This paper was presented by Retired Justice Antonio T. Carpio at the South China Sea Contemporary Issues Workshop organized by St. Anthony’s College of the University of Oxford on November 9, 2022.
What has prevented a third world war are two provisions in the 1945 United Nations Charter. The first provision outlaws the threat or use of force to settle disputes between or among states while the second provision mandates the peaceful settlement of international disputes.
China’s nine-dash line encroaches on the EEZs of the five ASEAN coastal states. With its new law, China’s coast guard can now fire on Vietnamese fishing vessels that fish within Vietnam’s EEZ that overlap with China’s nine-dash line. The threat or use of force violates the UN Charter and UNCLOS. Ironically, in Orwellian doublespeak, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, during the Symposium on Global Maritime Cooperation and Ocean Governance held in Hainan Province this November, told claimant states in the South China Sea not to use force or threat of force. Wang insisted that the South China Sea dispute should be resolved only through peaceful means and called on all nations to clearly reject maritime hegemonism.
In mid-2021, Indonesia sent its drilling ship to drill test wells in its EEZ off the coast of the Natuna Islands facing the South China Sea, within the area encompassed by China’s nine-dash line. China warned Indonesia to stop the drilling, and a four-month standoff ensued between Indonesian coast guard and navy ships and Chinese coast guard vessels.
Obviously, if the Philippines wants to keep its energy costs within reasonable levels, and if it wants to unburden its people from exorbitant energy costs, the Philippines must follow the example of Malaysia and Indonesia in asserting its sovereign rights in its own EEZ. This requires political will which the Duterte administration was in severe deficit of when dealing with China.