Vessel Collisions in the Law of the Sea: The South China Sea Arbitration

The book examines China's law enforcement vessels' actions in the South China Sea, analyzing violations of international regulations and post-arbitration critiques. It highlights China's harassment of vessels from littoral and non-littoral States and the absence of legal foundations for its behavior.

Format: Hardback
Length: 222 pages
Publication date: 09 December 2022
Publisher: Springer Verlag, Singapore

The book delves into the South China Sea Arbitration, specifically focusing on China's law enforcement vessels' operations in the Scarborough Shoal in April and May 2012. It explains the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGS) in layperson's terms and analyzes China's violations of these regulations based on confidential Philippine documents, technical works by professional mariners, and reports submitted by navigational safety experts to the Tribunal. The book also highlights Chinese post-arbitration critiques of the Tribunal's decision, which it characterizes as rationalizations of collisions as instruments of Chinese foreign policy. In contrast, the book highlights the practice of the US and Western European States, which mandate compliance with collision regulations even during law enforcement operations. The book draws on sources in five languages (English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish) and provides valuable insights into China's harassment of vessels from littoral and non-littoral States in the South China Sea, as well as the absence of legal foundations for China's rationalizations of its behavior.

Weight: 440g
Dimension: 252 x 245 x 20 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9789811697920
Edition number: 1st ed. 2022