CHINA / POLITICS
Chinese institutions release report rebuking SCS ‘arbitration,’ exposing tribunal as lacking jurisdiction and misapplying international law
A report titled Legal Critique of the South China Sea Arbitration Awards: The South China Sea Arbitration Awards Are Not International Law was released on July 16, 2026 in Beijing by National Institute for South China Sea Studies, Jinan University, Ocean University of China and Shanghai Maritime University. Photo: Fan Wei/GT
Four Chinese academic institutions on Thursday jointly released a report titled Legal Critique of the South China Sea Arbitration Awards: The South China Sea Arbitration Awards Are Not International Law, criticizing that the arbitral tribunal established in the South China Sea arbitration case lacked judicial jurisdiction from the outset and fundamentally flawed in international law application in rendering its award.
The report, jointly published by the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, Jinan University, Ocean University of China and Shanghai Maritime University, provides a comprehensive legal review of the so-called “arbitration” while seeking to correct misconceptions surrounding the case.
Experts involved in drafting the report told the Global Times that although the tribunal repeatedly invoked the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), some countries continue to portray the “award” as a fair application of international law, the tribunal was never legally empowered to hear the case and therefore had no basis to apply UNCLOS or other international legal principles.
According to the report, disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea center on two issues: territorial sovereignty over islands and maritime jurisdiction. However, the Philippines reframed these disputes as questions concerning the interpretation and application of the provisions of UNCLOS in order to bring them under compulsory arbitration.
“The arbitral tribunal simply had no jurisdiction to act as a judge in this case,” Xu Qi, vice dean of the Academy of Foreign-Related Rule of Law at Jinan University, and one of the report’s principal authors, told the Global Times.
UNCLOS explicitly excludes questions of land territorial sovereignty from its scope, Xu said. As an ad hoc tribunal established under Annex VII of UNCLOS, the tribunal had no jurisdiction over sovereignty disputes between China and the Philippines and violated the fundamental principle of international law that without jurisdiction there can be no judicial authority.
The report cited the 2015 Chagos Marine Protected Area Arbitration between Mauritius and the UK as an example of inconsistent legal reasoning. In that case, another Annex VII tribunal ruled that Mauritius’ claim could not be separated from the underlying territorial sovereignty dispute over the Chagos Archipelago and therefore fell outside UNCLOS compulsory procedures.
“Faced with essentially the same legal issue in the ‘South China Sea arbitration’, the tribunal reached the opposite conclusion,” Xu said, noting that the selective application of legal principles exposed its predetermined position and bias.
The report also noted that China had, as early as 2006, lawfully excluded disputes over maritime delimitation from compulsory dispute settlement by making a declaration under Article 298 of UNCLOS.
On August 25, 2006, China submitted a declaration to the UN Secretary-General stating that it does not accept any compulsory procedures under Section 2 of Part XV of UNCLOS with respect to disputes concerning maritime delimitation, historic bays or titles, military and law-enforcement activities, and disputes in respect of which the Security Council is exercising the functions assigned to it by the charter of the UN.
According to the report, the Arbitral Tribunal deliberately ignored this and wrongfully asserted jurisdiction, constituting a flagrant disregard of the principle of state consent and destroying the very foundation of its jurisdiction over this case.
Xu said the tribunal further attempted to circumvent Article 298 by unilaterally classifying China’s South China Sea islands as “rocks” under Article 121(3) of UNCLOS, thereby eliminating any overlapping maritime entitlements between China and the Philippines and artificially removing the maritime delimitation dispute from the case.
“The tribunal deliberately distorted the applicable rules in order to hear disputes that clearly fell outside its jurisdiction,” Xu noted.
Beyond jurisdictional issues, the report exposes that the award itself contains serious legal flaws stemming from systematic misinterpretation of UNCLOS.
One example concerns Article 121 on the legal regime of islands. The report says the tribunal effectively rewrote the Convention by imposing additional criteria such as “natural capacity,” “settlement” and “self-sufficiency,” while replacing the Convention’s disjunctive wording “or” in paragraph 3 “sustaining human habitation or economic life of its own” with a cumulative relationship of “and.”
Zhang Qiyue, another contributor to the report, said such interpretations downgraded even Taiping Dao, the largest naturally formed feature in the South China Sea, to the status of a rock, effectively denying every island in the Nansha Qundao the ability to generate an exclusive economic zone or continental shelf.
“This subjective reinterpretation of treaty provisions has been widely criticized by international law scholars,” Zhang told the Global Times.
The report further noted that the tribunal applied different standards to different parties, interpreting features claimed by the Philippines more favorably while uniformly classifying Chinese-controlled features such as Meiji Jiao, Ren’ai Jiao and Huangyan Dao as “rocks” or even “low-tide elevations.”
It also criticizes the tribunal for altering official Chinese government documents. According to the report, from geographical, historical and legal perspectives, China’s Nansha Qundao constitute an integral legal whole, and their territorial sovereignty is indivisible. However, when citing China’s diplomatic notes, the tribunal arbitrarily altered “China’s Nansha Islands is” to “China’s Nansha Islands are,” a modification that was intended to dismember the Nansha Qundao as an integrated whole.
“The tribunal separated the islands from the archipelago one by one before determining their legal status,” Xu said. “Such an approach constitutes a direct challenge to China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
The report also questions the tribunal’s evidentiary procedure, exposing that it violated the fundamental principle of “he who asserts must prove,” gathering foreign archival materials on behalf of the Philippines and acting as a veritable “second complainant.” According to the report, the tribunal not only obtained historical survey materials from the British, Japanese, and US navies but also retrieved documents from the French National Library, without regard to their relevance, and allowed Philippines to supplement evidence outside time limits.
It further alleges that the tribunal ignored Chinese-language publications, disregarded materials demonstrating that Taiping Dao has abundant high-quality ground water, while relying solely on limited British hydrographic materials to determine that Ren’ai Jiao is a low-tide elevation. On the same issue, the tribunal admitted defective materials from the Philippines while excluding historical archives from China.
The report also criticizes the tribunal’s appointment of experts, noting that the process lacked transparency, involved no consultation with the parties, relied exclusively on Western experts, and accepted politically biased satellite imagery and research from think tanks without adequate scrutiny.
The report further questioned the composition of the tribunal itself, noting that Shunji Yanai, former president of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea who appointed the arbitrators, had also served as Chairman of the Advisory Council on Security and Defense Legislation for the Abe administration. He had actively promoted Japan’s lifting of the ban on collective self-defense, openly challenged the post-World War II international order, and it his mission to amend the pacifist Constitution.
According to the report, all five arbitrators were from Europe or long-term residents in Europe, a composition stands in stark contrast to the principle under Article 9 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice that “in the body as a whole the representation of the main forms of civilization and of the principal legal systems of the world should be assured.”
Xu said China’s decision not to participate in the arbitration is fully supported by both domestic law and international law, describing it as a legitimate exercise of state sovereignty with ample precedent in international practice.
The report said China’s position has received broad international understanding and support. According to the report, more than 230 political parties and organizations from over 100 countries have explicitly supported China’s position on the South China Sea issue and do not recognize the “arbitral award.”
The report noted that the “arbitration award” contains no enforcement provisions. It argues that because the award is illegal and invalid, no question of enforcement arises. Apart from the Philippines, the “award” has not received explicit support or a response from other ASEAN member states.
“In reality, neither the Philippines nor any other country possesses the ability or authority to enforce this award,” Xu said. “Regional countries understand this, and so do the external forces that promoted the arbitration in the first place.”
