Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, on Friday expounded China's position on the South China Sea arbitration case while attending the ASEAN Plus foreign ministers' meetings.
Wang said the arbitration case unilaterally initiated by the Philippines lacked the necessary precondition of prior consultations and failed to meet the principle of state consent, which is fundamental to arbitration. Therefore, it did not possess the legal basis to proceed from the outset.
The move violated the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), which stipulates that disputes should be resolved peacefully through friendly consultations by parties directly concerned. It also ran counter to commitments made by the Philippines in bilateral agreements with China and breached the principle of estoppel under international law, Wang noted.
He pointed out that although the arbitration case was presented in various forms, the essence of the Philippine claims concerned China's territorial sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and maritime delimitation issues. Territorial issues are beyond the scope of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and China had explicitly excluded maritime delimitation from compulsory arbitration in a declaration made in 2006, in accordance with UNCLOS concerning the optional exceptions to the applicability of the U.N. Convention.
Among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, only the United States has not joined UNCLOS, while the other four, including China, have all made similar declarations of exclusion, Wang said. The arbitral tribunal exceeded its mandate and abused the UNCLOS dispute settlement mechanism, undermining the rule of law in international maritime affairs and engaging in actions contrary to the very Convention it claimed to uphold.
Wang emphasized that the tribunal's ruling contained serious factual and legal flaws. In particular, it wrongly classified Taiping Island -- the largest feature in the Nansha Islands with an area of over 500,000 square meters -- as a rock, thereby concluding that no feature in the Nansha Islands could generate an exclusive economic zone or continental shelf. This decision contradicts both the facts on the ground and the provisions of UNCLOS. If such a standard were applied globally, the existing maritime order would be fundamentally altered, Wang said, questioning whether countries like the United States and Japan would also be willing to abandon their own maritime claims under this logic.
Wang said it is widely recognized that the arbitration case and the subsequent hype were orchestrated and manipulated by forces outside the region, with the aim of disrupting peace in the South China Sea and serving their own interests. More and more countries around the world have come to see the nature of this farce.
China's position, Wang stressed, is precisely about upholding the principle of international rule of law and the authority of UNCLOS. Thanks to joint efforts by China and ASEAN countries, the situation in the South China Sea remains stable, with freedom of navigation and overflight effectively protected.
China is accelerating consultations with ASEAN countries on a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea, striving to establish a new narrative of peace, cooperation and friendship in the region. Any attempt to stir up trouble or sow discord will fail, Wang said.
Chinese FM expounds China's position on South China Sea arbitration case
Chinese FM expounds China's position on South China Sea arbitration case
