Comment by ETH_start

The Chinese government’s territorial claims in the South China Sea show near-total disregard for international law. China has constructed heavily militarized artificial islands roughly 200 kilometers from the Philippine coast — and more than 1,000 kilometers from the Chinese mainland — in order to assert control over waters that, under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and a binding 2016 ruling by an international arbitral tribunal, lie squarely within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. China lost the case on the merits and simply rejected the ruling.