Manila, Aug 31 (EFE).- The Philippines on Thursday slammed a new map published by China showing territories disputed with Manila in the South China Sea.
“The Philippines rejects the 2023 version of China’s Standard Map issued by the Ministry of Natural Resources of the People’s Republic of China on August 28, 2023, because of its inclusion of the nine-dashed line (now a ten-dashed line) that supposedly shows China’s boundaries of China in the South China Sea,” Philippine’s department of foreign affairs said in a statement posted on social media platform X.
The Philippine government’s remarks come three days after China published the map on the Ministry of Natural Resources website.
The new map published by Beijing claims almost the entire South China Sea as its own, now using the “ten-dashed line” to mark its claims in the Eastern Pacific and ownership of those waters.
China and the Philippines maintain a conflict over the sovereignty of several islands and shoals in the South China Sea, most of them located within 200 nautical miles of the western Philippine coast, a limit established by the United Nations to determine the maritime sovereignty of countries, according to a convention which China ratified in 1996.
In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled that China had no legal basis to claim “historical rights” over the disputed islands, a decision that Beijing refuses to recognize.
“This latest attempt to legitimize China’s purported sovereignty and jurisdiction over Philippine features and maritime zones has no basis under international law, particularly the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS),” the Philippine ministry added.
The territorial dispute between Beijing and Manila in the South China Sea has worsened since the coming to power last year of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who has turned to the US for support amid multiple incursions in Philippine territorial waters by Chinese ships. EFE
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