China has built 7 artificial islands in the Spratly Islands.

VietNamNet has selected several new studies presented at this conference.

Scholars and researchers had a calm look at the East Sea (internationally known as the South China Sea) dispute. They agreed that the action of China is the "seed" for the final ruling of the Court of Arbitration on July 12th 2016.

Dr. Nguyen Ngoc Truong, President of the Center for Strategic and International Development Studies, outlined "from no to yes" in the East Sea of China.

From a continental country where Hainan is the farthest point in the sea, in 1907 China gradually reached its hand through the East Sea. Initially, they took advantage of the "gap of power" in the region’s geopolitics to “jump into”. They have constantly “invented” many public and hidden tricks to take over the sovereignty of the waters of its neighbors.

The period of 2009 - 2013 marked the time China sped up the Sea disputes. On March 8th 2009, China for the first time prevented the operation of an ocean exploration vessel of the US Navy in this region, which was called the "Impeccable incident". On May 7th 2009 China for the first time made an announcement about the nine-dash line.

Then China continuously conducted other unruly and more challenging actions in the East Sea. China built up seven artificial islands in the Spratlys Islands, expanded China’s outpost to the center of the East Sea, and gradually militarized the features in the Paracels Islands, making a significant change in the status quo in this area.

In the speech entitled "China's attitude towards the ruling on the East Sea", Professor - Dr. Hideo Yamagata from Nagoya University of Japan discovered interesting details. 

He said, "immediately after the ruling was released, on July 13th, China launched a white paper stating: "China's firm stance on the settlement of related disputes through negotiations between China and the Philippines". 

In this document, China asserted that based on islands in the East Sea, China has the internal waters, territorial waters, the contiguous zone, the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf. 

And the interesting thing discovered by Prof. Hideo Yamagata is that, in this document, China did not mention the nine-dash line. It seems that China has abandoned the argument based on the 9-dotted line from where it made claims for most of the East Sea ... "

Many workshop participants made the same recommendation: China tried to seriously change the status quo of the East Sea. Not only widening its control over the waters but also widening its territory toward the center of the East Sea. Worse, China will continue the militarization of the artificial islands, and declare an air defence identification zone (ADIZ) as a provocative step against the international community.

Prof. Mahbubani, Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy of Singapore, has repeatedly talked about the tragedy that modern China is falling into: they are caught in a cang around their neck and China understands that they must soon exit.

Duy Chien