Unlawful award only raises regional tensions

The South China Sea arbitral tribunal in The Hague has made its award in the Philippines' case. As pointed out by many, the tribunal was willed to extend ill-founded jurisdiction over this case.

As per design, the international tribunal doesn't qualify to judge maritime rights based on their sovereign nature. The case that Manila raised against Beijing touches upon various issues where sovereignty is at stake, as such, the court has willfully and erroneously expanded its turf and thus made an unlawful ruling.

Even worse, this tribunal has been ill intended to promote the Philippines' unwarranted national interests. For instance, the court has ruled that Taiping Island of the Nansha Islands doesn't really constitute a "legally qualified island", contradicting the simple fact that people have been living on the island, largely self-sufficiently, for a long time. The argument that there is no evidence that a "human community" had long been formed there, a precondition to establishing Taiping as an island, sounds absurd to Chinese, on both the mainland and in Taiwan. Such a conclusion seriously reduces the traditional Chinese fishing grounds, especially for those fishermen from Taiwan, and hence will aggravate, rather than help reduce, the fishing disputes in the region. Such arguments indicate the tribunal has not had any proper sense of justice and fairness.