Xi's China Dream may be hoisted by its own petard

New Delhi

AN international court's stinging verdict, denying China's claim to ownership of virtually the entire South China Sea, has put a spanner in the "China Dream" of President Xi Jinping and left him with a series of difficult options.

When he took over leadership of the Chinese Communist Party in November 2012, Mr Xi made the China Dream - described as "the great revival of the Chinese nation" - his signature mission. To symbolically underline the importance of the South China Sea to this initiative, among his first visits outside Beijing as the new party boss was to meet the sailors aboard the Haikou, a guided-missile destroyer which had patrolled disputed waters in the sea.

In its sharp rebuke, the international court at The Hague called China's claims illegal and said that its artificial island building is causing "irreparable harm", concluding that Chinese claims of "such rights were extinguished to the extent they were incompatible with the exclusive economic zones provided for in the Convention". The court said that "there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within" Beijing's so-called "nine…