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.
“It’s China’ s legitimate and lawful right to determine the territorial sea baseline in the Beibu Gulf (the Gulf of Tonkin),” he said.
Newsweek reached out to Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs via written request for comment.
“Article 7 (of UNCLOS) includes the phrase, ‘The drawing of straight baselines must not depart to any appreciable extent from the general direction of the coast,’ but it’s very clear from the maps that I have seen that China’s new baselines depart considerably from the general direction of the coast,” Bill Hayton, associate fellow with the Asia-Pacific program at London’s Chatham House think tank and author of A Brief History of Vietnam , told Newsweek .
He added said the new baseline does not look set to spark a dispute over an issue like fishing rights between Beijing and Hanoi. “The question is whether any other state will take China to a tribunal over the new line,” he said.
The Philippines did just that in 2013, though China spurned proceedings. The Hague-based arbitral court largely sided with Manila and against Beijing’s sweeping claims.
Alexander Vuving, professor at Hawaii’s Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, believes the move is a continuation of China’s expansive activities in its backyard, which have resulted in clashes with Vietnam within the past decade and, more recently, with the Philippines .
“The new baseline puts Vietnam’s before a fait accompli,” he said, as reported by Radio Free Asia. “It gives reasons for China to question the agreement that Beijing and Hanoi signed off in 2000 and push the boundary closer to the Vietnamese coast.”
Vuving said that in some areas, the new baseline “represents an encroachment of 20 to 30 nautical miles (23-34 miles) upon international waters,” while in certain areas it intrudes as far as 50.
Unlike the Philippines under pro-U.S. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Vietnam has largely maintained a careful geopolitical balance between Washington and Beijing.
Last December, Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s state visit to Hanoi resulted in the signing of 36 agreements between the countries, ranging from security to railway development.
Xi’s visit came only months after his American counterpart Joe Biden and General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Nguyen Phu Trong raised the status of U.S.-Vietnam ties to the level of Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.
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