According to the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on July 11, 2025, Wang Yi, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Foreign Minister, spoke on China's position regarding the "South China Sea Arbitration Case" during the annual series of foreign ministers' meetings on East Asian cooperation in Kuala Lumpur.
Wang Yi stated that the "South China Sea Arbitration Case" initiated unilaterally by the Philippines did not fulfill the necessary prerequisite of sufficient prior exchanges of views, violated the principle of consent of the parties, which is the basis for arbitration, and was inherently devoid of the legal prerequisites for initiating arbitration. The Philippine approach violated the provisions of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea that direct parties should peacefully resolve disputes through friendly negotiations, renounced the commitments made by the Philippines in bilateral agreements with China, and breached the principle of "estoppel" under international law.
Wang Yi said that although the "arbitration issue" has been packaged in various ways, the essence of the Philippine claims concerns the territorial sovereignty of China's Nansha Islands and directly involves maritime delimitation. However, territorial issues are not within the scope of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and maritime delimitation had already been explicitly excluded by the Chinese government's declaration in 2006. Among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, except for the United States, which has not joined the Convention, the other four countries have also made exclusion declarations. The "arbitral tribunal" has overstepped its authority, abused the dispute settlement mechanism of the Convention, undermined international marine rule of law, and is essentially doing things that violate the Convention while claiming to act under its banner.
Wang Yi said that the "arbitral tribunal" also has serious defects in fact finding and legal application, with numerous errors, particularly incorrectly identifying Taiping Island, the largest island in the Nansha Islands with an area of 500,000 square meters, as a rock, and thereby concluding that no islands or reefs in the Nansha Islands can generate an exclusive economic zone or continental shelf. This is completely inconsistent with the facts of the South China Sea and the provisions of the Convention. If this standard is applied, the global maritime order would be rewritten. Similarly, the islands and reefs of some countries such as the United States and Japan would lose the basis for claiming maritime rights. Would you be willing to give up your claims as well?
Wang Yi emphasized that the world knows that both the initiation of the "arbitral tribunal" and the subsequent hype have been orchestrated by external countries, aiming to disrupt the South China Sea and profit from it. More and more countries around the world have seen through the nature of this farce, and China's position is precisely about upholding the spirit of international rule of law and the seriousness of the Convention. With the joint efforts of China and ASEAN countries, the situation in the South China Sea is stable, and freedom of navigation and overflight is effectively guaranteed. China is accelerating consultations with ASEAN countries to strive to conclude the "Code of Conduct in the South China Sea" as soon as possible, building a new narrative of peace, cooperation, and friendliness in the South China Sea. Any attempt to stir up trouble and sow discord will end in failure.
Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7525991325825630761/
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