Hanoi (VNA) – The United States on July 12 said the ruling from the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague that China has no historic title over ♕the waters of the East Sea (internationally known 🉐as South China Sea) should be treated as final and binding and not be a reason to raise tensions.

“We certainly would urge all parties not to use this as an opportunity to engage in escalatory or provocative actions,” the White House’s spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters. The same day, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party's 2016 presidential candidate, welcomed the ruling on the Philippines’s lawsuit against China’s claims in the East Sea while emphasising the importance of the waters to the US economy. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s candidate, said he urges all parties to respect the tribunal’s ruling. Earlier, the court in The Hague issued the ruling on the case brought by the Philippines against China’s nine-dash line claim in the East Sea. It affirmed that China’s claims to historic rights over waters within the nine-dash line are contrary to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). China has caused permanent and irreparable harm to the coral reef ecosystem at the Spratly (Truong Sa) archipelago, and that it also has no historic title over waters of the South China Sea, the tribunal said. The Hague Tribunal also finds no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the nine-dash line. According to The Hague court, China has no rights to a 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) surrounding the Mischief and Thomas reefs. The court defined “Ba Binh” feature in Vietnam’s Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelago as a “rock” which means it has no EEZ. The PCA also underlined that China has interfered with the traditional fishing rights of the Philippines in Scarborough Shoal, highlighting that China’s actions have worsen disputes between the country and the Philippines when efforts have been made to resolve the disputes.-VNA