China's SCS Strategy Thread

T

tidalwave

Senior Member
Registered Member
That means Argentina sinking of Chinese fishing boat is illegal! China can go after Argentina! Scarborough ruling of fishing can be shared open a lot of door for China!
 
J

joshuatree

Captain
Blackstone said:
Reality is beginning to sink into some revelers Philippine's so-called "crowning achievement" is little more than a Pyrrhic victory, and things will not end well for Philippines or for anyone else in the SCS.

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"There is surprise at the extent of the sheer arrogance of these judges sitting (in Europe) deciding what is a rock and what is an island,"
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Exactly, the ruling on Taiping Island is bogus using a subjective qualifier that wasn't even part of 121 - making rules as they went along. It's not just China but even Taiwan that is livid at this arrogance. While the outside stance is unrelenting, it's not far fetch that had the ruling been more mixed, either omiting Taiping or giving Taiping an EEZ that needs to be demarcated with the Philippines, there would be room created for all sides to claim "victory" and a settlement hashed out.

At this point, China doesn't need to do anything. People are mistaken to assume a shame game is going to make China back off. Heck, even Taiwan stepped up. The decision makers in China long ago accepted the "reputation damage" as the cost of not losing their claims.

China should simply submit a notice to the UN of withdrawing from UNCLOS and citing this case as evidence of the defect on UNCLOS where it is vague in definitions and can't reign in abuse of power. China never gave up it's claims by signing onto UNCLOS with their declarations stating so when they signed onboard. UNCLOS can't even clearly define where coastal state's rights and freedom of navigation ends and begins. How many states subscribe to one interpretation vs another is not law. China can simply follow customary law just like the US. If the entire world is not onboard with UNCLOS, it's not the end all, be all, especially when it wasn't a real court that presided over the case. It's like Model UN, paid for by the Philippines.
 
W

weig2000

Captain
Apparently, some Philippine columnist has started to question if the $30 million they spent on the PCA lawyers for the unilateral arbitration (an oxymoron, I know) against China is well worth it. They may want reimbursement from CIA or State Department. The readers comments below the original article are also quite interesting...

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July 14, 2016 10:55 pm

I REALLY hope the $30 million (P1.4 billion) I was informed we, taxpayers, spent for the legal fees and expenses of the eight top-notch international lawyers and their staff who prepared our case against China in the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) turn out to be well spent.

Not only did they manage to get the PAC to redefine the standard meaning of “arbitration,” which for centuries had been defined as procedure in which two parties agree to a third party to settle their dispute. Now, it seems, “arbitration” can be a unilateral arbitration.

Now we also have succinct propaganda kit to try to convince the world to kick China’s ass for its bullying in the South China Sea. The US Central Intelligence Agency or its State Department should reimburse us the P1.4 billion—the suit is a big blow to China’s clout in the Spratlys, where the Americans have been pulling their hair how they could intervene since they don’t have claims in the area, and they even haven’t ratified the UNCLOS.

There’s one hitch though, which I bet the very clever lawyers the government hired weren’t eager to tell their clients. The arbitral court’s decision is certainly a blow to China’s image, which the Court in effect portrayed as a bully in the South China Sea that even drives away lowly fishermen from international waters.

The hitch is that so far, superpowers normally ignore rulings not only of the Arbitration Court, but even of the International Court of Justice, even with a resolution of the UN demanding that they comply with decisions of such international bodies.

“Superpower” here is defined as the four permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, the only UN body with the authority to issue binding resolutions to member states, especially resolutions for going to war. These four, each with veto powers over any of the body’s resolution are: US, Russia, France, United Kingdom, and—since 1971—the People’s Republic of China.

I’d have to have to include long footnotes for this column to convince you, dear incredulous reader, that superpowers routinely have ignored PCA decisions, which the world would later forget. So better just trust the following July 11 article in The Diplomat by a respected academic, Graham Allison, now director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and former dean of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

The article’s title was “Of Course China, Like All Great Powers, Will Ignore an International Legal Verdict,” with the lede, “In ignoring an upcoming verdict on the South China Sea, Beijing is following well-established precedent by great powers.”
Article starts as follows:

From the day the Philippines went to court, China has argued that the PCA has no legitimate jurisdiction on this issue since it concerns “sovereignty”—which the text of the Law of the Sea treaty explicitly prohibits tribunals from addressing. When the Court rejected China’s objection, Beijing refused to participate in its hearings and made it clear that it will ignore the PCA’s ruling. The United States and others have criticized Beijing for taking this stance. But again, if we ask how other permanent members of the Security Council have acted in similar circumstances, the answer will not be one we like.

