China unrepentant after South China Sea ruling

It will be interesting to see what, if anything, comes of the Permanent Court of Arbitration's ruling that China has no legal or historical right to a swathe of the South China Sea it has been aggressively claiming for years.

The area, often referred to as the "nine dash line", claimed by China for no apparent good reason other than its mineral resources (principally oil and gas) and its strategic importance as one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, overlaps the territorial claims of five Southeast Asian nations (Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei), and a quick perusal of a map shows just how little it has to do with China geographically.

China has responded, with its usual ignorance and bluster, that it will completely ignore the ruling, and will "firmly safeguard national sovereignty" in the region regardless of world opinion. For some time, China has had, and will apparently continue to have, a policy of building up artificial islets in the area, some of which now boast military airfields. The arbitration court specifically took China to task for "severe harm to the coral reef environment" as a result of its construction and dredging activities in the region. Furthermore, it has ruled that none of the shoals or reefs, claimed by China as islands, actually qualify as islands under international law, meaning that the region is essentially "high seas", open to ships and planes of all countries, and that the normal 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zones of the Philippines and other nations in the area should apply to it as usual.

Also, for some time now, China has been conducting naval and air drills in the region, and is thought to be about to declare an "air defence identification zone", which would require all foreign aircraft to identify themselves and to seek Chinese permission to enter the airspace. Essentially, China has been banging the tub as hard as it can on the issue, and saying to the rest of the world "defy us if you dare".

China is technically a signatory to the 1996 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and as such should abide by its provisions. But China appears to quite willing to ignore the Convention in this case, and also in other ongoing maritime disputes with Japan and Vietnam. The nationalistic Chinese press has promised military and political reprisals against the United States and Japan and anyone else who happens to get in their way over this matter, and a tense mood has suddenly become even more tense.

This is just what the world needs: one more international flashpoint to be aware of! But China's reaction to the ruling may have other, potentially even more important, repercussions: if Beijing is willing to blithely ignore one international treaty it happens not to like, then what confidence can we have that its word is worth anything in other trade and compliance agreements? If China follows through and becomes a full-blown pariah state, then the well-being and security of the whole world is at risk.