Vietnam has called on China to abide by maritime law after Beijing declared earlier this month that it was expanding its territorial claims with a new baseline in the South China Sea’s Gulf of Tonkin. The Chinese foreign ministry’s Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs said the move was consistent with Chinese and international law and necessary for “the exercise of national sovereignty and jurisdiction.”
China’s expansive claims over most of the South China Sea overlap with those of Vietnam and several other coastal states. China is already locked in a years-long and escalating dispute with the Philippines over features within the U.S. ally’s exclusive economic zone. Baselines are used to determine the width of waters a country can claim full jurisdiction over. Extending 12 nautical miles beyond baselines are a country’s territorial waters, where foreign vessels are generally accorded the right of passage. Lying within the baselines are internal waters, where foreign vessels are denied this right.
“Vietnam is of the view that the coastal states are obligated to comply with the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in establishing their baselines for measuring the breadth of the territorial sea and ensure that those baselines do not affect the legitimate rights and interests of other states,” Vietnamese foreign ministry spokesperson Pham Thu Hang said Thursday. She added that Vietnam “reserves all rights and legal interests under international law.”
Hanoi has raised the issue with Beijing and calls on it to “respect and comply with” UNCLOS and an agreement the neighbors inked in 2000 pertaining to exclusive economic zones, delimiting territorial sea boundaries, and continental shelf in the Gulf of Tonkin, Pham said. Asked to respond to Pham’s remark during Friday’s press conference at the Chinese foreign ministry, spokesperson Wang Wenbin seemed to suggest Beijing is entitled to make changes to the status quo in the gulf. Another China creeping Intrusion in Vietnam Sea.
+ There are no comments
Add yours