Earlier this month, China announced new “baselines” around Scarborough Reef, a large coral atoll surrounded by a handful of reefs barely above sea level in the South China Sea.
By doing so, China reaffirmed its sovereignty claim over the disputed waters that have become a global flashpoint.
It was a pre-calculated response to the imposition of new maritime laws by the Philippines two days earlier, aimed at protecting its own claims to the reef and other disputed parts of the sea.
This legal tit-for-tat is a continuation of the ongoing sovereignty and maritime dispute between China and the Philippines (and others) in a vital maritime area through which a third of global trade travels.
The Philippines rejected China’s announcement as a violation of its “long-established sovereignty over the sea”. Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said:
What we are seeing is an increasing demand by Beijing to accept our sovereign rights in the region.
As tensions over these claims continue to increase, the risk of conflict at sea between the two countries is continuously increasing.
What is Scarborough Reef?
Scarborough Reef is called Huangyan Dao in Chinese and Bajo de Masinloc in the Philippines. It is located northeast of the South China Sea, about 116 nautical miles (215 km) west of the Philippine island of Luzon and 448 nautical miles (830 km) south of the Chinese mainland.
At high tide it is reduced to a few small islands, the highest of which is only 3 meters above the water. However, at low tide, it is the largest coral atoll in the South China Sea.
China claims sovereignty over all waters, islands, reefs and other features of the South China Sea, as well as unspecified “historical rights” within its claimed nine-dash line. It also includes Scarborough Reef.
In recent years, the reef has been the site of repeated skirmishes between China and the Philippines. Since 2012, China has blocked Filipino fishing vessels from accessing the valuable lagoon here. This prompted the Philippines to take China to international arbitration under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 2013.
Three years later, an arbitration tribunal ruled that China had no historic rights over maritime areas where it would conflict with UNCLOS. The tribunal also concluded that China had “unlawfully prevented Filipino fishermen from carrying out traditional fishing in the Scarborough Shoal.”
China refused to participate in the arbitration case and strongly rejected its ruling as “invalid and void” and having “no binding force”.
What did China do this month?
China announced the exact location of the base points of its territorial claim around Scarborough Reef with geographical coordinates (longitude and latitude), connected by straight lines.
Declaration of so-called “baselines” is standard practice for countries that wish to lay claim to maritime areas along their coasts. Baselines provide a starting point for measuring these areas.
A country’s “territorial sea” is measured out to 12 nautical miles (22 km) outward from this baseline. Under the UNCLOS treaty, a country has full sovereignty rights over the territory, including the seabed, waters, airspace, and any resources located there.
Countries want their base lines to be as far away from the sea as possible so that they can maximize maritime zones over which they can gain economic benefits and enforce their own laws.
China is no exception. As with other countries (especially in Asia), it draws the most generous baselines of all – straight baselines. These may connect distant inland areas or other coastal areas with a simple straight line, or even encircle nearby islands.
China is particularly fond of straight baselines. In 1996, it pulled them off most of its mainland coast and around the Paracel Islands, a disputed archipelago in the South China Sea. China this March defined additional direct baselines across the Gulf of Tonkin to its land border with Vietnam.
China says these actions comply with UNCLOS. However, its use of direct baselines around Scarborough Reef is in conflict with international law. This is because UNCLOS provides a specific rule for baselines around rocks, which China did not follow.
However, based on our review of satellite imagery, China has only advanced the outer limits of its territorial sea by a few hundred meters in two directions. This is because its straight base lines largely touch the edge of the cliff.
So these new baselines around Scarborough Reef are quite conservative and cover a dramatically smaller area than the US feared.
NEW: The PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) on November 10 released coordinates demarcating the PRC-claimed territorial sea baseline around Scarborough Shoal.
The PRC’s announcement of a territorial sea baseline around Scarborough Shoal is presumably intended to legitimize… pic.twitter.com/2VrI8Dqf6z
– Institute for the Study of War (@TheStudyofWar) 13 November 2024
China’s announcement indicates it has given up its claim to a much larger “offshore archipelago” it calls the Zhongsha Islands.
China has long claimed that Scarborough Reef is part of this larger island group, which also includes Macclesfield Bank, located entirely underwater 180 nautical miles (333 km) to the west. This has led to concerns that Beijing could draw a baseline around the entire archipelago, claiming all the waters within exclusively for its own use.
The South China Sea arbitration tribunal ruled that international law bars such claims. Many countries may have breathed a collective sigh of relief that China has decided to stake a very small claim on the Scarborough Reef.
Importance and future steps?
However, China’s clarification about its baselines around the Reef suggests it may be more assertive in its law enforcement here.
The China Coast Guard said it would step up patrols in the South China Sea to “resolutely maintain order, protect local ecosystems and biological resources, and safeguard national territorial sovereignty and maritime rights.”
Given the long history of skirmishes related to fishing access around Scarborough Reef, this creates the potential for further confrontation.
And what about the South China Sea’s biggest prize – the Spratly Islands?
We can now expect China to continue its long straight baseline march south of this group of islands. The Spratlys are an archipelago of more than 150 small islands, reefs and atolls covering approximately 240,000 square kilometers of attractive fishing grounds. Along with China, Philippines and many other countries also claim these.
These countries can be expected to resist any attempts to encircle the Spratly Islands by new Chinese baselines.
,Author: Yukong Wang, Lecturer, Newcastle University; Clive Schofield, Professor, Australian National Center for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS), University of Wollongong, and Warwick Gullett, Professor of Law, University of Wollongong)
,disclosure statement: Clive Scofield served as an independent expert witness appointed by the Philippines in the South China Sea arbitration case. Warwick Gullett and Yukong Wang do not work for, consult to, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Affiliation not disclosed)
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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