作者： admin

On July 14, 2026, a roundtable dialogue on South China Sea security held in Hong Kong drew legal experts, scholars and diplomatic officials from across the globe, with participants uniformly condemning the unilateral 2016 South China Sea arbitration and voicing solid support for Beijing’s position of nonacceptance and nonrecognition of the tribunal’s so-called “award”.

Participants emphasized that China’s rejection of the invalid ruling is not a challenge to international law, but a firm defense of the international rule of law against its abuse. The 2016 arbitration, unilaterally initiated by the Philippines and manipulated by external intervening forces, produced a one-sided ruling in Manila’s favor that Beijing immediately deemed null and void, with no legal binding force whatsoever.

Qi Dahai, director-general of the Department of Treaty and Law of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, told the forum that both the arbitral tribunal’s conduct and its resulting “award” deviate sharply from established international law and standard practice for global arbitration. Qi labeled the proceeding a politically motivated unilateral gambit that has set a dangerous precedent for international dispute resolution, noting that it has eroded the core purpose of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) — which is to advance peaceful resolution of maritime disagreements — while violating the legitimate sovereign rights of China as a coastal state. “Respecting and abiding by international law never means that a state must accept illegal jurisdiction that is manifestly a political setup,” Qi stressed.

Wu Shicun, chairman of the Huayang Center for Maritime Cooperation and Ocean Governance and the academic committee of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, argued that the arbitration and its outcome are fundamentally distorted, having been weaponized by Manila and outside actors to construct a false narrative of “China threat” in the region. Wu called for greater global transparency around the hidden interest chains that have formed around the exploitation of the invalid ruling, beyond simply highlighting its inherent legal flaws.

Legal experts from Western and Asian nations echoed this critical assessment. UK-based international law expert Stephen Fietta, founder of Fietta LLP, analyzed state practice of UNCLOS implementation across multiple countries and concluded that the 2016 “award” has exerted minimal legitimate influence on the evolution of international law, particularly regarding maritime claims surrounding small island features and the status of historical maritime rights.

Speaking to the strategic importance of regional stability, Huang Jiefang, secretary-general of the Asian Academy of International Law, noted that safeguarding peace, stability and security in the South China Sea carries extraordinary practical significance amid the current period of global systemic transformation and intensifying geopolitical competition. Malaysian National Defence University professor Ruhanas Harun added that all South China Sea security disputes must be managed and resolved through diplomatic channels, consistent with international norms.

Jayanath Colombage, former chief of the Sri Lankan Navy and former Sri Lankan ambassador to Indonesia and ASEAN, told China Daily that regional stakeholders should prioritize inclusive economic cooperation and pursue negotiated solutions through intra-regional dialogue, rather than aligning with outside powers to confront China. “No country in the region should fall into this trap set by external parties,” Colombage warned.

In addition to reaffirming the invalidity of the 2016 ruling, many participants called for a comprehensive review of UNCLOS’s existing dispute settlement mechanism. Inha University (South Korea) international law professor Lee Seo-kwoo noted that the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) has heard only 36 cases over its 30 years of operation, and many sitting judges lack specialized technical and legal expertise in ocean law, pointing to deep structural flaws in the current framework.

During the forum, attendees also joined the official launch of *A New Critique of the South China Sea Arbitration Award*, a new report co-compiled by the National Institute for South China Sea Studies and the Huayang Center for Maritime Cooperation and Ocean Governance. Canadian legal scholar Phillip Saunders, professor emeritus at Dalhousie University’s Schulich School of Law, praised the report as a timely and important contribution, noting that it situates the South China Sea issue in a contemporary geopolitical context, corrects widespread misinformation in the international community, and reaffirms the critical need for cross-regional cooperation to maintain peace and stability.

When China’s Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress entered into force on July 1, after being approved by the National People’s Congress in March, it quickly triggered widespread pushback from Taiwan’s government, overseas ethnic communities, and Western governments over its sweeping provisions and unprecedented cross-border legal authority.

The legislation includes a series of broad mandates that touch every sphere of public and private life, both within China and beyond its borders. Article 14 requires all levels of Chinese government to embed Chinese cultural symbols and narratives of a unified Chinese nation into public infrastructure, urban development, geographic naming, and all state-sponsored public events. Article 20 mandates that parents and guardians teach children to express loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party, the People’s Republic of China, and the concept of a unified Chinese nation, banning any instruction deemed harmful to ethnic unity. For online platforms, Article 31 requires that providers prioritize and distribute content promoting ethnic unity, while mandating the immediate removal and reporting of any material deemed to incite ethnic tension or division. Article 53 prohibits any individual or group from using ethnic identity, cultural traditions, or religious belief as a basis for challenging state authority or disrupting public order.

