Send the whole fleet, let Fat Tony take care of all the ships and guys while they are out there!

South China Sea: The Disputes and Southeast Asia’s Culture of International Law
Disputes in the South China Sea are not as complicated as they may seem.
By Pham Ngoc Minh Trang
October 22, 2019
Most observers usually look at the South China Sea disputes with pessimistic eyes. After capturing the attention of the world in 2009, when China for the first time officially introduced the nine-dash-line map, the conflicts in the region has continued to grow, tensions between the interested parties increasing. Furthering tensions, China ignored the judgment of an international tribunal in a 2016 suit against Beijing’s expansive claims. Thereafter, some observers have claimed that the disputes are too complicated to settle by law. But such pessimism ignores the fact that Southeast Asian countries have a culture of heeding international law. Whether judging from a realist lens or not, the law remains a useful tool for small countries to protect their interests.

Not So Complicated

From a legal perspective, disputes in the South China Sea are not as complicated as they may seem. There are two reasons for that statement.

First, all the claimants in the South China Sea – Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam – are parties to the two most important legal mechanisms dealing with multilateral disputes: the United Nations Charter (UN Charter) and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Under the regimes of these conventions, state parties have the obligation to settle their disputes by peaceful means, such as negotiation, regional arrangements, international arbitration, or courts/tribunals. Unlike the UN Charter, UNCLOS goes a step further and prescribed detailed methods of solving conflicts at sea for its parties in Chapter XV. In general, the consent of states is placed at the center of all dispute settlement mechanisms. However, UNCLOS particularly opens a chance for a state party individually to bring its conflict with another state before an international court or arbitration when it comes to certain types of disputes. These are called compulsory procedures, entailing binding decisions in section 2 of chapter XV of UNCLOS. When a state signed and ratified the Convention, it is understood that it has agreed with this settlement means in advance. This was the strategy the Philippines employed in its litigation against China in the South China Sea arbitration.

The second reason is that the whole situation in the South China Sea can be classified into specific legal categories, which could be settled separately by law.

The first category is related to conflicting claims of sovereignty over offshore maritime features. China and Vietnam claim sovereignty over all the features in the Paracels. For the Spratlys, the claimants include China, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

The second category concerns normal maritime boundary demarcation exercises of littoral countries. Coastal states usually have maritime zones overlapping with their opposite and/or adjacent neighbors, and so do the claimants in the South China Sea. For example, Vietnam and Malaysia have overlapping exclusive economic zones (EEZ) and continental shelves, or Brunei when extending its EEZ and continental shelf has recognized the future delimitation of boundaries with neighbors in the future. And there is China, which claims a maritime zone comprising 80 percent of the South China Sea within the infamous nine-dash-line. This claim, however, was rejected by the arbitral tribunal in the case between the Philippines and China in 2016.

https://thediplomat.com/2019/10/south-c ... ional-law/

let Fat Tony take care of all the ships and guys while they are out there!

Don't you mean Fat Leonard? He is in custody.
https://news.usni.org/2019/01/24/paying ... estigation

International law means nothing unless there is big military power to back it up. The US used to be big and powerful enough to maintain international law to the benefit of all. But now clearly Communist China sees laws as something only losers follow and for them to take advantage of.

See Failure of the League of Nations for a textbook example.

U.S. Position on Maritime Claims in the South China Sea
PRESS STATEMENT

MICHAEL R. POMPEO, SECRETARY OF STATE

JULY 13, 2020

The United States champions a free and open Indo-Pacific. Today we are strengthening U.S. policy in a vital, contentious part of that region — the South China Sea. We are making clear: Beijing’s claims to offshore resources across most of the South China Sea are completely unlawful, as is its campaign of bullying to control them.

In the South China Sea, we seek to preserve peace and stability, uphold freedom of the seas in a manner consistent with international law, maintain the unimpeded flow of commerce, and oppose any attempt to use coercion or force to settle disputes. We share these deep and abiding interests with our many allies and partners who have long endorsed a rules-based international order.

These shared interests have come under unprecedented threat from the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Beijing uses intimidation to undermine the sovereign rights of Southeast Asian coastal states in the South China Sea, bully them out of offshore resources, assert unilateral dominion, and replace international law with “might makes right.” Beijing’s approach has been clear for years. In 2010, then-PRC Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told his ASEAN counterparts that “China is a big country and other countries are small countries and that is just a fact.” The PRC’s predatory world view has no place in the 21st century.

The PRC has no legal grounds to unilaterally impose its will on the region. Beijing has offered no coherent legal basis for its “Nine-Dashed Line” claim in the South China Sea since formally announcing it in 2009. In a unanimous decision on July 12, 2016, an Arbitral Tribunal constituted under the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention – to which the PRC is a state party – rejected the PRC’s maritime claims as having no basis in international law. The Tribunal sided squarely with the Philippines, which brought the arbitration case, on almost all claims.

