The United States, the United Kingdom and a dozen other Western and Asian countries on Sunday reasserted that China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea are illegal, leaning on a 2016 arbitration ruling to dress up a power struggle as legal order. The joint statement from the 14 nations rejected what they called “destabilizing” actions in the disputed waters, while the 27-nation European Union issued its own statement calling the ruling a “landmark decision in the peaceful settlement of disputes.”
Who Gets to Name the Rules
The date matters. The statements marked the 10th anniversary of the July 12, 2016, arbitration ruling by a tribunal established in The Hague under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The countries backing the ruling said it is “final and legally binding.” China said Sunday the ruling was “null and void and has no binding force” and that Beijing “neither accepts nor recognizes it.”
That clash is the whole game in miniature. One bloc of states invokes international law. Another rejects the tribunal outright. Ordinary people, meanwhile, live with the consequences in waters that have become a pressure point for rival governments, coast guards and militaries.
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 arbitration was not some neutral miracle dropped from the sky. It came out of a dispute already shaped by force, by state power, and by the hard fact that one side had already moved to control territory.
The People Caught in the Middle
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. That means fishermen, crews and air and sea personnel keep getting shoved into the path of state competition.
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,’” and listed the Philippines, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, Italy, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovenia among the signatories. The same statement said the nations oppose “any destabilizing or unilateral actions including by force or coercion that threaten peace and stability in the region.”
That language sounds tidy. The reality described in the same article is uglier.
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, leading to collisions in the high seas and high-risk encounters in the air. The people at the bottom of this hierarchy are the ones who take the spray, the glare, the ramming risk and the fear.
What They Call Stability
The 14 nations also said they strongly oppose “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.” They added that “Freedom of navigation and overflight as well as other internationally lawful uses of the sea as reflected in UNCLOS” must be upheld, and said the territorial disputes should be resolved peacefully based on the 1982 U.N. convention.
In Beijing, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs answered with its own rejection of the tribunal and the ruling, saying they “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.” The ministry said, “China opposes and will never accept any claim or action based on those awards,” and added that Beijing “does not accept any means of third-party dispute settlement or any solution imposed on China.”
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. That’s the old imperial script in fresh ink: alliances, obligations, deterrence, and the ever-present threat that ordinary people will be the ones standing closest to the edge when the states start talking about defense.