Photo: AFP / Ted AljibeChina must accept a verdict declaring its South China Sea claims are invalid, Australia said Wednesday, and needs to halt its artificial island building in the disputed waters. The tribunal's ruling on Tuesday was a damning repudiation of Chinese behavior in the South China Sea, which ruled that China has no historic rights to the area and had acted illegally with large scale land reclamation. Beijing claims most of the South China Sea, even waters approaching neighbouring countries, as its sovereign territory, basing its arguments on Chinese maps dating back to the 1940s marked with a so-called nine-dash-line. "We call on both the Philippines and China to respect the ruling, to abide by it. "Australia has been calling on China for some time to halt reclamation work and not to militarize its structures," Bishop said.

Source: Thanhnien News July 13, 2016 02:48 UTC