Diplomat slams 'biased' Nansha arbitration panel

A senior Chinese diplomat has accused The Hague's Permanent Court of Arbitration of being biased toward the Philippines and said China does not accept, participate in or recognize the arbitration.

Xiao Jianguo, deputy director-general of the Foreign Ministry's Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs, made the comments on Saturday at an international seminar on the South China Sea arbitration in Wuhan, Hubei province.

He said the tribunal had failed to be impartial, was careless and irresponsible, and that many loopholes could be found in its awarding of jurisdiction and admissibility, made at the request of the Philippines in October.

In 2013, Manila unilaterally initiated an arbitration case over disputes with Beijing in the South China Sea. The tribunal is expected to make a final ruling midway through this year.

China argues that the tribunal has no jurisdiction and that the award was null and void.

Michael Sheng-ti Gau, a professor of public international law at Taiwan Ocean University, told the seminar that one fundamental hole in the Philippines' argument was that Taiping Island, the largest naturally formed isle in the Nansha grouping, is merely a "rock".

He said that in notes submitted to the United Nations between 2009 and 2011, the Philippines described some maritime features in Nansha as "islands". However, he said, the tribunal turned a blind eye to this.

Fu Kuen-chen, dean of Xiamen University's South China Sea Institute, said he felt sad that the tribunal had decided it has "jurisdiction" over the issue.

"China had actually made a declaration excluding certain types of disputes, including delimitation, from the compulsory arbitration," he said. "The maritime entitlement is inseparable from delimitation. The nature of the dispute concerns sovereignty and delimitation, not the application or interpretation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. We must pierce the veil".

Alexandre Luiz Pereira da Silva, assistant professor of public law at the Federal University of Pernambuco in Brazil, said, "China is correct not to accept the award ... and no one should blame China or force it to accept any decision made by the tribunal."

wangxu@chinadaily.com.cn