When the Netherlands sued Russia after the latter’s navy boarded and detained the crew of a Dutch vessel in waters off of the Russian coast in 2013, Moscow asserted that the court had no jurisdiction in the matter and refused to participate in the hearings. It also ignored a tribunal’s order that the crew be released while the dispute was being resolved. After the PCA ruled that Russia had violated the Law of the Sea and ordered Moscow to pay the Netherlands compensation, Russia refused.

Anticipating the Court’s ruling in the case brought by the Philippines, UK Prime Minister David Cameron proclaimed: “We want to encourage China to be part of that rules-based world. We want to encourage everyone to abide by these adjudications.” Perhaps he had forgotten that just last year the PCA ruled that the UK had violated the Law of the Sea by unilaterally establishing a Marine Protected Area in the Chagos Islands. The British government disregarded the ruling, and the Marine Protected Area remains in place today.

The United States has never been sued under the Law of the Sea because—unlike China—Washington has not ratified the international agreement and is thus not bound by its rules. Expect Chinese commentators to emphasize this point in the mutual recriminations that will follow the Court’s announcement.

The closest analogue to the Philippine case involving the United States arose in the 1980s when Nicaragua sued Washington for mining its harbors. Like China, the United States argued that the International Court of Justice did not have the authority to hear Nicaragua’s case. When the court rejected that claim, the United States not only refused to participate in subsequent proceedings, but also denied the Court’s jurisdiction on any future case involving the United States, unless Washington explicitly made an exception and asked the Court to hear a case. If China followed that precedent, it could withdraw from the Law of the Sea Treaty altogether—joining the United States as one of the world’s only nations not party to the agreement.

In the Nicaragua case, when the Court found in favor of Nicaragua and ordered the United States to pay reparations, the US refused, and vetoed six UN Security Council resolutions ordering it to comply with the court’s ruling. US Ambassador to the UN Jeane Kirkpatrick aptly summed up Washington’s view of the matter when she dismissed the court as a “semi-legal, semi-juridical, semi-political body, which nations sometimes accept and sometimes don’t.”

Observing what permanent members of the Security Council do, as opposed to what they say, it is hard to disagree with realist’s claim that the PCA and its siblings in The Hague—the International Courts of Justice and the International Criminal Court—are only for small powers. Great powers do not recognize the jurisdiction of these courts—except in particular cases where they believe it is in their interest to do so. Thucydides’ summary of the Melian mantra—“the strong do as they will; the weak suffer as they must”—may exaggerate. But this week, when the Court finds against China, expect Beijing to do as great powers have traditionally done.

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Zetageist

Zetageist

Junior Member
While the Courts Have Ruled, China Is Not Leaving the South China Sea

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The Philippines’ sweeping victory in
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issued under the UN Convention for the Law of the Sea dealt a serious blow to China. But while the arbitral award dramatically changed the legal landscape and geography of the South China Sea in favor of the Philippines and the United States, it is important to keep in mind that even following the award’s legal conclusions, China may have the legal right to maintain a strong and even dominant presence in the Spratly Islands.

To be sure, the arbitral award is a big defeat for China’s legal claims in the region. Prior to the decision, China had a series of ambiguous but legally plausible claims to historic rights under its famous “9 Dash Line” as well as an unspecified series of exclusive economic zones covering all of the Spratly Islands. Such unspecified claims allowed China to argue that it has “indisputable” sovereignty over all of the land features and accompanying waters in the South China Sea. After the tribunal’s award, China’s legal rights have been reduced to sovereignty over a few “rocks” which are entitled to only a 12 nautical mile territorial sea. China also has no legal right to exploit either the living or non-living resources in the Spratlys that lie outside of the territorial seas of the few “rocks” in the region that it either occupies or claims sovereignty over. Thus, even if China’s claims to sovereignty over all of the land features in the South China Sea are accepted, the tribunal’s ruling limits China’s legal rights to a few isolated and disconnected territorial seas. (For a useful summary of the award, see
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).

The complete rejection of China’s legal position, however, should not be read to mean that all Chinese activity in the region is illegal. Despite the sweeping nature of the Philippines’ legal victory, the award does not actually require China to withdraw from all or even most of what it was already doing in the South China Sea.

For instance, the Chinese occupation of Scarborough Shoal is not a violation, by itself, of UNCLOS. The tribunal found that the Scarborough Shoal is a rock, which means that if China has sovereignty, it has the right to claim a 12 nautical mile territorial sea. While the tribunal held that China must respect “traditional fishing rights,” building an artificial island on top of Scarborough Shoal would not by itself constitute a UNCLOS violation (assuming that building such an artificial island could avoid the environmental damage the Tribunal condemned in other contexts). Because the U.S. does not take sides on which country (the Philippines or China) has sovereignty over Scarborough Shoal, it must respect China’s sovereign claims to this “rock” and its territorial sea.