As the United States has previously stated, and as specifically provided in the Convention, the Arbitral Tribunal’s decision is final and legally binding on both parties. Today we are aligning the U.S. position on the PRC’s maritime claims in the SCS with the Tribunal’s decision. Specifically:

The PRC cannot lawfully assert a maritime claim – including any Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) claims derived from Scarborough Reef and the Spratly Islands – vis-a-vis the Philippines in areas that the Tribunal found to be in the Philippines’ EEZ or on its continental shelf. Beijing’s harassment of Philippine fisheries and offshore energy development within those areas is unlawful, as are any unilateral PRC actions to exploit those resources. In line with the Tribunal’s legally binding decision, the PRC has no lawful territorial or maritime claim to Mischief Reef or Second Thomas Shoal, both of which fall fully under the Philippines’ sovereign rights and jurisdiction, nor does Beijing have any territorial or maritime claims generated from these features.
As Beijing has failed to put forth a lawful, coherent maritime claim in the South China Sea, the United States rejects any PRC claim to waters beyond a 12-nautical mile territorial sea derived from islands it claims in the Spratly Islands (without prejudice to other states’ sovereignty claims over such islands). As such, the United States rejects any PRC maritime claim in the waters surrounding Vanguard Bank (off Vietnam), Luconia Shoals (off Malaysia), waters in Brunei’s EEZ, and Natuna Besar (off Indonesia). Any PRC action to harass other states’ fishing or hydrocarbon development in these waters – or to carry out such activities unilaterally – is unlawful.
The PRC has no lawful territorial or maritime claim to (or derived from) James Shoal, an entirely submerged feature only 50 nautical miles from Malaysia and some 1,000 nautical miles from China’s coast. James Shoal is often cited in PRC propaganda as the “southernmost territory of China.” International law is clear: An underwater feature like James Shoal cannot be claimed by any state and is incapable of generating maritime zones. James Shoal (roughly 20 meters below the surface) is not and never was PRC territory, nor can Beijing assert any lawful maritime rights from it.
The world will not allow Beijing to treat the South China Sea as its maritime empire. America stands with our Southeast Asian allies and partners in protecting their sovereign rights to offshore resources, consistent with their rights and obligations under international law. We stand with the international community in defense of freedom of the seas and respect for sovereignty and reject any push to impose “might makes right” in the South China Sea or the wider region.

https://www.state.gov/u-s-position-on-m ... china-sea/

How much is fish driving Chinese aggression in the South China Sea?
A massive decrease in Chinese fishing fleet activity throughout 2020 may not provide the full picture, with a recent ramping up of aggression in the South China Sea leaving many once again questioning China’s true motivations in the disputed waters
Written By: Ashley Lampard
5 April 2021
The fleet of Chinese fishing vessels huddled together in loose formation, 220 boats tucked quietly in the bend of a boomerang-shaped coral reef in what many call the South China Sea.

They first appeared in December 2020 at the place called Whitsun Reef, a natural formation at the heart of the hotly-contested Spratly Islands, some 35km west off the coast of the Philippines.

Hua Chunying, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman based in Beijing, told the press late last month that the fishing vessels are simply taking shelter from strong winds – but no one knows for certain why the vessels are there. They’re not fishing, and they haven’t moved much. They just sit, anchored in a stretch of sea claimed by five different nations: China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia.

In other seas, 200 odd fishing vessels may not be much to worry about – in this one, where Chinese ‘fishing militias’ have acted as a vanguard for the state’s territorial goals, a fleet like this was cause enough to scramble the Filipino air force. Now, as jets routinely monitor the fleet, fears are mounting in the Philippines that Chinese leaders are looking to start construction on a new artificial island to further entrench a national claim to the controversial reef.

The search for answers over China’s long-game in these waters is more often linked to lucrative subsea oil and gas deposits, as well as control over a waterway through which a third of the world’s maritime trade flows. But according to Rashid Sumaila, professor of ocean and fisheries economics at the University of British Columbia and director of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit at the UBC Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, perhaps the sea’s most overlooked asset is its living wealth.

“There’s too much fishing effort there. [China and Southeast Asian nations] need a lot, as there’s a large population [of fish] around the South China Sea. That is where you have the political games being played,” he told the Globe. “We tell [claimants], these fish are so important for the populations.”

As China attempts to consolidate its claims to the sea, long-standing rumours of food insecurity swirl in the country. In August 2020, Chinese President Xi highlighted that Covid-19 had “sounded the alarm” on food waste, later launching the “Clean Plate Campaign” to try to prevent food waste.

Singaporean defence analyst Andy Wong told the Globe he believed China was looking to increase its grip on the South China Sea due to this food insecurity back home.

“If China has a problem feeding them from the land then they’re going to turn increasingly to the sea,” Wong said. “[China would take] every single bit of coastal territory and disputed territorial waters in the South China Sea that they can get their hands on, so as to stake claim as to whatever resources they can get.”
https://southeastasiaglobe.com/south-china-sea-fish/

The fishers from China are militias militarized to help secure the navigation, trade, and mineral resources for sure, just a feint.