US: China must abide by arbitral ruling on South China Sea

MANILA, Philippines — The United States hit China’s continued defiance of the 2016 arbitral ruling that invalidated Beijing’s unlawful and expansive claims in the South China Sea and its aggressive actions against its neighbors.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called on China “to abide by the 2016 arbitral ruling and cease its dangerous and destabilizing conduct.”

An arbitral tribunal constituted under the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention unanimously ruled China’s expansive South China Sea maritime claims have no basis in international law.

Rubio said this decision is “legally binding on both the Philippines and China” and a significant milestone and a useful basis for peacefully resolving disputes between parties in the South China Sea.

China rejected and vilified the arbitral outcome that is now an integral part of international law.

“Since the 2016 ruling, China has ignored the decision, continuing to assert unlawful and expansive maritime claims and taking increasingly aggressive actions against its neighbors,” Rubio said in a statement on the 9th anniversary of the Philippines-China South China Sea arbitral tribunal ruling.

“Beijing’s expansive claims directly infringe on the sovereign rights and jurisdictions of Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia, and undermine peace, stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific,” he added.

Rubio said the US supports a “free and open Indo-Pacific.”

“We seek to preserve peace and stability, uphold freedom of navigation and overflight, maintain the free flow of trade and oppose coercion to settle maritime disputes,” he said.

The Department of Foreign Affairs underscored that the 2016 arbitral award on the South China Sea now forms part of international law despite China’s persistent refusal to recognize or honor the ruling.

The late foreign affairs secretary Albert del Rosario was the country’s top diplomat and part of the legal team which defended the Philippine position on the West Philippine Sea issue before an international tribunal based in The Hague.

The case filed by the Philippines against China before a United Nations-backed tribunal was a last resort, a lawful and lasting resolution to the South China Sea disputes after all other peaceful means had been fully exhausted.

In a landmark ruling on July 12, 2016, the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration found no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to a “nine-dash line” in the South China Sea and ruled that Beijing had breached the sovereign rights of the Philippines, which brought the case.

The court also ruled that many purported islands controlled by China are, in fact, not islands, but instead reefs or rocks, which do not generate territorial rights.