A few weeks ago, an international arbitral court (the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague in the Netherlands) handed down its ruling in a case brought by the Philippines against China with regard to its claims in the South China Sea. China claims ownership over nearly the entire sea, including parts which are distant from China but close to other countries such as the Philippines and Malaysia, based on the so-called "nine-dash line" that goes back to a map first drawn in 1947 by the Chinese government (then controlled by the KMT, prior to its defeat by the Communists in the Chinese civil war) and further claims exclusive economic rights throughout much of the region based on an assertion that the rocks and atolls in the area are islands. The Philippines challenged both Chinese claim to historic control over the region and its assertion that the features in the sea are islands rather than mere rocks. China refused to participate in the hearings, claiming the court had no jurisdiction over the disputes in the regions (while also claiming that China's claims were "indisputable").
Unsurprisingly, the court ruled against China, finding that the "nine-dash line" hand no validity and that the features in the sea are rocks, not islands. It didn't rule on the sovereignty claims made by China and other countries in the region (including the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei). Equally unsurpisingly, China rejected the ruling. But not only did it reject the ruling, it engaged in a massive campaign including propaganda against the court, recrutiing countries to supposedly support its claim that the court had no jurisdiction, and even blatant bribery to ensure that its neighbors were unable to present a untied front in support of the ruling. Tellingly, China started its propaganda campaign well before the ruling was actually handed down, no doubt because it knew it would lose. But its most extreme behavior came after the ruiling was handed down. A few days after the ruling was announced and in advance of a meeting of foreign ministers of the 10 states making up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), China announced an aid package to Cambodia, its closest ally in ASEAN, worth a reported US$500 million. Cambodia then proceeded to block efforts by other ASEAN members to include any reference to the ruling in the joint statement issued following the meeting (while ironically also claiming that the South China Sea dispute had nothing to do with it). Since ASEAN operates by consensus, meaning that any statements or actions by the group have to be agreed to by all its members, China's bribery (to call a spade a spade) of Cambodia and also Laos, another recepient of massive Chinese aid, has once more prevented the group from presenting a united front against China, even though four of its members are rival claimants in the South China Sea and Indonesia has also recently expressed opposition to some of China's more expansive claims. China continues to insist that any disputes should be settled in bilateral talks, which of course favor the much larger China. In the meantime, China can continue its blatant bullying of its rivals, using its greater military might to push and keep them out while it engages in massive land reclamation projects and builds air strips and other installations on the artifical islands it is creating in the sea.
Despite China's repeated protestations that it has the "facts" on its side, its "historical" claims are flimsy at best. A few historical artificats of Chinese origin found on the rocks in the South China Sea hardly constitute evidence that the islands were actually occupied by China, any more than the various items left on the Moon by the Apollo missions constitute evidence that the Moon belongs to the US. There's no evidence that the islands were ever actually inhabitated, and as recently as the Ming dynasty Chinese maps of the area were full of imaginary places similar to in contemporary Eurpoean imagination such as the "Island of Women" (女人國). China also may be altering less fanciful historical maps to erase evidence contrary to their claims. This isn't to say that the other countries involved necessarily have much stronger claims, but at least they don't claim the entire sea, just the areas relatively close to them, with one exception that I will come back to. In any case, as I have said before in talking about the dispute between China, Japan and Taiwan in the East China Sea, passionately arguing over rocks in the ocean makes all sides look at best a bit silly.
One other claimant in the South China Sea has also disputed the ruling by the arbitral court - Taiwan, the country where I live. One of Taiwan's biggest objections was the finding that Itu Aba, called Taiping Island by Taiwan and China, is a rock rather than an island. Since Taiwan actually occupies Itu Aba, the largest feature in the area, this objection is not surprising. Since I don't know the exact definitions used to determine whether a feature is a rock or an island, I don't have any particular opinion one way or another on whether the Taiwanese government or the court is correct on this particular point, though Taiwan might well have a case. But other aspects of Taiwan's reaction to the ruling were a bit absurd, even if the worst reactions came not from the current DPP-led govenment but from the anti-reason KMT (which bears a fair bit of responsibilty for the entire dispute due to their creation of the original 1947 map with its baseless claims). Rather than taking the opportunity to distinguish its position from that of China, such as by abandoning its equally ridiculous claim to virtually the whole sea, Taiwan is mistakenly simply aping China's reaction, marginalizing itself and incidentally endangering its own sovereignty, as China's absurd "historical" claims apply to Taiwan as well as the South China Sea. Regrettably, the curse of nationalism makes it hard for even the more Taiwan-oriented DPP government to take a rational approach to the issue, one which might allow to Taiwan to put forth its own independent claims in the area (for example, to Itu Aba) without appearing as irrational and fact-free in its claims as China.
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