PARIS, June 27 (Xinhua) -- In an op-ed recently carried by the French daily Le Figaro, Chinese Ambassador to France Zhai Jun has reiterated the country's stance that China does not accept the arbitration on the South China Sea issue.
The sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea and their adjacent waters belongs to China, Zhai noted in the signed article published on June 24.
In the 1970s, the Philippines successively seized several of the Chinese Nansha islands and started to claim sovereignty of these island and the surrounding waters, which the Chinese government repeatedly denounced as a serious violation of China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights, Zhai said.
The dispute between China and the Philippines over the South China Sea is in fact about the sovereignty of the islands, Zhai explained.
Read the full story at Xinhua