Scarborough Shoal is a good example of how the arbitral award does not directly authorize pursuit of all U.S. strategic goals in the region. Due to the Scarborough Shoal’s proximity to the main Philippines’ island, a Chinese artificial island there would be very troubling from a military and strategic point of view. Indeed, the U.S. government has been most aggressive in warning China not to permanently occupy Scarborough Shoal and in
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yesterday, former Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair even recommended that the U.S. use military force against “Chinese aggression” on the Scarborough Shoal, “if necessary”. But as a legal matter, the arbitral award does not in any way prohibit Chinese occupation on this vital strategic location. Any U.S. military action to remove Chinese coast guard ships from the Scarborough Shoal would require an independent U.S. determination that China has no possible sovereign claim there. That is certainly plausible, but it can find no support for this conclusion in the Tribunal’s award.

In the end, the award might not require as great a change in the status quo as it first appeared. Under the award, Taiwan may continue to occupy Taiping Island, China can stay in control of the Scarborough Shoal, and the Filipino marines can stay on Second Thomas Shoal (which falls inside the Philippines EEZ and continental shelf). The tribunal’s award, however, also allows China to maintain their artificial islands on Gaven Reef, McKennan Reef, Johnson

Reef, Cuarteron Reef, and Fiery Cross Reef since those are rocks that China might have sovereignty over and which sustain a territorial sea.

To be sure, the tribunal also found that China has built artificial islands on “low tide elevations” at Subi Reef, Hughes Reef, and Mischief Reef. But it also found that Subi Reef and Hughes Reef both lie within a territorial sea of “rocks” that China might also have sovereignty over. Thus, it is less than clear that the Philippines has the right to expel China from those artificial islands, even if it is not clear that China has a right to be there either.

In fact, the only unequivocally illegal Chinese occupation, under the award, is the Chinese artificial island on Mischief Reef. Because the tribunal found that the Mischief Reef is neither an island nor a rock, the Chinese artificial island is a violation of the Philippines’ right under UNCLOS to hold exclusive control over economic resources in its EEZ and on its continental shelf.

China has suffered an important setback in its global reputation from the tribunal’s unwavering rejection of its legal claims. But while the award strengthens the position of other claimants and outside naval powers like the United States, it does not do nearly as much as it might seem at first glance. China can (and will) stay in the South China Sea and the Spratly Islands, even if it conforms completely to the tribunal’s award.
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Blackstone

Blackstone

Brigadier
Zetageist said:
While the Courts Have Ruled, China Is Not Leaving the South China Sea

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Right off the bat, the title of Julian Ku's article is misleading, because the PCA isn't a "court" and can't render legal opinions automatically recognized by the UN. The PCA can, of course, ask the UN to accept its opinion paper, but China has a veto and I suspect it will sweet talk Russia into co-vetoing any attempt. Also, the ICJ was very quick to distance itself from the PCA, and made it perfectly clear the latter isn't a part of the UN. The bottom line is Ku recognized Philippines will get little for all their trouble, other than empty words of support from some countries. What was left unsaid is Beijing might extract a heavy price for the trouble.

As for PCA awarding Mischief Reef to The Philippines, it'll be interesting to see how Manila goes about acquiring it, because US already made it clear it wants no part of Philippines initiating conflicts.
 
Jura The idiot

Jura The idiot

General
LOL I'm sorry it took me like three days to get this post:

Thursday at 12:54 AM
longmarch said:
Hello Meiji island:)
191605m4b6uqjtmj1q00z6.jpg
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China conducts test flights on two new airports on Nansha Islands
Source: Xinhua | 2016-07-13 21:57:57
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just a coincidence LOL
 
eldarlmari

eldarlmari

New Member
The PH paid $30million for its abitration services rendered by the PCA

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by
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"I REALLY hope the $30 million (P1.4 billion) I was informed we, taxpayers, spent for the legal fees and expenses of the eight top-notch international lawyers and their staff who prepared our case against China in the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) turn out to be well spent.

Not only did they manage to get the PAC to redefine the standard meaning of “arbitration,” which for centuries had been defined as procedure in which two parties agree to a third party to settle their dispute. Now, it seems, “arbitration” can be a unilateral arbitration."

Referencing from Wikipedia:

Income and expenses[
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]
Since the PCA is not UN-backed agency, its income relies on the arbitration services it provides to its clients.
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Unlike the judges from the
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who are paid by the UN,
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members of the PCA are paid from that same income the PCA earns.
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So I guess the judges are pocketing a good portion of this $30million.
 
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