Most controversially, Article 63 extends Chinese legal jurisdiction to organizations and individuals located entirely outside of China’s territory, holding them legally liable for any acts deemed to undermine ethnic unity or promote ethnic division. Critics note that the law provides no clear, formal definition of what counts as “undermining ethnic unity,” leaving Chinese authorities with unconstrained power to interpret violations on an ad hoc basis.

Taipei’s top leadership was among the first to sound the alarm over the new law. On July 2, Cho Jung-tai, Premier of Taiwan’s Executive Yuan, framed the legislation as another expansion of Beijing’s growing network of extraterritorial laws that already includes the Anti-Secession Law, Counter-Espionage Law, and Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law. Cho emphasized that the ultimate goal of this expanding legal framework is to coerce all Taiwanese people into accepting Beijing’s political claims over the island. In response, he announced that Taiwan’s government will establish a new inter-agency task force to counter what officials describe as transnational authoritarian repression, while deepening coordination with like-minded democratic allies. “When law becomes a tool of authoritarian rule, democracy must become the front line of freedom,” Cho stated.

Academic analysts have outlined how the new law fits into Beijing’s layered strategy of political pressure on Taiwan. Hung Pu-chao, deputy director of Tunghai University’s Center for Mainland China Studies, explains that Beijing has now built three interconnected legal mechanisms targeting Taiwan, each operating at a distinct level of governance. The 2005 Anti-Secession Law sets the broad national strategic framework opposing Taiwanese formal independence. A 2024 regulatory opinion on punishing “Taiwan independence” separatist activity establishes targeted criminal accountability for individual political activists. The new Ethnic Unity Law, by contrast, codifies the ideological concept of a single unified Chinese nation into binding law, embedding this narrative into the core of China’s state governance.
Hung warned that the groups most immediately at risk are Taiwanese residents who travel frequently across the Taiwan Strait, operate businesses in mainland China, have cross-strait family ties, or work as academics, journalists, civil society leaders, or public commentators. “As long as people start adjusting their words and actions out of fear of being targeted, blacklisted, or barred from entering mainland China, Beijing’s political goal has already been achieved,” he noted, adding that the vague language of Article 63 leaves all final decisions on violations entirely in the hands of Chinese authorities.
Legal experts in Taiwan have also raised alarms about the law’s implications for cross-border rights. Chang Ching-ju, an attorney and executive committee member of Taiwan’s Judicial Reform Foundation, pointed out that the law enshrines strengthening Taiwanese people’s identification with the “Chinese nation” as an official state objective and requires all Taiwanese people to uphold Beijing’s vision of national unity. “Article 63 allows Chinese authorities to pursue legal action against any overseas organization or individual accused of undermining ethnic unity,” Chang told Taiwan’s Central News Agency. “We are currently conducting a review to assess whether Taiwan’s existing legal framework provides adequate protection for Taiwanese citizens against overreach by foreign cross-border jurisdiction and enforcement, and we aim to release our full findings by the end of this year.”
The ideological roots of the “Chinese nation” (Zhonghua minzu) concept stretch back to early 20th century Chinese political thought, but its modern application in the new law has amplified existing cross-strait tensions. Coined by exiled political theorist Liang Qichao in the early 1900s, the term originally referred exclusively to the Han ethnic majority, to distinguish them from the ruling Manchu Qing dynasty. Later, political thinker Yang Du expanded the concept into the “Five Races Under One Union” framework, grouping Han, Manchu, Mongol, Hui, and Tibetan peoples into a single national identity. Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Republic of China, adopted this framework, defining Zhonghua minzu as a unified nationality encompassing all five groups. After the Chinese Communist Party took control of the mainland in 1949 and the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan, both sides retained “China” or “Zhonghua” in their official state names. Tensions rose sharply after the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party took power in 2016; subsequent public opinion surveys show that a large majority of young Taiwanese now identify exclusively as Taiwanese, rather than Chinese, even as older generations with KMT ties maintain business and personal links to the mainland. Under the new law, KMT-linked business interests with operations on the mainland face implicit pressure to pressure their Taiwan-based relatives to adopt a Chinese national identity and avoid open support for the DPP administration.
Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te has already drawn formal criticism from Beijing for his public framing of Taiwanese historical identity. In a speech last June, Lai argued that Taiwanese people have a distinct historical origins, noting that Austronesian indigenous peoples inhabited the island prior to Dutch colonization in 1624, followed by rule under the Southern Ming, Qing Dynasty, and Japanese colonial rule, and stressed that the People’s Republic of China has never held sovereignty over Taiwan. A commentary in the state-run Beijing Daily hit back, accusing the Lai administration of deliberately smearing the new Ethnic Unity Law and Beijing’s cross-strait united front outreach, claiming the law is intended to build positive ties with Taiwanese people and unify the island’s population. The piece argued that Lai is only hyping a false “China threat” narrative to disrupt peaceful cross-strait exchanges, ahead of Taiwan’s November 28 local elections – a vote widely viewed as a key bellwether for the 2028 presidential election.
Beyond Taiwan, the law has sparked global concern over its impact on ethnic minority communities and political dissidents living outside China’s borders. Western governments and international human rights bodies have warned that the law will expand Beijing’s transnational repression campaign targeting exiled Uyghurs, Tibetans, Inner Mongolians, and Chinese dissidents. In March, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk noted on social media platform X that the law’s broad provisions “could overly restrict freedoms of expression, belief and assembly” and warned that it risks penalizing the peaceful exercise of minority rights. In an April 30 resolution, the European Parliament strongly condemned China’s repressive assimilation policies and related human rights violations across Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia, and expressed grave concern over the new law, which it said formalizes assimilation policies and restricts cultural, religious, and linguistic freedoms for communities both inside and outside China. A U.S. State Department spokesperson called the law “problematic” for imposing sweeping legal obligations on individuals and organizations, including those based outside of China.
The controversy escalated in early July when a Tibetan exile activist, Pawo Lobga Rangzen, died following a self-immolation protest outside United Nations Headquarters in New York, held to oppose the new legislation. On July 14, dozens of Hong Kong diaspora and civil society groups released a joint statement condemning the law’s extraterritorial provisions, drawing parallels to Hong Kong’s 2020 National Security Law and 2024 Safeguarding National Security Ordinance – laws that activists say have already been used to target, harass, and intimidate Hong Kongers and other exiles living outside China. The groups called on democratic governments around the world to strengthen legal protections for exiled communities and counter Beijing’s transnational repression.

