Undaunted by China’s aggressive rhetoric and expansionist claims to nearly all of the South China Sea, the Philippines has recently filed a legal case unilaterally against Beijing with an International Arbitration Tribunal in The Hague under the UN’s Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Notwithstanding that China has declared that it would not accept or participate in international arbitration under any circumstance, Beijing does appear to be wary of the latest development, despite the fact that any final ruling by the court on the dispute cannot be enforced.

The ruling will provide credence and shall be instrumental in molding international opinion on the dispute, even if it involves complex legal and technical matters that could take a long while to be settled.

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