“The basic principle remains the same on the nine-dash line which is that it’s not basis in international law to decide these issues, that it is something that the Chinese have articulated as a historical reason on their side, but we don’t see that as that basis.”
US Ambassador to Philippines Philip Goldberg said on the China’s new “10-dash map” during a meeting with the Philippine Constitution Association
“China’s end game is to have de facto — if not de jure — control over adjacent waters, the Western Pacific. The only question is if and how it will achieve it. China might need to consider more coercive measures to do so given the hardening resistance of other claimant states”
Philippines’ political science lecturer Richard Javad Heydarian said in an interview with Bloomberg at the Ateneo de Manila University.
“That is going to take a very long time to resolve, because no country will lightly give up its territorial claims. It’s politically very difficult to do, and so you end up with an impasse.”
Singapore’s Prime minister Lee Hsien Loong said about the ongoing tensions in the East Sea