South China Sea ruling ‘null and void’, says ministry

Chinese Admiral Wu Shengli told his US counter part Admiral John Richardson that a minor incident could spark war in the South China Sea if the United States did not stop its “Provocative Acts” in the disputed waterway, the Chinese navy said on Friday.

“What we believe should happen, is the parties take the claims to global courts to have them judged according to worldwide laws, the law of the sea and in the meantime, there should be a de-escalation of tensions and there should be freedom of navigation, freedom of overflight throughout the South China Sea”, she said.

The San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1952 and the Treaty of Peace between the ROC and Japan, which was signed in the same year, as well as other global legal instruments, reconfirm that the islands and reefs in the South China Sea occupied by Japan were returned to the ROC, it added. The operations serve to protect the rights, freedoms, and lawful uses of the sea and airspace guaranteed to all nations under global law. It should freeze construction of facilities on the artificial islands and start talks with the other countries concerned to settle territorial disputes, including pushing negotiations with ASEAN for an early conclusion of a legally binding code of conduct for the South China Sea.

Ahmad said that the United Kingdom will not want any escalation in the disputed maritime waters and his country will exercise its right of passage over the waters and air corridors.

US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter calls the operations as “routine activities” and made clear that Washington would continue the operations.

In the case, filed in 2013, the Philippines argues that China’s broad claims “do not conform with the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and should be declared invalid”.

Experts say Washington launched the USS Lassen mission in the hopes that Beijing would step back from its island building campaign.

Reviewing the claims submitted by the Philippines, the tribunal has rejected China’s argument that the “dispute is actually about sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea and therefore beyond the tribunal’s jurisdiction”, the five-man tribunal said in a nine-page summary of its ruling.

Wu said it is a well-known fact and the country’s consistent stance that China has irrefutable sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and its adjacent waters. Among those represented will be China, Vietnam and the Philippines, who are now locked in a dispute over the South China Sea.

China was visibly irate with a USA naval “incursion” into what it claimed were its territorial waters in the South China Sea.

The resource-rich region, which houses $5 trillion worth of annual global trade, is being claimed by China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei Darussalam.

But he rejected other countries’ concerns that China will limit freedom-of-navigation as a “pseudo-proposition”.