease tensions that have rattled the region as disputes between China, Vietnam and the Philippines heat up.
However, she indicated yesterday that the US would push for more clarity on the subject, suggesting that all nations involved should delineate their claims according to the 1982 international Law of the Sea.
The Philippines also said China’s claims had no validity under international law.
US officials said many of the national claims to territory in the region were exaggerated and that many nations had also preferred to legitimize claims based on historical precedent rather than land features.
Clinton said the US had no claim to the South China Sea and took no position on the relative merits of competing claims.
However, she said the US, as a maritime nation, did have an interest in ensuring that disputes were resolved peacefully and called on all countries involved to avoid exacerbating the situation.
Clinton said the recent surge in tensions over the South China Sea threatened regional peace, while warning against using force to solve the dispute.
“The United States is concerned that recent incidents in the South China Sea threaten the peace and stability on which the remarkable progress of the Asia Pacific region has been built,” Clinton said. “They should exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities that would complicate or escalate disputes,” she said.
A senior US official said Clinton’s move to invoke the Law of the Sea to assess claims could require many countries to dig for solid evidence to back up their territorial assertions.
The US itself has signed, but not ratified, the Law of the Sea.
However regional claimants do belong to the convention, although there remains no clear international procedure for adjudicating rival claims.
TAIWAN IS TAIWAN: US Representative Tom Tiffany said the amendment was not controversial, as ‘Taiwan is not — nor has it ever been — part of Communist China’ The US House of Representatives on Friday passed an amendment banning the US Department of Defense from creating, buying or displaying any map that shows Taiwan as part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The “Honest Maps” amendment was approved in a voice vote on Friday as part of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for the 2026 fiscal year. The amendment prohibits using any funds from the act to create, buy or display maps that show Taiwan, Kinmen, Matsu, Penghu, Wuciou (烏坵), Green Island (綠島) or Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) as part of the PRC. The act includes US$831.5 billion in
‘WORLD WAR III’: Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said the aid would inflame tensions, but her amendment was rejected 421 votes against six The US House of Representatives on Friday passed the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for fiscal 2026, which includes US$500 million for Taiwan. The bill, which totals US$831.5 billion in discretionary spending, passed in a 221-209 vote. According to the bill, the funds for Taiwan would be administered by the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency and would remain available through Sept. 30, 2027, for the Taiwan Security Cooperation Initiative. The legislation authorizes the US Secretary of Defense, with the agreement of the US Secretary of State, to use the funds to assist Taiwan in procuring defense articles and services, and military training. Republican Representative
Taiwan is hosting the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) for the first time, welcoming more than 400 young linguists from 43 nations to National Taiwan University (NTU). Deputy Minister of Education Chu Chun-chang (朱俊彰) said at the opening ceremony yesterday that language passes down knowledge and culture, and influences the way humankind thinks and understands the world. Taiwan is a multicultural and multilingual nation, with Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese, Hakka, 16 indigenous languages and Taiwan Sign Language all used, Chu said. In addition, Taiwan promotes multilingual education, emphasizes the cultural significance of languages and supports the international mother language movement, he said. Taiwan has long participated
The paramount chief of a volcanic island in Vanuatu yesterday said that he was “very impressed” by a UN court’s declaration that countries must tackle climate change. Vanuatu spearheaded the legal case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, which on Wednesday ruled that countries have a duty to protect against the threat of a warming planet. “I’m very impressed,” George Bumseng, the top chief of the Pacific archipelago’s island of Ambrym, told reporters in the capital, Port Vila. “We have been waiting for this decision for a long time because we have been victims of this climate change for
RSS