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Beijing’s focus on maritime law ‘reflects rising concerns over South China Sea’
- Five-year plan includes call to mitigate risks and prepare for legal battles to defend national interests
- Analyst says if rival claimant Vietnam starts arbitration ‘there’s now a greater chance that China would take part’
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Beijing’s plan for the next five years includes a call to mitigate risks and prepare for legal battles over its maritime disputes, which analysts say reflects growing concerns over the South China Sea.
The plan – tabled at the ongoing annual legislative sessions in Beijing – also calls for China to draw up a basic maritime law, a task carried over from the previous five-year period.
“[We] must study the current circumstances, mitigate risks and [prepare for] legal struggles,” the plan to 2025 says. “[We] must resolutely defend national maritime interests.”
It is Beijing’s first five-year plan since it refused to take part in a 2016 legal challenge brought against it by Manila over the South China Sea. The Hague tribunal rejected Beijing’s expansive claims in the region, saying they had no legal basis, but China refused to accept the ruling and called it “a farce”.
Zhu Feng, an international relations expert with Nanjing University, said while the new five-year plan makes no mention of that ruling, its language suggests a rising sense of crisis over the South China Sea.
“China doesn’t want to see another legal case but there is likely to be one, so I think preparations are under way,” Zhu said. “If Vietnam starts arbitration, there’s now a greater chance that China would actually take part.”
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