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This was announced in a special statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China, Ukrinform reports.
These are two pieces of legislation signed on Friday, November 8 by Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. that define the country's maritime rights and establish sea and air routes to strengthen its territorial sovereignty.
The new laws, based on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), define the Philippines' exclusive right to economic activities within the country's 200-mile exclusive maritime zone (370 km from its coast), which includes a number of archipelagos and shoals that China claims as its own. territory
"China strongly opposes this and will continue to take all necessary legal measures to resolutely protect China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests," the Foreign Ministry said.
The agency called the new Philippine laws a serious violation of China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea, and once again declared the non-recognition of the 2016 decision of the International Court of Justice in The Hague on the lack of grounds for China's territorial claims in this sea.
The Foreign Ministry statement indicated the baseline of China's "territorial waters" around the Scarborough Shoal, which China claims as its territory and calls Huangyan Island, even though the shoal is 100 miles from the Philippines and about 500 miles from China.
Rich in fish and other resources, the Scarborough Shoal has become a focal point of disputes over sovereignty and fishing rights between the Philippines and the PRC.
Beijing has passed domestic laws on the South China Sea and has claimed sovereignty over much of it, including areas claimed by the Philippines, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam.
The Chinese side backs up its claims with a large coast guard fleet, whose ships regularly prevent fishermen from neighboring countries from fishing, block oil and gas production, and collide with law enforcement vessels of neighboring countries.
Most of all, China encroaches on the maritime areas adjacent to the Philippines, in particular, part of the large Spratly archipelago (Chinese name Nansha Qundao), Scarborough Shoal and Sabina Shoal (Xianbin Jiao), near which fierce clashes between Chinese and Philippine ships have occurred in recent months.
