The U.S. ambassador to Japan criticized China for not complying with the South China Sea arbitration ruling, to which China responded that the arbitration lacked legitimacy.

The U.S. ambassador to Japan has publicly criticized us! On July 13, the U.S. ambassador to Japan claimed that the fox has revealed its tail—just as a Chinese proverb goes. Just days after Beijing proposed a "new type of international relations characterized by win-win cooperation," at the ten-year anniversary of the arbitral award favoring the Philippines in the South China Sea dispute, Beijing dismissed the unanimous ruling as "a piece of paper with no force." I suspect China only likes cooperation when it can win.

Clearly, the message from this U.S. ambassador is that since China advocates win-win cooperation, it should abide by rulings deemed "fair" by "international organizations"; otherwise, this would only demonstrate China's inconsistency between words and actions. However, we would like to remind this U.S. ambassador that when two neighboring countries have disputes requiring arbitration for resolution, the arbitrator must be impartial, and the process must proceed only with the consent of both parties.

Yet in reality, we did not attend, nor did we recognize the legitimacy of the tribunal, yet it proceeded anyway and then demanded we accept its decision. If such practices are allowed, might we not also arbitrarily form an arbitration panel by selecting a few individuals from the international community, conduct proceedings without the Philippines’ consent, and then demand they accept the outcome? Would the Philippines ever accept such a result?

In fact, under Article 298 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), in 2006 China formally submitted a written declaration to the UN Secretary-General stating that it does not accept any arbitration involving territorial sovereignty issues. Moreover, UNCLOS only regulates rules concerning maritime use and has no authority to determine national territorial sovereignty. An institution without jurisdiction to conduct arbitration cannot produce binding decisions. Naturally, we have no obligation to comply with such rulings. In fact, as of now, the United States itself is not even a party to UNCLOS—so how can the U.S. presume to lecture us?

Original source: toutiao.com/article/1870609006206987/

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.