International Law Is Failing the South China Sea

Oct 1, 2019 | Shirley Wang
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When Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Beijing on August 29, expectations were high that progress would be made on the South China Sea territorial dispute. After all, under mounting domestic pressure, Duterte had promised —for the first time—that he would bring up the 2016 arbitral tribunal ruling during his meeting with Xi. The 2016 ruling made by the Permanent Court of Arbitration under Annex VII to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) ruled in favour of the Philippines. It established that there was no legal basis for Chinese claims of historic rights to territory based on the Nine-Dash Line and that China had breached its obligations under the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGs). Despite the ruling, China has continued to assert its claims to more than 80  percent of the South China Sea.