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The Philippines filed a Sino-Philippine dispute over the South China Sea to the International Arbitration Tribunal in January 2013. And on March 30, 2014, it submitted a plea to the International Court. Its unilateral action of forcing international arbitration is wrong and has been criticized by scholars studying international law and international affairs.

[By JIao Haiyang/China.org.cn]

Scholars say that China's stance of non-acceptance and non-participation in the issue has a solid basis in international law. The Philippines has to fully understand the complexity and sensitivity of the South China Sea Issue and return to the right track of resolving the dispute through negotiation as soon as possible to avoid further damage to bilateral ties.

According to Jia Yu, vice director of the China Institute for Marine Affairs under the State Oceanic Administration (SOA), since the 1970s, the Philippines has illegally occupied some of the islands or reefs that make up China's Nansha Islands (Spratly Islands), including Mahuan Dao, Feixin Dao, Zhongye Dao, Nanyao Dao, Beizi Dao, Xiyue Dao, Shuanghuang Shazhou and Siling Jiao. This violation of the principles of International Law is the root of the dispute over the Nansha Islands. As early as in 2006, China submitted a statement to the Secretariat of the United Nations saying that it excluded any international jurisdiction or arbitration in terms of territorial sovereignty or maritime disputes over demarcation and military activities as defined in Section 2, Part 15 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. No matter what method the Philippines uses, it will not change the fact that this arbitration is over sovereignty over islands and marine demarcation in the South China Sea.

China always maintains that solving disputes over territorial sovereignty and marine demarcation through negotiations from the overall situation of Sino-Philippine relations and regional peace and stability. China also advocates settling territorial and marine interest disputes on the basis of international laws, respecting history and facts, Jia emphasized. Both the UN Charter and the Convention encourage concerned parties to solve their disputes through consultation and negotiation. However, the Philippines has ignored China's goodwill and tolerance and sued China first with the vicious intention of dragging China into an international arbitration. This is a disregard of and provocation of China's sovereignty.

"The filing of the arbitration is an abuse of legal procedures," said Wu Shicun, an academician with the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The Convention has specified that the precondition of launching an arbitration has to follow the principles of International Law – the doctrine of state consent. A state member complies with the arbitration in the following two ways: First, it can exclude certain arbitration on disputes in specific fields authorized by the Convention. China stated in 2006 that it excluded any international jurisdiction or arbitration in terms of territorial sovereignty or marine demarcation. But the Philippines ignored China's statement and filed the arbitration over the disputes of islands sovereignty and marine demarcation. Second, states can exclude international arbitration through consultations in advance. China and the Philippines and other parties concerned used negotiation to solve disputes over the South China Sea in the Declaration on the Code of Conduct on the South China Sea in 2002. This declaration has repelled other legal procedures including the arbitration. Therefore the unilateral action of the Philippines is invalid and has violated the Convention and international laws.

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