China vowed to take all necessary measures to protect its sovereignty in the South China Sea, saying it had the right to set up an air defense zone after rejecting an international tribunal’s ruling that junked its territorial claims for 90 percent of the entire region. State media called the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in the Hague a “puppet” of external forces after the tribunal ruled that China had breached the Philippines’ sovereign rights by endangering the latter’s ships, fishing and oil projects in the West Philippine Sea, the part of the South China Sea that encompasses Manila’s 360-kilometer (200-nautical-mile) exclusive economic zone (EEZ). China has repeatedly accused the United States of stirring up trouble in the South China Sea, where its territorial claims overlap in parts not only with that of the Philippines but also with those of Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.

China calls int’l court a puppet. (2016, July 14). Philippine Daily Inquirer, pp. A1, A7.