'South China Sea arbitration award' revisited

Does the so-called South China Sea arbitration stand up to legal scrutiny? A report by the China Institute for Marine Affairs argues that the case was not simply an impartial legal judgment. It argues that a dispute over territorial sovereignty was reframed as one under the UNCLOS.

The UNCLOS deals with maritime rights. It does not decide who owns land or islands. So how did the Philippines try to bring this case under the UNCLOS? By using what lawyers call a "mixed-dispute" strategy: combining a sovereignty dispute with maritime claims and treating sovereignty as merely "incidental".

This approach has also drawn criticism from scholars outside China:

·The British Institute of International and Comparative Law described it as a "deliberate strategic choice".

·French scholar Jean-Louis Iten described it as an astuce procedurale — a procedural trick to keep the case within the tribunal's reach.

China ratified the UNCLOS in 1996. The report's argument is not that the UNCLOS is the problem. Its warning is that the Convention is weakened when courts or tribunals stretch its terms. Revisiting this award is not a rejection of international law, but a reminder that it must be applied with restraint, consistency, and respect for its limits.