China defends sweeping maritime claims after US criticism

BEIJING — China connected Thursday defended its “historical rights” to virtually the full South China Sea, pursuing a caller U.S. authorities study saying Beijing’s claims are astir wholly invalid.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin called the State Department study “Limits successful the Seas,” issued this month, an effort to “distort planetary law, confuse the public, sow discord and disrupt the determination situation.”

“China has humanities rights successful the South China Sea. China’s sovereignty and related rights and interests successful the South China Sea person been established successful a agelong play of past and are accordant with planetary law,” Wang said.

The immense maritime portion has been tense due to the fact that six different governments assertion each oregon portion of the strategically captious waterway, done which an estimated $5 trillion successful planetary commercialized travels each twelvemonth and which holds affluent but accelerated declining sportfishing stocks and important undersea lipid and state deposits.

The U.S. holds nary authoritative presumption connected who owns what features successful the sea, but maintains the implicit close to run successful what it insists are planetary waters.

That includes sailing Navy warships past Chinese-held features, including artificial islands equipped with airstrips and different subject facilities.

The U.S. study said Beijing’s assertion “has nary ineligible ground and is asserted by (China) without specificity arsenic to the quality oregon geographic grade of the ‘historic rights’ claimed.”

The U.S. survey besides said that China’s assertion to sovereignty covering much than 100 features submerged astatine precocious tide were inconsistent with planetary law; that its enclosure of immense areas of the oversea was unsupported by planetary law; and that its signifier of claiming maritime zones based connected labeling each land radical arsenic a full was “not permitted by planetary law.”

China’s “expansive maritime claims successful the South China Sea are inconsistent with planetary instrumentality arsenic reflected successful the 1982 United Nations Convention connected the Law of the Sea,” the survey said.

“The wide effect of these maritime claims is that (China) unlawfully claims sovereignty oregon immoderate signifier of exclusive jurisdiction implicit astir of the South China Sea,” it said.

In his response, Wang said the U.S. “arbitrarily misinterprets the convention, engages successful governmental manipulation with aggregate standards for its ain selfish interests, and undermines the planetary regularisation of law.”

He besides renewed China’s disapproval of a 2016 planetary arbitration ruling that mostly invalidated Beijing’s claims. The ruling is “illegal and null and void. China does not judge oregon admit it,” Wang said.