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Six years on, South China Sea ruling may still offer solutions
China has never accepted the 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) ruling that found that the country had no legal claim to the territory within the so-called Nine-Dash Line (NDL).
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ix years have passed since an international arbitral court quashed China’s claims to the South China Sea, but the disputing parties are barely any closer to resolving overlapping territorial claims over the sea or rights therein.
However, the court ruling still offers countries from the region – including Indonesia – the means to address the disputes in a productive manner while awaiting progress on a code of conduct (COC) to prevent open conflict.
Monday marked six years since the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) ruled in favor of the Philippines in an arbitration case brought against China’s claims to maritime features in the disputed sea.
The court ruled that there was no legal basis for China’s Nine-Dash Line (NDL) and that the country had violated Philippine sovereign rights in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The NDL delineates what Beijing claims is a sphere of rightful control encompassing the majority of the South China Sea based on assertions about the nation’s traditional fishing grounds.
China has never accepted the ruling, with one foreign ministry spokesman saying on Wednesday that it would “never accept any claim or action based on the award”.
Indonesia supported the PCA award, Foreign Ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said, noting that the ruling offered a legal precedent to oppose infringements on national sovereignty.
“On several occasions, we have even used the legal arguments [in the ruling] as the basis for interactions and for diplomatic notes on the issue of overlapping claims among countries in the South China Sea,” Faizasyah said in an online press conference on Thursday.
Indonesia is not a claimant in the South China Sea dispute, but it often deals with Chinese vessels operating without its permission in its EEZ in the North Natuna Sea, a body of water adjacent to the South China Sea.
Faizasyah said negotiations for a COC in the South China Sea were ongoing and that “the sooner it is settled the better”, so that it could be applied in the disputed waters.
The establishment of a COC was a requirement from a deal between ASEAN and China made 20 years ago to prevent open conflict between claimants in the South China Sea dispute – the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, China and Taiwan.
Beijing had avoided entering into talks on the COC until 2018, when a single draft negotiating text was agreed upon between ASEAN and China. The talks have since stalled, partly due to the onset of COVID-19.
A United States destroyer sailed near the disputed Paracel Islands in the South China Sea on Wednesday, just days after the commemoration of the PCA ruling.
This move drew an angry reaction from China, which said its military had “driven away” the ship after it illegally entered territorial waters, Reuters reported.
The US regularly carries out what it calls freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea, challenging what it says are restrictions on innocent passage imposed by China and other claimants.
