China’s “own goals” in the South China Sea. Several paragraphs in the Tribunal’s award expose episodes of China shooting itself in the foot. For instance, there’s the
Tribunal’s statement in paragraph 1164 that it would have found itself lacking jurisdiction over the seven artificial island-bearing features had China stated that they had military applications. Instead, the Tribunal “will not find activities to be military in nature when China itself has consistently resisted such classification and affirmed the opposite at the highest level.” Remember Xi Jinping’s pledge in the White House Rose Garden that the Nansha Islands (the Chinese name for the Spratlys) would not be militarized? Turns out that turned what could have been a less embarrassing verdict into a virtual calamity for China.
Other areas in the award–
for instance, paragraph 209, on petroleum block assignment–highlight simple lapses in China’s conceptual framing of its position. In the aforementioned paragraph, the Tribunal points out that had China eschewed framing its entitlement to continental shelf rights in terms of the language of “historic rights” and used language consistent with UNCLOS, it may have had some luck with the Tribunal. Instead, the judges found that “the framing of China’s objections strongly indicates that China considers its rights with respect to petroleum resources to stem from historic rights,” which were declared invalid elsewhere.
One final example of the Tribunal underlining an “own goal” by China is in its reading of the nine-dash line itself.
Paragraph 213 notes that China’s declaration of baselines in the Paracels and around Hainan contradicts its ambiguous claim to a territorial sea or internal waters within the area claimed by the nine-dash line. “China would presumably not have done so if the waters both within and beyond 12 nautical miles of those islands already formed part of China’s territorial sea (or internal waters) by virtue of a claim to historic rights through the ‘nine-dash line,’” it notes.
One wonders if China could have fared better on these counts if it had actively participated in the arbitration process, instead of refusing to participate and leaving its position up to the Tribunal’s interpretation based on a lone position paper, public statements, and past declarations.
http://thediplomat.com/2016/07/5-ta...e-historic-south-china-sea-arbitration-award/