Chinese scholar: 9-dash line without legal basis...yet

'Beijing unlikely to establish ADIZ in South China Sea'

MANILA, Philippines - China may be using the nine-dotted line to draw the extent of its claim over the disputed South China Sea, but  it has yet to establish a legal basis for doing so, says an eminent Chinese scholar.

Wu Shicun, president of state-sponsored center for South China Sea studies in Beijing, belied foreign reports that Beijing will also declare an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in what the Philippines calls the West Philippine Sea.

"Chinese authorities haven't defined the nine-dashed line in a legal sense and haven't published the territorial sea baseline for the Nansha (Spratlys) Islands," Wu said in a column on Beijing-run English daily The Global Times on Tuesday.

"It requires comprehensive legal and technological preparations to establish an ADIZ in the South China Sea, which is much more complicated than doing so in the East China Sea. Even if all obstacles are eliminated, China will not necessarily take this course in the South China Sea," Wu said.

Wu, an advocate of China's "historical" claim over the disputed maritime territory, said that China's plans to establish an ADIZ in the South China Sea soon are merely "groundless accusations."

"Despite such groundless accusations, no hasty actions to establish an ADIZ are required given the complexity of territorial disputes surrounding the South China Sea," Wu said.

In instituting the air zone over virtually the entire East China Sea last November, China believes that Japan itself unilaterally extended the ADIZ to cover the disputed Diaoyu or Senkaku Islands in the 1960s.

The 9-dash line, in contrast, demarcates and claims almost the entire South China Sea, resulting in protests by the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Taiwan and Malaysia.

The line is acknowledged to have first appeared in a Chinese publication in 1948 as indicated by the Kuomintang ruling party at that time.

The Philippines said the demarcation violated the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Ironically, however, China was among the nations that ratified the UNCLOS.

The overlapping claims of the five countries are said to be partly motivated by oil resources believed to be found in the islands and reefs.