(Pu-Chao Hung – ASPI The Strategist) No one should expect diplomatic pressure alone to make Beijing abandon a sovereignty claim. Ten years ago this month, a tribunal constituted under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea handed China one of its most significant legal defeats in a generation. It rejected the legal basis for China’s claim to historic rights within the nine-dash line and upheld most of the Philippines’ submissions. Beijing’s response has never changed: the award is ‘null and void’, and a decade of legal criticism and diplomatic pressure has not budged it. This is usually treated as China’s refusal to accept an unfavourable ruling. But 10 years of persistence points to a broader strategic logic. Beijing does not necessarily maintain sovereignty claims because it expects others to recognise them today. It maintains them because abandoning them would close options that may become valuable tomorrow.
Stick with it until you win: why Beijing keeps sovereignty disputes alive | The Strategist
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