According to the Liberty Times, China’s claim of sovereignty over South China Sea islands and artificial islands based on the “nine-dash line” led the Philippines to file a South China Sea arbitration case against China at the Hague, Netherlands, for violating the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The ruling was scheduled for release today. Chinese state media criticized that the President of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) overseeing this judgment was Japanese, Shunji Yanai, arguing that a Japanese person presiding over the arbitration was “fundamentally impossible to be impartial.”
As the South China Sea arbitration ruling approached, Chinese state media scrutinized Arbitration Tribunal President Shunji Yanai, questioning the fairness of the arbitration. Shunji Yanai served as Japan’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs in $1997$. After graduating from the University of Tokyo, he entered Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and served as Ambassador to various Western countries multiple times, making him one of Japan’s most influential diplomats.
The caption reads: Shunji Yanai, President of the Arbitration Tribunal for the South China Sea Case, is Japanese.
When the U.S. deployed troops to Iraq in $2001$, Shunji Yanai had just retired as Japan’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs and was serving as the Japanese Ambassador to the U.S. Chinese state media used this to point out that “it can be seen that he (Shunji Yanai) is both the chief commander of Japanese diplomacy and the diplomatic link between Japan and the United States.”
Shunji Yanai became a judge for ITLOS in $2005$. While serving as an arbitration judge, he was chosen in $2007$ to chair the “Committee on Reinterpreting the Constitution to Allow Collective Self-Defense,” initiated by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, to establish the “legal foundation” for the Japanese military to deploy overseas and fight alongside the U.S. military. In $2011$, he was elected as the President of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.
Chinese state media described Shunji Yanai as “a person who helped the United States invade Iraq, a member state of the United Nations, and should have been tried himself, but is now a person helping the United States judge China.”