Nine-dash line not intended as national border
It has been reported by news agencies that the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague is about to publish its ruling on the South China Sea dispute and is expected to rule in favour of the Philippines.
These agencies say that China’s nine-dash line is invalid and therefore does not support the Chinese claim of sovereignty over the South China Sea waters and island groups, the latter of which were ordered by the 1943 Cairo Declaration to be restored to China.
It has also been reported that China is considering pulling out of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos) if that is the basis for invalidating the nine-dash line (the “tongue”).
Well, the nine-dash line was never meant to be a national border, or to enclose, as China has been alleged to be doing, “almost all of the South China Sea”. As was made clear in a 1992 pronouncement, China reaffirmed its sovereignty over the territorial waters around its offshore islands, “the islands, reefs and shoals of the Pratas, the Zhongsha (in which is embedded the Scarborough Shoal), the Spratlys and the Paracels, inside of the nine-dash line”, but did not close off the international waters next to them.
If China should pull out of Unclos, it would join the same category as the non-Unclos US, no longer recognising the 12-nautical-mile territorial waters or the 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone of any state, Unclos or non-Unclos, nor Vietnam’s “tongue” which stretches across more than half of China’s “tongue”. But why should the tribunal recognise Vietnam’s claim?
Peter Lok, Chai Wan