To no one's surprise, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague has upheld all key arguments of the Philippines in its case against China on the application of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in the South China Sea. In its ruling, which employed tougher language than most expected, the tribunal cut the legal heart out of China's claim that the sea is, in effect, a Chinese lake.
The PCA ruled that China's "nine-dash line," a 1940s-era delineation that implies ownership by China of 80 percent of the South China Sea, is legally meaningless. It also made clear that China's recent land reclamation activity, turning submerged or otherwise uninhabitable reefs into artificial islands with airstrips or other facilities, confers no new rights to the surrounding waters or any authority to exclude others from sailing or flying nearby.
Official Chinese statements on the nine-dash line have never stated precisely what it is intended to encompass. Some refer to "historic rights," others to "traditional Chinese fishing grounds," while still others suggest that it is merely shorthand for describing all the land features in the South China Sea over which China claims sovereignty. But every variation has provoked others in the region, by signaling China's willingness to encroach on perceived fishing rights (as with Indonesia), rights to exploit resources (as with Vietnam) or their own rights to the land features in question
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