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China will set up an international maritime judicial centre to protect its sovereignty and make it a maritime power, its top judge said today amid escalating disputes with a host of its jittery neighbours over the contested South China Sea (SCS).
Courts across China shall work to implement the national strategy of building the country into a "maritime power," Chief Justice Zhou Qiang told nearly 3,000 lawmakers of the National People's Congress in a report on the work of the China's Supreme People's Court (SPC) at a plenary meeting of the national legislature.
An international maritime judicial centre will be set up to assert maritime rights, SPC said.
"(We) must resolutely safeguard China's national sovereignty, maritime rights and other core interests," Zhou said.
"(We) must improve the work of maritime courts and build an international maritime judicial centres," he said.
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Zhou said some 16,000 maritime cases were concluded by Chinese courts last year, the most in the world.
The country is also home to the largest number of maritime courts globally speaking, he said.
China is currently entangled in a maritime dispute with Japan in the East China Sea and host of others in the SCS.
Zhou's comments came as China boycotted a tribunal of the UN Conference of the Law of Sea (UNCLOS) arbitrating on the Philippines's petition countering China's claims on some of the islands in the SCS.
Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei and Taiwan have counter claims over the SCS, contesting China's claims of sovereignty over most of it.
Last week, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi termed the UNCLOS arbitration as tainted and said Beijing will not honour the outcome of the tribunal as it has "legally" excluded itself from the proceedings.
"The Philippines' stubbornness is clearly the result of the behind scenes instigation and political manoeuvring. This so called arbitration has become tainted and gone astray and China is not going to honour it," Wang had said.
China is also bracing for a major showdown with the US over the issue as Washington backed small countries' right to claim on the SCS and send ships and aircraft to assert freedom of navigation in the area.
Earlier reports said some 225,000 cases involving over 70 countries and regions had been handled by China's maritime courts in the three decades between 1984, when the first such court was set up, and 2013.
Close to 8,000 vessels, of which 1,660 were foreign, were detained and 663 were auctioned off during that period, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
Zhou pointed to a 2014 case at a southeastern China maritime court involving a collision between a Chinese trawler and a Panama-flagged cargo ship in waters near the islets China disputes with Japan in the East China Sea.
The case, which was ended via mediation, clearly showed China's jurisdiction over the region, he said.
