T Almost every member of ASEAN has been involved in disagreements with China over islands and reefs in the South China Sea just off their coasts. Chinese leaders insist with growing boldness that the islands, rocks, and reefs have been “China’s historical territory since ancient times,” and resulted to several military confrontations over the last two years.

China’s assertion to the Spratlys on the basis of history was frustrated on the fact that the region’s past empires did not exercise sovereignty.

China always claimed that its land boundaries were historically never defined and delimited while it claimed its maritime boundaries were always clearly defined and delimited. Inconsistency in the Chinese stand on land and maritime boundaries is flawed, and without defence.

Claims to territorial sovereignty and maritime boundaries are normally decided through a customary international law, negotiation before the International Court of Justice, or the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Generally the treaty rejects “historically based” claims. Modern international law does not recognize the suzerainty relationship compulsory. Great majority of international legal experts have concluded that China’s claim to historic title over the South China Sea is invalid.

The United States and nearly all of the other ASEAN nations have been calling for a “Code of Conduct.”

The July ASEAN for the first time in 45 years did not issue a final statement, but a statement had been read in November conference claiming the South China Sea controversy would not be “internationalized,” which nearly all of the ASEAN members angrily complained they had never agreed to.

Will a final solution to these disputes be tenable?

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Tidbits:

G.R. No. 123901    September 22, 1999 ENRIQUE A. BARROS  vs.NLRC, TRANSORIENT MARITIME SERVICES, INC., DAISHIN SHIPPING CO., LTD. and DOMINION INSURANCE CORPORATION (Contributed by Atty. Fidel Borja)

The entries in the seaman's book of  petitioner cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered as  substantial evidence to prove voluntary repatriation and lawful  dismissal. We cannot rule otherwise for to do so may prove dangerous as all employers of seafarers will now be complacent in perpetrating indiscriminate acts of termination with the seaman's book as their shield against culpability.