New Delhi:The ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague on the South China Sea dispute in favour of the Philippines may have come as a setback for China but it will not stop Beijing from continuing with its quest for maritime hegemony in the region.
“The reaction of China on the court’s ruling was on expected lines,” Prashant Kumar Singh, Associate Fellow in the East Asia Centre of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), told IANS.
“In the immediate term, it might adopt aggressive posturing and show a defiant face to other claimants to the dispute and also to the US which is a security provider for many of the claimants, including the Philippines,” he said.
But in the medium term, he said, how things would play out would depend a lot on domestic, international and regional responses to the situation. An international arbitration tribunal in the PCA ruled on July 12 that China violated the Philippines’ rights in the South China Sea, one of the busiest commercial shipping routes in the world.
The court accused China of interfering with the Philippines’ fishing and petroleum exploration, building artificial islands in the waters and failing to prevent Chinese fishermen from fishing in the zone.
The tribunal held that fishermen from the Philippines had traditional fishing rights in Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea and that China had interfered with these rights by restricting their access.
For the rest of this article, click here: http://www.thehansindia.com/posts/index/National/2016-07-19/Only-India-South-Korea-have-active-technology-for-deep-sea-mining/243175