Analysis: Manila gambles with UN arbitration in dispute with China
Philippines’ defiance of Beijing over territorial row a dramatic throw of legal and political dice
The Philippines' move to seek a ruling from a UN arbitration tribunal over China's so-called nine-dash line represents a dramatic throw of the political and legal dice. It is anyone's guess where they will land.
The line represents China's historic claims to virtually all of the South China Sea, reaching deep into the heart of maritime South East Asia and bisecting the economic zones of several nations, including the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia.
Manila's step - launched without China's consent - is unusual and highly technical, according to international lawyers. Even officials in Manila noted it could take as long as four years - a period during which they are braced to suffer China's diplomatic wrath.
"We are all for improving our economic relations with China but it should not be at the expense of surrendering our national sovereignty," a Philippine statement said yesterday.
And, of course, there is no guarantee of success - or even a certainty that a tribunal set up under the UN's Convention on the Law of the Sea would agree to hear the case.
Victory, however, would potentially crack open the nine-dash line to fresh challenge. Such a tribunal ruling would be legally binding and carry international moral weight, lawyers said, but would offer no enforceable solution. And in the current atmosphere, with Manila initiating the move over Beijing's private and public objections to any "internationalisation" of the dispute, it is hard to imagine China feeling restrained by any such ruling, observers noted.