China’s stance towards the applicability of the common heritage of mankind governance regime to the Arctic

Introduction. The article provides an analysis of China’s tough stance towards the applicability of the governance regime of the common heritage of mankind to the Arctic referring to the Part XI of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, 1982, in the general context of contemporary inter­national law.  

Materials and methods. General scien­tific and private scientific methods of cogni­tion constitutes the methodological basis for the study.  

Results of the study. In the course of the study the author concludes that China’s current stance towards the governance regime of the International seabed area as the common heritage of mankind and towards the international maritime law as a whole should not have exclusively negative assessments as it was during the period of the confrontation between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China in 1960-1980. Objectively the long-term interests of the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Fed­eration in the maintenance of international maritime law are aligned. However, a contemporary legal poli­cy of China differs from the policy stated at the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea. It became more focused on the promotion of China’s national interests in the Arctic, on the creation of the Area of the common heritage of mankind in the Arc­tic Ocean, even though none of the Arctic Coastal State advocate this stance.

 Conclusions. In this article the author balanc­es China’s arguments in favour of applicability of norms of the international law related to the com­mon heritage of mankind to the Arctic with the Arc­tic Coastal States’ arguments against it according to the doctrine in the sphere of the international law in which the legal concept of the common heritage of mankind is clarified. The author reveals reasons of China’s support of the concept of the common heri­tage of mankind initiated by the USA and China’s effort to broadly interpret it especially towards the Arctic in terms of the Arctic Coastal States’ stance towards this issue contained in the materials of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (1973 – 1982).

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