After tribunal ruling, ball is in China’s court

There is growing concern that countries with territorial disputes would follow the same legal path as the Philippines government and take their cases to the aribitral tribunal that recently ruled in favour of the Manila government.
According to reports, the United States government is worried that such legal manoeuvres would feed into what Washington deems a distorted narrative that the US is the main party responsible if other claimants pursue such an avenue.
In Japan, members within the ruling party are urging the government to seek arbitration over overlapping claims in the East China Sea.
Japan is not one of the parties to the South China Sea territorial disputes with China but the recent ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague has taken its toll on the world stage.
The court ruled last week in favour of the Philippines against China with its clarification relating to the claims in disputed areas in the South China Sea.
The court ruled that several elements of China’s claims, along with the way and means in which the Chinese government had tried to enforce it, were unlawful.
China’s historical rights to areas within the so-called nine-dash line, according to the court, had no basis in international law.
The court also ruled that what China had called islands in the Spratly seas were actually rocks. If they were islands, China would be entitled to claim 200 nautical miles of exclusive economic zones (EEZ), also known as continental shelves of islands. A rock would give China 12 nautical miles of the territorial seas.
The court found that China had caused widespread environmental destruction because of construction activities, violating the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The court also found that Beijing had infringed on Philippine sovereignty because their construction interfered with the country’s fishing and petroleum exploration.
As expected, Beijing dismissed the ruling. But the rest is not history because the implications of the ruling are still not clear. There are demands in Tokyo among members of the ruling party to seek legal action against China, while Filipino fishermen are asking the UN to investigate the alleged human rights violations committed against them by Chinese officials patrolling the disputed territories.
One likely outcome is that China might increase its naval presence in the disputed areas, leading to more scope for tensions.
For the sake of stability, China should consider exploring ideas for possible negotiations with the new Philippine government. The new president, Rodrigo Duterte has said Manila is willing to sit down and talk with Beijing. The fact that Manila has chosen not to flaunt its victory deserves praise.  It is in everybody’s interest that the dispute in this waterway be resolved peacefully and the principle of freedom of navigation be respected and protected. China should not see this as a defeat. Respecting an international court’s ruling will not make it look weak. An accommodating stance would give China the moral high ground should it decide to take a more compromising approach to resolve this dispute with the Philippines and other claimants.
For the time being all eyes are on China. Beijing can take a do-nothing approach or it can make a gesture of goodwill by working with Asean to conclude the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea. It may not resolve this long-standing territorial dispute with other claimants. But at the least, it would be a step in the right direction.