It is time for China to do a #CHexit from the South China Sea, social media users and activists in the Philippines said Monday on the eve of a crucial tribunal ruling.

Inspired by the Brexit term coined for Britain's vote to leave the European Union, the catchy new reference for China has quickly gained currency on Facebook, Twitter and protest placards ahead of Tuesday's verdict on Beijing's claims to most of the sea.

"We ask our friends from other countries, especially our brothers and sisters in Southeast Asia, to call for a #CHexit," Mong Palatino said as he protested with a small group of people outside the Chinese consulate in Manila.

"China should stop bullying its neighbours."

On social media, some of the messages were more blunt.

"China, get out of Philippine territory! #CHEXIT," wrote @emiletabiar on Twitter.

"The West Philippine Sea is not for you to own. #CHexit," said @rmcocoba.

Other Filipinos were not amused.

"'CHexit'?!?!? Cringing on this one," said @titobabis.

China claims nearly all of the strategically vital sea, even waters approaching the coasts of the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations.

Manila filed a case with an international tribunal in The Hague in 2013 challenging China's claims. China refused to participate in the hearings and vowed to ignore Tuesday's verdict.

Vietnamese anti-China football activist attacked
Hanoi (AFP) July 11, 2016 - A prominent Vietnamese activist who plays in a football team that doubles up as an anti-China protest group said Monday he was viciously beaten by plainclothes thugs after a match.

La Viet Dung, 40, is a member of No-U FC, a club of around 50 democracy and rights activists who play each weekend in Hanoi as a way to try and circumvent the authoritarian state's routine harassment of dissidents.

Dung said he was attacked by three unidentified assailants on his way home Sunday evening.

"The reason for their harassment, I think, was that the communist regime never wants any different viewpoints," Dung told AFP by phone on Monday.

Critics of the one-party communist state are often beaten up by unidentified attackers in assaults that are rarely solved, but which the victims attribute to pro-government groups.

Pictures and video footage posted on social media showed Dung bleeding profusely from a deep wound to the back of his head.

The club's name is a rebuke to the U-shaped "nine-dash" line that Beijing uses to map its claim to the disputed South China Sea -- a strategic waterway that Vietnam and a number of its regional neighbours also partially claim.

The football matches allow critics like Dung the chance to meet, talk and strategize.

But the players are routinely monitored by plainclothes officials, Dung said, with the club having to change playing fields around 20 times since it was founded in 2011.

Anti-Chinese sentiment runs high in Vietnam.

Rioting broke out in Vietnam after Beijing sent an oil rig into contested waters in 2014, with at least three Chinese people killed in the unrest.

Hanoi will likely closely watch the result of a court case under United Nations sea laws on Tuesday at The Hague in a dispute between China and the Philippines over the South China Sea.