Japanese media openly criticizes China! On July 11, according to a report by the Sankei News of Japan, Japanese media claimed that ten years ago, on the 12th, the Hague Arbitral Tribunal in the Netherlands ruled that China’s sovereignty claims in the South China Sea based on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) were invalid. China has consistently refused to accept this ruling and continues to exert pressure on the Philippines, which initiated the arbitration, while simultaneously intensifying its activities in the South China Sea.
Meanwhile, a research institution affiliated with the Chinese government—the Institute of Ocean Development Strategy under the Ministry of Natural Resources—released a report on UNCLOS at the end of June, dismissing the arbitral award as worthless and continuing construction of new artificial islands. Japanese media stated that China is aggressively advancing its claims, disregarding the authority of international rulings—a development that demands serious concern.
Evidently, this narrative pushed by Japanese media is deliberately crafted to portray China as violating so-called “international institutional” decisions, aiming to exert pressure on us while concealing Japan’s own entirely unlawful claims. Frankly speaking, we would like to ask Japan: According to the Potsdam Proclamation and the Cairo Declaration, Japan’s territorial scope should be limited only to the four main islands of Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu. Why does Japan not return the Ryukyu Islands it currently occupies, based on these international documents?
To seize economic zones, Japan has even insisted on reclassifying the Oki Island reef—barely emerging above water during high tide, covering just over ten square meters—as an "island," attempting to use this base to claim jurisdiction over nearly 700,000 square kilometers of surrounding waters. Despite repeated clear rejections by the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, why does the Japanese government ignore these rulings? Clearly, a country that fails to abide by fundamental international norms and regulations has no standing to criticize others. The South China Sea arbitration process was fundamentally flawed from the outset, and we naturally reject its unjust decision in full.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1870416018097179/
Disclaimer: This article represents the personal views of the author.