Please tell me which article in UNCLOS stated that reef that's submerged under high tide are not consider as territory? Like I said before, many states claims completely submerged rocks as territory let along half submerged reefs.
You are probably thinking I was making my own interpretation. So lets cut to the chase and look at an interpretation and judgment of the international court: go to this link of the ICJ website, download the 2012 summary of a judgement for the Nicaragua vs. Colombia case (which is quite similar to the LTE dispute between PHL vs CN case:
http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/index.php?p1=3&p2=3&case=124&code=nicol&p3=5
Download the last (september 2012) summary. Then read the bottom of the first page where it clearly says this:
“1. Whether the maritime features in dispute are capable of appropriation. Before addressing the question of sovereignty, the Court must determine whether the maritime features in dispute are capable of appropriation. It is well established in international law that islands, however small, are capable of appropriation. By contrast, low-tide elevations (features which are above water at low tide but submerged at high tide) cannot be appropriated, although a coastal State has sovereignty over low-tide elevations which are situated within its territorial sea, and these low-tide elevations may be taken into account for the purpose of measuring the breadth of the territorial sea.”
In case you don’t know, “appropriation” in this legal context means acquiring ownership of lands/islands that was previously either unclaimed or claimed by another party.
And like I said, UNCLOS only allows sovereignty claim over LTE if they are within the territorial sea of the coastal state.
Continental shelf are defined in UNCLOS as a prolongation of the land mass of the costal state, the slope and the rise. It doesn't include deep ocean floor. In case of SCS, none of the coastal state's continental shelf extend into any of the disputed island, especially in the case of Philippine if you take a look at the sea floor map, the descent of the slope is very rapid. That's why none of the claimant states are using continental shelf to establish their claim, whereas by UNCLOS continental shelf can be extended further than EEZ.
Looks like you are not informed about the PHL vs. CN arbitration case. The Phil
is claiming that reefs like Mischief and some other are on their continental shelf. Please read the those PHil vs CN court documents, they are available on the net.
Yes PRC has never officially clarify it's nine dash line, but ROC did, and they are the originator of the lines. I'm not a spokesman for PRC, and I'll state that claiming the SCS as sovereign territory is infeasible. When you do listen to the spokesman from Chinese foreign ministry, you'll hear the term Nansha not Nanhai when claiming sovereignty. And do also remember that it is a dash line not a solid line for a purpose, that is it not claiming the entire area within.
Forget what the ROC says, what they say have no legal implication for China unless China officially condones it.
And no, Chinese official don’t just talk about sovereignty for the Paracels, they also talk about sovereignty when talking about the Spratlys. Latest example is their statements for the latest FONOP argument (you can search the PRC foreign ministry website for many example of China claimimg sovereignty over the whole 9 dash lines area).
When I'm talking about the US demand, I'm speaking purely from the US perspecctive, that the principle to conduct FONOP on the high sea is based on the exact same article as the freedom of island building. As such, it cannot exercise its right while at the same time demand another state to relegate that same right.
First of all, FON can happen anywhere, not just in the high seas. Everyone has FON rights through any seas, including EEZ or even territorial sea. So FONOP principle do not only depend on that article about high seas, all the other provisions about EEZ, etc. give everyone FON rights.
Again, we are talking about the SCS, Obama was talking about the SCS, and we all know that China is not claiming “high seas right” to justify their island building. Never have and probably never will. Why? because that same article has a clause saying that high seas does not fall under the sovereignty of anyone. And China has already officially claimed sovereignty over the 9 dash lines anyway (but never clarify what kind of sovereignty, and exactly what area, because they can’t prove it).
So in “US perspective”, China is not claiming “high sea rights” but sovereignty rights, so its no problem for them to troll you and tell you to stop building and at the same time claiming that they are sailing across international water. Simply because they know China won’t appeal to high seas rights and that China does not have the legal support to appeal to sovereignty rights either.
Well there's going to be legal problems because the area is disputed. There are many overlapping claims from multiple countries. But my interpretation of the current events is that China considers it her own territory that's why they are building there. They really don't see it as that area belonging to any other country.
No, just because there is a dispute does not mean that everyone will have legal problems. Just like in real life for individuals, people will only have “legal problems” if what they are doing does not comply with the law. If what they are doing is legal, then they won’t have any “legal problems”, even if someone try to dispute it.
This is just simple logic bro.