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What Beijing’s new claims suggest

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What Beijing’s new claims suggest

Earlier this month, China declared new “baselines” around Scarborough Reef, a large coral atoll topped by a handful of rocks just above sea level in the South China Sea.

In doing so, China reaffirmed its claim to sovereignty over what has become a global trouble spot in the disputed waters.

This was a calculated response to the Philippines’ adoption of new maritime laws two days earlier aimed at protecting its own claims to the reef and other disputed parts of the sea.

This legal back-and-forth is a continuation of the ongoing sovereignty and maritime dispute between China and the Philippines (and others) in a key maritime area through which a third of world trade passes.

The Philippines rejected China’s statement as a violation of its “long-standing sovereignty over the shoal.” Defense Minister Gilberto Teodoro said:

What we are seeing is an increasing demand from Beijing that we give up our sovereign rights in the region.

As tensions surrounding these claims continue to escalate, there is an ever-increasing risk of a maritime conflict between the two countries.

What is Scarborough Reef?

Scarborough Reef is called Huangyan Dao in Chinese and Bajo de Masinloc in the Philippines. It is located in the northeast of the South China Sea, about 116 nautical miles (215 km) west of the Philippine island of Luzon and 448 nautical miles (830 km) south of mainland China.

Disputed claims in the South China Sea. Author provided

At high tide it shrinks to a few small islands, the highest of which is only 3 meters above the water. However, at low tide it is the largest coral atoll in the South China Sea.

China claims sovereignty over all waters, islands, rocks and other features in the South China Sea, as well as unspecified “historic rights” within its claimed nine-dash line. This also includes the Scarborough Reef.

In recent years, the reef has been the scene of repeated clashes between China and the Philippines. Since 2012, China has barred Filipino fishing vessels from accessing the valuable lagoon. This led the Philippines to sue China in 2013 in international arbitration under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Three years later, an arbitration tribunal ruled that China had no historic rights to maritime areas where doing so would conflict with UNCLOS. The tribunal also concluded that China “unlawfully prevented Filipino fishermen from engaging in traditional fishing at Scarborough Shoal.”

China declined to participate in the arbitration and rejected its ruling, saying it was “null and void” and “not binding”.

What did China do this month?

China indicated the exact location of the base points of its territorial claim around Scarborough Reef with geographical coordinates (longitude and latitude) connected by straight lines.

China’s new base claims on Scarborough Reef. Author provided

Establishing so-called “baselines” is common practice for countries that want to claim maritime zones along their coasts. Baselines form the starting point for measuring these zones.

A country’s “territorial sea” is measured from this baseline to a distance of 12 nautical miles (22 km). Under the UNCLOS treaty, a country then has full sovereign rights over this zone, which includes the seabed, water, airspace and all resources there.

Countries want their baselines to be as far out to sea as possible so that they can maximize the areas of the sea where they can generate economic benefits and enforce their own laws.

China is no exception. Along with other countries (particularly in Asia), it draws the most generous baselines of all – straight baselines. These can connect distant headlands or other coastal outcrops with a simple straight line, or even enclose offshore islands.

China especially loves straight baselines. In 1996, they were lured along most of the mainland coast and around the Paracel Islands, a disputed archipelago in the South China Sea. China defined additional straight baselines in the Gulf of Tonkin up to its land border with Vietnam in March this year.

China says these measures are in line with UNCLOS. However, the use of straight baselines around Scarborough Reef is contrary to international law. This is because UNCLOS has a specific rule for baselines around reefs, which China has not followed.

However, based on our analysis of satellite images, China has only advanced the outer limit of its territorial sea by a few hundred meters in two directions. This is because its straight baselines largely follow the edge of the reef.

These new baselines around Scarborough Reef are therefore quite conservative and cover a significantly smaller area than the US had feared.

China’s statement signals that it may have given up its much larger “offshore archipelago” claim to the so-called Zhongsha Islands.

China has long claimed that Scarborough Reef is part of this larger archipelago, which also includes Macclesfield Bank, a completely submerged area 180 nautical miles (333 km) to the west. This led to fears that Beijing could draw a baseline around this entire archipelago and claim all the waters within it exclusively for its use.

The South China Sea Arbitration Tribunal ruled that international law prohibits such claims. Many countries will breathe a collective sigh of relief that China has decided to stake a much smaller claim on Scarborough Reef.

Meaning and future steps?

However, China’s clarification of its baseline around the reef suggests it may be taking a more forceful approach to law enforcement here.

The Chinese Coast Guard has said it will increase its patrols in the South China Sea to “maintain order, protect the local ecosystem and biological resources, and protect national territorial sovereignty and maritime rights.”

Given the long history of clashes over fishing access around Scarborough Reef, this sets the stage for further confrontations.

And what about the biggest trophy in the South China Sea – the Spratly Islands?

We can now expect China to continue its long, straight baseline march to this archipelago to the south. The Spratlys are an archipelago of more than 150 small islands, reefs and atolls spread over around 240,000 square kilometers of lucrative fishing grounds. They are claimed by China as well as the Philippines and several other countries.

These countries are expected to protest against any attempt to encircle the Spratly Islands with new Chinese bases.The conversation

(Authors: Yucong Wang, Lecturer, University of Newcastle; Clive Schofield, Professor, Australian National Center for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS), University of Wollongong, and Warwick Gullett, Professor of Law, University of Wollongong)

(Disclosure statement: Clive Schofield served as an independent expert appointed by the Philippines in the South China Sea arbitration. Warwick Gullett and Yucong Wang do not work for, advise, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic employment.)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)