On a recent Monday, former U.S. President Donald Trump sparked immediate international backlash and sarcastic pushback from Iran after announcing he would renew the American economic blockade of Tehran and impose a 20 percent fee on commercial vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz, framing the charge as payment for U.S. security guarantees in the strategic waterway.

Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi turned Trump’s own words against him in a viral social media post, opening with sarcastic agreement: “POTUS is absolutely right. Whoever provides secure and safe passage of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz should be compensated for this service.” Araghchi doubled down on Iran’s long-standing claim to regional security responsibility, adding, “Iran has always been the GUARDIAN of the Strait and will remain so FOREVER. 20% is of course too much. We will be fair.”

The announcement originated during a Monday morning interview on Fox News’ *Fox & Friends*, where Trump framed the United States as “the guardian angel of the strait” and insisted the U.S. deserved compensation for its security role. Shortly after the interview, Trump repeated the proposal in a post on his social media platform Truth Social, writing that “the USA will be, from this point forward, known as ‘THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,’ but as such, and as a matter of FAIRNESS, will be reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped, for any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the World.”

Policy analysts and critics have been quick to point out the significant contradictions in the Trump proposal, noting that the 20 percent toll is exponentially higher than the 1 to 2 percent fee Iran has previously sought for shipping through the strait. Many experts warn that Trump’s move has inadvertently strengthened Iran’s argument that it is entitled to charge its own fees for navigation security in the waterway.

The contradiction also directly undermines recent public statements from senior U.S. leadership. Just weeks before Trump’s announcement, current U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reaffirmed long-standing U.S. policy to reporters, stating that “no country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway. That’s existing international law. That’s the way it is in international waterways all over the world, and that’s the way we expect it’ll be here. So I don’t think we have anybody to convince around here in that regard. I think all the countries in this region would agree with us.”

The Strait of Hormuz remains one of the world’s most critical chokepoints for global energy trade, with roughly a fifth of all global oil consumption passing through its waters on a yearly basis. Disputes over navigation rights and security in the strait have been a core point of tension between the U.S. and Iran for decades.