China sees international ruling on maritime disputes as “scrap paper,” according to Grant Newsham, a retired Marine colonel and senior research fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies.
He referenced a complaint launched by the Philippines against China in 2013 at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague, seeking a judgment on its right to use the waters around the South China Sea islands and reefs it controls.
The PCA dismissed China’s South China Sea claims outright in 2016, emphasizing that China intruded on Philippine sovereignty through operations such as island-building in Manila’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
“And you get a decision, and you have this international body rule on it. And everyone agrees that they will be bound by the jurisdiction. But when it comes to China, that Permanent Court of Arbitration decision was made, [but] the Chinese declared that it is no more than a piece of scrap paper, they weren’t going to follow it,” Newsham told “China in Focus” on NTD, the sister media outlet of The Epoch Times….