U.S. Savages China For Bogus Claim To South China Sea Features

The US government stepped up its criticism of China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea (SCS) by issuing a report that declares “historical rights” invoked by Beijing a meaningless term, Robert Delaney reported for South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Photo Insert: Seventeen ships from the Royal Australian Navy, Royal Canadian Navy, German Navy, Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) and U.S. Navy sail in formation during Annual Exercise (ANNUALEX) 2021.

Referencing the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and an international ruling dismissing most of China’s claims in the SCS, the US State Department said in its report, titled “Limits in the Seas,” that they “gravely undermine the rule of law in the oceans.”

The report comes amid ongoing tensions between China and rival claimants in the South and East China Seas, and follows recent reports in the Japanese media that Japanese warships have conducted freedom of navigation patrols near the disputed Spratly Islands in a bid to deter Beijing.

Beijing asserts “historic rights” over more than 80 percent of the SCS, including the Spratlys, via its “nine-dash line”– an area stretching as far as 2,000 km (1,243 miles) from the mainland and reaching waters close to Indonesia and Malaysia. There is nothing in historical records that could justify the claim from imperial times when China had to build the Great Wall to stop foreign invasions. Worse, the so-called “nine-dash line” was invented only in 1947 by Kuomintang oceanographers.

The July 2016 ruling by an international tribunal in The Hague determined that China had no “historic rights” in the SCS and ruled that some of the rocky outcrops claimed by several countries could not legally be used as the basis for territorial claims.

Asked about the report on Thursday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said the US was “driving a wedge” between China and other countries in the region. “China has been clear and resolute on its position on the so-called ruling on the SCS,” Wang said during a regular press conference.

“It was illegal and invalid. China does not accept or acknowledge that. The US, despite being an outsider to the region, has frequently sought to provoke confrontation in the South China Sea and drive a wedge between [China and] countries in the region.”

China is a signatory to the UNCLOS and is mandated to respect the decision of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) but insists ad nauseam that it has a valid claim to SCS features as if the seas were a Chinese lake. The report also disputed China’s comic claims to more than 100 features in the South China Sea that are submerged during high tide – precluding them from sovereignty claims under international law.

It stressed that any feature’s legal status must be assessed based on its “natural state,” an apparent reference to China’s creation over the past decade of thousands of acres of new land in the Spratly Islands through dredging and artificial island-building.

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