The South China Sea dispute and the Philippines Arbitration Tribunal: China's policy options

ABSTRACT

The Philippines Arbitration Tribunal separately dealing with the jurisdiction over the South China Sea dispute is the continuance of the set practice by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea's Annex VII arbitral tribunals of bifurcation of proceedings, and was the best option for it to deal with China's objections to its jurisdiction in the circumstance of China's non-acceptance of and non-participation in the arbitral proceedings. Such a measure has potentially important implications for the tribunal itself and for China. The tribunal's decision to have jurisdiction over some parts of the Philippines’ submissions resumed the merits proceedings of the dispute. This development of the proceedings would force China to reconsider its current policy of non-participation. Participation in the subsequent merits proceedings might be the right choice for China.

KEYWORDS:

• China's participation
• jurisdiction
• Philippines Arbitration Tribunal
• South China Sea dispute
• United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea

Acknowledgements

The author expresses sincere thanks for the reviewers’ comments. All errors are the author's own. This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and the Research Funds of Renmin University of China under Grant [15XNI003].

Notes

1. China's Foreign Minister, Wang Yi (2015), said at the press conference held in Singapore on August 3, 2015 that ‘[t]he focus of disputes on the Nansha Islands between China and some nations does not lie in the “nine-dash line”’.

2. After the Huangyan Island incident took place in April 2012, the Philippines proposed to China for referring the Huangyan Island issue to the ITLOS or international arbitration for resolution (Weimin 2012a).

3. Koh (2015), former president of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, advocated that China should reconsider its negative position on arbitration in order to conform to the best Asian and international practice.