The Department of Foreign Affairs (Dfa) on Monday responded to China’s allegation that the Philippines is putting pressure on Beijing before an international arbitral tribunal over disputed waters in the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea).
China said it would not participate in the arbitration a week ahead of the deadline to respond.
“We take notice that China has officially stated its position on the matter of arbitration filed by the Philippines against the said country,” the Dfa said in a statement.
“We also note the points raised in the paper. The Philippine position on these are stated in the memorial it submitted to the tribunal last March.”
In March this year the Philippines presented a 4,000-page “memorial” to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague, asking the magistrates to invalidate the so-called nine-dash line.
The country argues that the nine-dash line violates the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
(Unclos), as it comes within 30 miles of the Philippines, and breaks into its 200-mile exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf.
China’s foreign ministry on Sunday said the Philippines’s underlying goal in seeking arbitration “is not to seek
peaceful resolution of the West Philippine Sea issue, but to put political pressure on China, so as to deny China’s lawful rights in the Scs [West Philippine Sea] through the so-called interpretation or application of the convention.”
China lays claim to 90 percent of the 3.5 million square kilometers of the West Philippine Sea, rejecting claims to parts of it from the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam.
Foreign observers say that the area remains a flash point of conflict among the claimants, and could drag the US, an ally of the Philippines, Vietnam and Japan, into the fray.
China has a separate conflict with Japan in the East Sea.
The tribunal has given China until December 15 to reply.
China’s participation is not required, since the tribunal is not meant to resolve the dispute but address the legal validity of China’s nine-dash line, as well as the classification of features, such as the Scarborough Shoal, under the Unclos to which China is a signatory.
China’s claim is represented on its maps by a tongue-shaped nine-dash line that loops far south from its coast.
A ruling in the Philippines’s favor could undermine parts of China’s claim to the sea, which critics say has an obscure basis under the convention.
While China is a signatory to the 1982 Unclos, it says the West Philippine Sea disputes are exempted because of a 2006 declaration China made to the UN.
Image credits: AP