UK calls for rules not power in sea row

BEIJING – Visiting British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond told a Beijing audience yesterday that competing territorial claims in the South China Sea, a key global trade artery, risk boiling over and must be resolved peacefully.

China claims most of the South China Sea, overlapping with areas the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan deem to be their territory.

Beijing has been pouring massive amounts of sand to expand and fortify small reefs and build facilities in the area, which it says are meant to promote maritime and navigational safety and scientific research, as well as having military purposes.

There was “tension and the risk of escalation” in the area, Hammond told students at the capital’s elite Peking University, adding: “We want to see claims dealt with by rules-based, not power-based, solutions in Asia as elsewhere.”

As well as China, most of the Southeast Asian claimants have also built facilities in the waters.

The United States and Southeast Asian nations have called for a halt to further island-expansion and construction by Beijing, though China’s foreign minister said last week that land reclamation had stopped.

Britain depends on global sea lanes for the delivery of 95 percent of its trade and “has a strong interest in the stability of the South China Sea region,” Hammond said, adding that $5 trillion worth of trade passes through the area every year.

The issue needed to be addressed “in a way which is consistent with the long-term peace and stability of the region, with freedom of navigation and overflight, and in accordance with international law, including the Law of the Sea,” he said.

China has a growing role on the global diplomatic stage and Hammond said that “with increasing power comes increasing responsibility.”

Hammond was in China for high-level talks ahead of a planned state visit to Britain in October by Chinese President Xi Jinping, during which he will stay with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.

Limits outlined

China respects freedom of navigation in the disputed South China Sea but will not allow any foreign government to invoke that right so its military ships and planes can intrude in Beijing’s territory, the Chinese ambassador said.

Ambassador Zhao Jianhua said late yesterday that Chinese forces warned a US Navy P-8A not to intrude when the warplane approached a Chinese-occupied area in the South China Sea’s disputed Spratly Islands in May. A CNN reporter who was on board the plane, which had taken off from the Philippines, reported the incident then.

“We just gave them warnings, be careful, not to intrude,” Zhao told reporters on the sidelines of a diplomatic event in Manila.

Washington, however, does not recognize any territorial claim by any country in the South China Sea, a policy that collides with the position of China, which claims virtually the entire sea.

When asked why China shooed away the US plane when it has pledged to respect freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, Zhao outlined the limits in China’s view.

“Freedom of navigation does not mean to allow other countries to intrude into the airspace or the sea which is sovereign. No country will allow that,” Zhao said. “We say freedom of navigation must be observed in accordance with international law. No freedom of navigation for warships and airplanes.”

Zhao also repeated an earlier pronouncement by Beijing that China’s use of land reclamation to create new islands at a number of disputed Spratly reefs has ended. China, he said, would now start constructing facilities to support freedom of navigation, search and rescue efforts when accidents occur, and scientific research.

“When we say we’re going to stop reclamation, we mean it,” Zhao said.

He acknowledged that “necessary defense facilities” would also be constructed. 

Rogue nation

Meanwhile, Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio yesterday said China should not allow itself to be a “rogue nation” while the Philippines and the rest of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) work peacefully to settle the territorial row in the South China Sea.

Carpio met with Senate President Franklin Drilon and other senators to brief them about the developments on the arbitration case filed by the Philippines in The Hague in the Netherlands.

A decision is expected to be released by May next year.

Once the Philippines wins the case, Carpio said it can lead other countries in the region to pressure China to comply with international law.

“I think we will win that. We are not alone because Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia will benefit immensely from the ruling,” he said.

The Philippines also expects support from the United States and the European Union, which back the country on the peaceful settlement of the dispute.

The South China Sea conflict has gained the interest of the ASEAN, Carpio noted, referring to the agreement by member countries to come up with a joint communiqué.

“There was an improvement in terms of support from the ASEAN to our position. Before Malaysia refused to discuss the issue but now it is saying it has to be tackled. Singapore is saying we cannot ignore the reclamations anymore,” Carpio said.

“So the reclamations have really unnerved a lot of our ASEAN neighbors, and they want China to discuss the Code of Conduct because it’s been more than a decade now that we’ve been talking about it,” he added.?If the ruling will not be favorable to the Philippines and the other claimant countries, Carpio warned that there will be a massive arms race in the region. – AP, Christina Mendez