Philippines, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, and Vietnam. In 2022, Vietnam demanded that Taiwan cease conducting live fire exercises at the Spratly Islands. 2016 arbitration In January 2013, the Philippines initiated arbitration proceedings against China under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) across a range of issues, including the latter's historic rights claims over parts or all of the Spratly Islands inside the nine-dash line. A tribunal of arbitrators constituted under Annex VII of UNCLOS appointed the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) as registry to the proceedings. On 12 July 2016, the arbitral tribunal ruled in favor of the Philippines on most of its submissions. While it would not "rule on any question of sovereignty over land territory and would not delimit any maritime boundary between the Parties", it concluded that China had not historically exercised exclusive control within the nine-dash line, hence has "no legal basis" to claim "historic rights" to resources. It also concluded that China's historic rights claims over the maritime areas (as opposed to land masses and territorial waters) inside the nine-dash line would have no lawful effect outside of what is entitled to under UNCLOS. It criticized China's land reclamation projects and construction of artificial islands in the Spratly Islands, saying that they had caused "severe harm to the coral reef environment". Finally, it characterized Taiping Island and other features of the Spratly Islands as "rocks" under UNCLOS, and therefore are not entitled to a 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone. The award was ruled as final and non-appealable by either country. China rejected the ruling, calling it "ill-founded". Taiwan, which currently administers Taiping Island, the largest of the Spratly Islands, also rejected the ruling. Eight governments have publicly called for the ruling to be respected, 35 have issued generally positive statements without calling for parties to abide by it, and eight have publicly rejected it. The eight governments in support were Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines, United Kingdom, and the United States; the eight in opposition were China, Montenegro, Pakistan, Russia, Sudan, Syria, Taiwan, and Vanuatu. The United Nations itself does not have a position on the legal and procedural merits of the case or on the disputed claims, and the Secretary-General expressed his hope that the continued consultations on a Code of Conduct between ASEAN and China under the framework of the Declaration of the Conduct of