The United States, the United Kingdom and a dozen other Western and Asian countries reasserted on Sunday that China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea are illegal based on a 2016 arbitration ruling. The joint statement, issued by 14 nations, came with the usual language of order and stability, while the people who actually live with the consequences of these maritime power games remain stuck under the boot of rival states, coast guards and military forces.
Who Gets to Decide
The 14-nation statement said the countries rejected “destabilizing” actions in the disputed waters that threaten regional stability. The 27-nation European Union issued a separate statement, reaffirming the ruling as a “landmark decision in the peaceful settlement of disputes.” That peaceful settlement, of course, sits on top of a tribunal established in The Hague under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The ruling, dated July 12, 2016, is described by the states backing it as “final and legally binding.”
China answered with its own hard line. Beijing said Sunday that the ruling was “null and void and has no binding force” and that it “neither accepts nor recognizes it.” China refused to join the arbitration initiated by the Philippines in 2013 after a tense standoff in the contested waters a year earlier that ended with Beijing effectively seizing a disputed shoal. The legal theater has been running ever since. Different flags, same hierarchy.
Who Pays for the Power Grab
Beijing continues to defend its claims to virtually the entire sea passage, a key global trade route that has long been feared as one of Asia’s most active flashpoints. The area has seen repeated territorial standoffs involving China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. Those are not abstract lines on a map. They’re contested waters where state power gets enforced through ships, aircraft and intimidation, while ordinary fishermen and crews are left to absorb the risk.
The U.S.-led statement said, “We reaffirm the Arbitral Tribunal’s decision that there is no legal basis for China’s expansive maritime claims in the South China Sea, including those based on `historic rights.’” The countries listed were the Philippines, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, Italy, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovenia, alongside the U.S. and Britain. The coalition wrapped itself in the language of law, but the underlying contest remains one of competing state claims over sea lanes and strategic control.
What They Call Order
The same statement said, “We reiterate our strong opposition to any destabilizing or unilateral actions including by force or coercion that threaten peace and stability in the region.” It also said the nations opposed “the use of coast guard, military and maritime militia forces to harass, obstruct, intimidate lawful operations by other states at sea or in the air and in so doing endanger the safety of personnel and fishermen and seriously degrade regional peace and security.” That’s the machinery of domination speaking in polished diplomatic prose.
The countries said “Freedom of navigation and overflight as well as other internationally lawful uses of the sea as reflected in UNCLOS” must be upheld, and that the territorial disputes should be resolved peacefully based on the 1982 U.N. convention. Peaceful, in this context, means managed by states, refereed by institutions, and enforced by the same powers that patrol the water.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected that framework outright. It said the arbitration tribunal and its ruling “seriously contravene the general practice of international arbitration” and “gravely infringe upon China’s legitimate rights as a sovereign state and state party to UNCLOS and are unjust and unlawful.” Beijing said it “does not accept any means of third-party dispute settlement or any solution imposed on China.”
Territorial confrontations in the disputed waters have become more prevalent in recent years, particularly between Chinese and Philippine and Vietnamese forces and fishing fleets. Chinese coast guard ships and support vessels have used powerful water cannons, military-grade lasers and dangerous blocking maneuvers against Philippine forces and fishermen from rival claimant countries that have led to collisions in the high seas and high-risk encounters in the air.
The United States has repeatedly called on China to comply with the arbitration ruling. The former Biden and current Trump administrations both warned that Washington is obligated to defend the Philippines, its oldest treaty ally in Asia, if Filipino forces, vessels or aircraft come under armed attack in the disputed waters. The great powers keep their alliances, their tribunals and their threats. The people below them get the water cannons, the lasers and the collisions.