Manila's scheme abuses law

The Chinese government has always stood for settling the South China Sea disputes through consultation and negotiation by the parties directly concerned. This is an important consensus that China and the Philippines have reached in a number of bilateral agreements, such as the Joint Statement Between China and the Philippines on the Framework of Bilateral Cooperation in the 21st Century in May 2000 and the Joint Statement of the People's Republic of China and the Republic of the Philippines in September 2011. It is also an important principle enshrined in the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) signed in 2002 by China and the ASEAN member states, including the Philippines. China and most other signatories have all along been actively promoting the implementation of the DOC. Obviously, the Philippines' breach of the bilateral consensuses and its commitments to the DOC, constitutes a perfidious act of lacking due national credit.

The Philippines has gone out of its way to try to drag China into the arbitration process. Taking advantage of the deficiencies of relevant UNCLOS mechanisms, it has tried to manipulate the composition of the Arbitral Tribunal and the Rules of Procedure in an attempt to make things difficult for China. By unilaterally filing an international arbitration on the South China Sea disputes, the Philippines has not only violated international law including UNCLOS, but also denied the basic historical facts. It has both gone against international justice and breached the basic norms governing international relations. The Chinese government's position of neither accepting nor participating in the related arbitration is both justified and based on solid legal ground.

What does the Philippines attempt to gain by filing for international arbitration?

The Philippines knows very well that it will run into insurmountable legal barriers should it submit its South China Sea disputes with China to the UNCLOS dispute settlement procedures. Therefore, it is distorting facts and misrepresenting international law in order to bypass China's 2006 declaration and turn the disputes over the sovereignty of islands and reefs and delimitation of maritime boundaries into disputes concerning the interpretation or application of UNCLOS which could be subject to ruling by an international arbitral tribunal. The Philippines is trying to create the impression that the China-Philippines disputes relating to the South China Sea are not about disputes over islands and reefs or delimitation of related maritime boundaries. But despite these calculating moves, people can easily see what the South China Sea disputes between the Philippines and China are about. Just as the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said about the Philippines' submission of its memorial on March 30, "the direct cause of the dispute between China and the Philippines is the latter's illegal occupation of some of China's islands and reefs in the South China Sea. At the heart of the matter are the disputes between the two sides on the sovereignty over islands and reefs, and delimitation of maritime boundaries".

In order to realize its aims, the Philippines has deliberately tried to divert attention from the real issue. In its memorial, the Philippines states that its claim does not concern the sovereignty of islands and reefs or delimitation of maritime boundaries and that it only asks the arbitral tribunal to rule on whether the relevant reefs with Chinese presence are islands, reefs or submerged maritime features and whether these islands and reefs are entitled to 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zones and continental shelves. But according to the principle that "land dominates the sea", sovereignty over land or islands is the prerequisite and basis of any claim of maritime rights and interests. In other words, maritime entitlement derives from sovereignty over land or islands. Like the two sides of one coin, ownership of islands and reefs and the maritime entitlement cannot be separated from each other, with the former being of primary importance. If the ownership of islands and reefs is undecided, how can one determine the maritime entitlement they can claim and their role in maritime delimitation? In order to turn its disputes with China on the South China Sea into those that might be admissible for the arbitral tribunal, the Philippines has deliberately made this coin one-sided. Anyone with common sense will naturally ask, "How can anything exist without its very basis?" Or to use a Chinese saying, "With the skin gone, to what can the hair attach itself?" The Philippines should, first and foremost, return to China the Chinese islands and reefs it has illegally occupied.