China's Ministry of Natural Resources releases the "Assessment Report on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea - Achievements, Positioning, and Challenges" via a press conference on June 30, 2026. Photo: Hu Yuwei/GT

China's Ministry of Natural Resources released the "Assessment Report on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea - Achievements, Positioning, and Challenges" on Tuesday. The report conducts a comprehensive evaluation of the historical achievements, legal nature, roles and functions, as well as its problems and challenges of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS, or "the Convention"). It was launched amid the Philippines' continued abuse of the Convention to promote its illegal so-called South China Sea arbitration case.

The report notes that 2026 marks the 30th anniversary of China becoming a State Party to the UNCLOS. Over the past three decades, China has consistently and faithfully fulfilled its obligations under the Convention and has been an active participant, builder, and contributor to the Convention and its mechanisms. However, the implementation of the Convention continues to face inherent difficulties and external challenges that urgently need to be addressed.

Philippines' tricks

"Particularly against the current backdrop where the authority of the United Nations is being challenged and the foundations of multilateralism are being eroded, practices such as misinterpreting and distorting the meaning of the Convention's provisions, abusing its dispute settlement procedures, and arbitrarily expanding judicial or arbitral jurisdiction have quietly emerged. All of these are gradually undermining the Convention's seriousness, integrity, and authority," the report further points out.

A typical example of such behavior is the so-called "South China Sea Arbitration" initiated by the Philippines.

Luo Gang, a researcher at the Ministry of Natural Resources' China Institute for Marine Affairs and the lead author of the report team, told the Global Times that the biggest trick in the Philippines' "South China Sea Arbitration" is packaging a territorial sovereignty dispute as a maritime rights dispute in an attempt to use the Convention to resolve it. In reality, however, territorial sovereignty disputes fall outside the jurisdiction of the Convention.

"The UNCLOS only regulates matters related to maritime rights and has no authority to handle territorial sovereignty disputes. The core of the China-Philippines dispute is precisely the issue of territorial sovereignty over islands and reefs," Luo said. "Since the Convention has no jurisdiction over territorial sovereignty, if the Philippines wanted to initiate compulsory arbitration under the Convention, it had no choice but to rely on litigation tactics to deliberately package the dispute - disguising the essential territorial sovereignty issue as a purely maritime rights dispute in order to meet the conditions for arbitration. This is the core tactic of the Philippines' malicious abuse of the Convention."

The report explains the operational logic behind the Philippines' fabrication of "mixed disputes": The arbitration claims submitted by the Philippines encompass both territorial sovereignty and maritime rights issues, yet it unilaterally demands that the tribunal avoid the territorial sovereignty aspect and rule only on maritime rights. Luo illustrated this legal trap with a dough metaphor: "If maritime rights are likened to green dough and territorial sovereignty to white dough, the Convention only has authority over the green dough. Yet the Philippines mixes the two into a multicolored dough and asks the tribunal to separate and adjudicate only the green part. However, the two types of rights are deeply intertwined and cannot be fully separated. Although the tribunal appears to rule solely on maritime rights, it is in fact making implicit determinations on territorial sovereignty throughout the process."

In short, by relying on deliberate litigation packaging, the Philippines forcibly transforms a territorial dispute that the Convention has no authority to handle into an admissible issue. This seriously distorts and undermines the original purpose and operational logic of the dispute settlement mechanism established by the Convention, Luo emphasized.

The report quotes French Professor Jean-Louis Iten at Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis University, who, commenting on the South China Sea Arbitration, said the dispute adjudicated by the so-called arbitral tribunal is in fact a dispute detached from the substance of land territorial sovereignty, one that has been "artificially determined by the claimant" (French: artificiellement déterminé par le demandeur). The claimant's manner of initiating the proceedings appears to be a kind of "procedural trick" (French: astuce procédurale) designed to prevent the arbitral tribunal from losing jurisdiction. The report said such "procedural tricks" not only damage the credibility of the Convention's dispute settlement mechanism and the legitimacy of its outcomes, but may also trigger tensions and conflicts. 

Objective interpretation

The assessment report also details the inherent difficulties and external challenges facing the implementation of the Convention that urgently need to be addressed. It explicitly points out challenges such as misinterpretation of provisions and abuse of procedures. For example, certain countries maliciously distort "freedom of the seas," abuse "freedom of navigation," and invent the term "international waters."

The report states that some countries advocate a so-called "rules-based international order" while adopting an opportunistic attitude toward international law - using it when it suits them and abandoning it when it does not. Such double standards also endanger the foundation of the international maritime rule of law.

To safeguard the international rule of law and uphold the Convention's seriousness, integrity, and authority, the assessment report urges the international community, especially governments, academia, and policy circles, to view the Convention objectively and dialectically, interpret and apply it in good faith, properly balance its inheritance and development, and firmly resist practices that distort its provisions, abuse procedures, or exceed jurisdiction.

The report also calls on countries around the world to jointly implement China's Global Development Initiative, Global Security Initiative, Global Civilization Initiative and Global Governance Initiative, address the difficulties and challenges in implementing the Convention, promote the building of a more just and reasonable global ocean governance system, and steadily advance toward a community with a shared future for humanity.

China: defender of the Convention

China has always been a staunch defender and builder of the international maritime rule of law. As one of the first countries to sign and ratify the UNCLOS, China has defended the authority and integrity of the Convention through concrete actions.

On issues concerning territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, China maintains that disputes should be resolved through dialogue among the countries directly concerned, in accordance with international law, including the UN Charter. Together with ASEAN countries, China has fully and effectively implemented the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) and is accelerating consultations to reach a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea (COC) in 2026, in order to promote fair regional maritime governance, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weidong said in his keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the Sixth Symposium on Global Maritime Cooperation and Ocean Governance on December 10, 2025.

Committed to the well-being of all humanity, China consistently advances shared maritime development and safeguards common maritime security from the perspective of its people's interests. 

At the Third United Nations Ocean Conference in June 2025, China announced it would launch 100 bilateral and multilateral cooperation projects and provide 5,000 training opportunities to support small island developing states and others in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals. China has made contributions in areas such as maritime navigation safety, disaster prevention and reduction, and ecological protection. It has dispatched 48 escort fleets to the Gulf of Aden and the waters off Somalia for routine escort missions and has provided disaster prevention and early warning services to over 130 countries, according to China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

China has always been an active participant in and faithful practitioner of the Convention. It strictly fulfills its obligations under the Convention and safeguards the international rule of law through concrete actions. Certain countries, driven by self-interest, have misinterpreted and abused the provisions of the Convention to level unfounded accusations against China, which are entirely contrary to the facts, Chen Xiangmiao, a research fellow at the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, told the Global Times. "Some international cases, including the illegal arbitration initiated by the Philippines, are undermining the seriousness and integrity of the Convention with serious legal flaws and political manipulation."
 
This report seeks to advance the progressive development of the Convention and uphold the long-term stability of the maritime order. Only by maintaining an objective and impartial position can the authority of the Convention be effectively preserved and properly implemented, the expert said.