By Sourabh Gupta

March 17, 2016

"Sometime in late-spring/early-summer, an arbitral tribunal constituted under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) will issue a highly-awaited final ruling on a Filipino protestation that China's maritime claims - and actions in defense of those claims - in the South China Sea are contrary to UNCLOS and thereby a violation of the Philippines' sovereign rights and freedoms. Received wisdom holds that Manila will carry the day in court, with the tribunal striking down in particular the more egregious of China's claims based on the Nine Dash Line. In anticipation of the ruling, Western governments and Southeast Asian states have begun to raise the diplomatic, military, and moral temperature on Beijing to adhere.

But what if the received wisdom fails to hold?

The essence of the Philippines' argument rests on two complementary pillars. First, no insular feature in the South China Sea is anything but a 'rock' - hence none is entitled to a maritime zone beyond its 12 nautical mile (nm) territorial sea. As such, China's exercise of fishing, oil and gas development, and marine conservation rights as well as its construction of artificial islands on low-tide elevations beyond the 12 nm limit of appropriate-able features in the South China Sea is unlawful. Second, China exercises exclusive rights and jurisdiction to fishing resources and to the sea-bed up to the perimeter enclosed by the Nine Dash Line - i.e., in instances even beyond 200 nm - under the guise of 'historic rights.' Beyond the territorial sea, such claims have no basis in law, having been superseded by the Convention's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) regime."

Read more:
http://csis.org/publication/pacnet-28-philippines-v-china-arbitration-be-careful-what-you-wish

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