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China foreign minister Wang Yi slams South China Sea ruling as ‘farce' at regional meeting

China foreign minister Wang Yi slams South China Sea ruling as ‘farce' at regional meeting

CNA12-07-2025
KUALA LUMPUR: Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi restated Beijing's rejection of the 2016 South China Sea arbitration ruling on Friday (Jul 11), on the eve of the ruling's ninth anniversary, amid renewed tensions and growing speculation about a potential second legal challenge.
Calling the decision a 'farce', Wang said the case, brought by the Philippines against China 's South China Sea claims and ruled on by a tribunal of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, was 'orchestrated and manipulated by external powers'.
Their purpose 'was to destabilise the South China Sea for their own benefit', Wang said during the annual East Asian Summit foreign ministers' meeting in Kuala Lumpur.
He said China works to maintain stability in the region and has been speeding up the negotiation of a binding South China Sea code of conduct with Asean.
'All attempts to stir up trouble or sow discord will ultimately fail,' he added at the meeting attended by top diplomats of 18 countries, including the 10 ASEAN member states and the United States.
The Philippines filed the case with the court in 2013, but Beijing refused to participate.
The court, in China's absence, ruled on Jul 12, 2016, in support of most of the Philippines' submissions, including its contention that China's extensive claim via the 'nine-dash line' appearing on Chinese maps since 1953 was invalid under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
Additionally, the court ruled that China's land reclamation projects in the area were environmentally harmful.
The ruling also held that no land features in the disputed Spratly Islands could be classified as 'islands', meaning that China could not claim exclusive economic zones around the reefs it occupies, while the Philippines could extend its zone from its coastline to include those reefs.
Despite having signed UNCLOS in 1982 and ratified it in 1996, China strongly rejected the ruling and improved ties with former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte by 'putting aside' the ruling during his 2016-2022 term.
However, tension has escalated since the current Philippine president, Ferdinand Marcos Jnr, took office.
It has been reported that Manila is considering filing a new UN arbitration regarding the maritime conflicts.
In his remarks on Friday, Wang repeated China's declaration of 'four noes' in the case – no acceptance, no participation, no recognition and no implementation.
He contended that the case addressed the issues of territorial sovereignty and maritime delimitation, which exceed the jurisdiction of both UNCLOS and the arbitration tribunal's authority.
China and other major world powers, he said, had excluded maritime delimitation when they joined the convention.
'The tribunal's handling constituted an overreach, abusing the convention's dispute resolution mechanism and undermining international maritime rule of law. They are violating the convention under the banner of the convention,' Wang said.
He added that the Philippines did not seek prior consultations with China before filing to the tribunal, and that therefore the initiation of the arbitration was legally flawed.
He also accused Manila of breaking its commitment to the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China calls for South China Sea disputes to be solved through dialogue, as well as its bilateral promises to Beijing.
Wang also condemned the tribunal's 'flawed and erroneous' decision to classify the Taiping Island (Itu Aba) of the Spratlys – a 0.5-square-kilometre island with fresh water and vegetation occupied by Taiwan – as a 'rock' that could not sustain an exclusive economic zone.
'If this standard were applied globally, the international maritime order would be rewritten, potentially depriving many nations ... of their maritime rights,' he said, referring to how the reefs of countries like the US and Japan would similarly lose their basis for claiming maritime rights and interests.
"Would these countries be willing to give up their claims as well?"
Besides the Philippines, three other ASEAN members – Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam – have competing claims with China in the South China Sea.
Beijing sees the self-governed island of Taiwan as a rogue province, to be reunited eventually with the mainland, by force if necessary.
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This family self-deported to Mexico, and lost everything
This family self-deported to Mexico, and lost everything

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time4 hours ago

  • Straits Times

This family self-deported to Mexico, and lost everything

Sonia Coria and her husband Carlos Leon, Mexican migrants who fled cartel violence in their hometown with their family and sought refuge in Arizona, U.S., before voluntarily returning to Mexico, look on outside their home in Uruapan, Michoacan state, Mexico, July 23, 2025. REUTERS/Ivan Arias URUAPAN, Mexico - As broadcasters declared Donald Trump the next President of the United States, Sonia Coria turned to her husband and asked if they should go home. For seven months they had been living in Glendale, Arizona, sharing a two-bedroom apartment with Coria's aunt and slowly building a life far from the threats and cartel violence that made them flee Mexico. Coria, 25, took odd jobs as a cleaner and her husband, Carlos Leon, also 25, worked as a gardener. Their eldest child Naomi, eight, was going to a local charter school, making friends and picking up English. In the small kidney-shaped pool of the condominium building where they lived, she had learned to swim. Little Carlos, five, was learning to ride a bike. Their neighborhood in western Glendale - a city of some 250,000 people just outside Phoenix - was home to lots of Mexican migrants. Opposite their apartment block was a small butcher, Carnicería Uruapan, named after the town they had fled in the dangerous Mexican state of Michoacan. They had bought their first car on installments - a tan-colored 2008 Ford F-150 pickup truck that cost them $4,000. They were still poor, sometimes going to soup kitchens for a meal or picking up appliances and toys that neighbors had thrown out, but it was a life they could only have dreamed of back home in Mexico. Trump's campaign, and his victory, changed how they felt about living in the United States. They had followed the law, entering the United States at a border crossing and applying for asylum. The application was in process. But they now worried they could lose everything. "We run the risk of them taking away the little we've managed to scrape together," Coria remembers telling her husband that night as election coverage played on the television. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. 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Since then, "tens of thousands of illegal aliens" self-deported through CBP Home app, a Department of Homeland Security official told Reuters, without giving further details. More than 56,000 Mexicans have voluntarily returned from the U.S. since Trump returned to the White House, according to Mexican government figures. Figures from last year were unavailable. Self-deportation is not a new idea. During the Great Depression and again in 1954's Operation Wetback, U.S. deportation campaigns pressured over a million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans to leave - far more than through formal deportations. "Self-deportation is not an accident, but a deliberate strategy," said Maria Jose Espinosa, executive director at CEDA, a non-profit organization in Washington that works to improve relations between the U.S. and Latin American countries. 'LEFT WITH NOTHING' On January 19, Coria, Leon, and the two kids packed what they could fit into their F-150 and drove toward the Mexican border. 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Leon eventually found work in a car repair workshop. Coria got a job in a Chinese restaurant. The children complain about leaving the United States. Carlos asks for his bike; Naomi is forgetting her English. In June, a 62-page letter from customs seen by Reuters informed them that their truck had been seized and had become property of the federal treasury. Also, that they owe the equivalent of $18,000 in customs duties for bringing in the F-150 to Mexico. REUTERS

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Straits Times

time4 hours ago

  • Straits Times

South Korea to prepare mutually agreeable trade package as US tariff deadline looms

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CNA

time4 hours ago

  • CNA

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