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Text: Zhang Runchen
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introduction
The South China Sea has been the legitimate territorial waters of the mainland since ancient times, and the islands and reefs in the South China Sea have been the legitimate territory of the mainland since ancient times. However, in the eyes of some countries, the mainland's sovereignty over the South China Sea seems to be in vain, and neighboring countries can almost be said to be wantonly violating the mainland's sovereignty over territorial waters.
Some people say that the South China Sea is inevitably too big, and the nine-dash line has reached the door of neighboring countries, is it "too hegemonic"? Is it really legal?
Promoted by some people with ulterior motives, similar remarks have rapidly fermented in China-hating countries, and a large number of people who do not know the truth have been deceived and have pointed the finger at the mainland. But in fact, the border line of the South China Sea is now the result of many concessions made by the mainland to its neighbors, but unfortunately some people are still not satisfied.
(Topographic Map of China)
1. The historical basis for China's sovereignty over the South China Sea
Today, the South China Sea covers an area of 4.73 million square kilometers, and has been the territory of the mainland since ancient times, and from ancient times to modern times, there is a large amount of historical evidence to prove the legitimacy of China's sovereignty in the South China Sea.
As early as the Qin Dynasty, after the Second Expedition to Baiyue, China's territorial scope was advanced to the Lingnan region for the first time. When there are Chinese activities in the Lingnan area, it is not surprising that further exploration will be made in the South China Sea. In Vietnam at that time, the locals also belonged to the "Hundred Vietnamese" and did not form a national concept at all, so it should not be disputed that the Chinese took the lead in establishing sovereignty in the South China Sea.
The real controversy is where the South China Sea should be. In the "Chronicles of Foreign Objects in Nanzhou" during the Three Kingdoms period, the South China Sea began to appear in written form in historical records, and people at that time described the South China Sea as: "Traveling northeast, extremely rugged, with many rising seas, shallow and many magnets." ”
"Rising sea" is actually the name of the South China Sea at that time, and "Qitou" is the meaning of islands and reefs in the South China Sea. The combination of this sentence means that when ships sail in the South China Sea, they often run aground and run aground, as if they are firmly attracted by a magnet. It can be seen that at that time, the people of the Han Dynasty had already had large-scale maritime activities in the South China Sea.
(Qin Empire)
After that, the South China Sea became more and more frequent in historical documents. Pei Yuan's "Guangzhou Chronicles" of the Jin Dynasty and Shen Huaiyuan's "Nanyue Chronicles" of the Southern Dynasty all have relevant records of the South China Sea.
During the Song Dynasty, due to the extreme development of maritime trade, the Song people's perception of the South China Sea gradually became concrete. The Song people called the Xisha Islands "Changsha" and the Nansha Islands "Shitang", which was the first time that the two islands had separate names. In the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, the Central Plains Dynasty's perception of the South China Sea became more and more concrete.
In the twenty-ninth year of Wanli, Matteo Ricci's self-made world map clearly marked "Wanli Stone Pond".
(Song is good at sailing)
However, these contents only prove that the Chinese have long included the South China Sea in the scope of their activities, but they are not enough to support the formation of legal sovereignty in the South China Sea. The South China Sea was first included in China's territory in 1402, in the fourth year of the Ming Dynasty, when Kim Shiheng, a Korean, explicitly included the South China Sea in China's territory for the first time when he drew up the "Map of the National Capitals of the Past Dynasties".
(Map of the capitals of the past dynasties)
It can be seen that although the Central Plains Dynasty did not explicitly declare the sovereignty of the South China Sea at that time, it has become a consensus of the surrounding countries that the South China Sea belongs to China. The reason for such a consensus is that although the Central Plains Dynasty did not explicitly declare sovereignty over the South China Sea, it had already begun to fulfill its sovereign obligations before declaring sovereignty.
In the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties, the Central Plains Dynasty all had standing maritime patrol agencies in the South China Sea, although the scope had not yet reached the scope of today's nine-dash line. However, in the Qing Dynasty, the maritime patrol of the Central Plains Dynasty had reached the junction of "Yiyang", and even entered the coastal waters of Vietnam, Champa and even Siam, which showed that the nine-dash line at that time had already belonged to the patrol range of the Qing Empire.
At the same time, the Qing Empire also undertook the obligation to rescue ships in distress in the South China Sea, and the two emperors of Yongzheng Qianlong successively issued orders to order special personnel to be responsible for related affairs, and the rescue records are mostly stored in the "Qing Shilu". During the Qing Dynasty, there was already a clear division of maritime activities between China and Vietnam, which was basically equivalent to the nine-dash line, and Vietnam did not dispute this at the time.
(Official map of the South China Sea drawn by the Qing Empire)
Second, a hundred years of wind and rain rights protection road
Until the end of the Qing Dynasty, China never explicitly claimed sovereignty over the South China Sea, and the formation of the nine-dash line was actually "forced out" by the foreign powers. In 1907, Japanese businessman Nishizawa led 120 Taiwanese workers to Dongsha Island, where they expelled the island's Chinese residents, demolished Chinese temples on the island, and even destroyed the ancestral graves of Chinese, and changed the island's name to "Nishizawa Island."
Dongsha Island is rich in phospholipid guano, which was a very important industrial resource at that time, and it was also one of the main reasons why Nishizawa grabbed Dongsha Island. In 1909, the incident was reported to the imperial court, and the governor of Liangguang, Zhang Renjun, sent a note to the Japanese consul Yorikawa Asanojin to negotiate the matter, and the Japanese insisted that Dongsha Island was a "desert island".
The Liangguang Governor's Office successively produced maps published by China and Britain as evidence and demanded that the Japanese side return Dongsha Island. In the end, after months of negotiations, the Qing Empire took out 160,000 silver dollars to "buy" various Japanese products on the island, and Nishizawa paid 30,000 silver dollars in compensation.
(Zhang Renjun)
It is equivalent to China taking out 130,000 yuan to redeem Dongsha Island. This was only the beginning, as Japan's mapping of the islands in the South China Sea and its various encroachments continued until the outbreak of the worldwide economic crisis in 1929. At the same time, France, which controlled the Indochina region, also continued to invade China's islands and reefs in the South China Sea, and France began the relevant mapping work of the Paracel Islands in 1920.
In 1930, the French warship "Mailihuus" forcibly occupied Spratly Island in the Spratly Islands. In 1933, the French Navy occupied Taiping Island and Amber Sandbank. On the eve of World War II, France had already occupied nine islands and reefs in the South China Sea, which were called "nine small islands".
France's transfer of the "Nine Small Islands" to Vietnam's Ba Tia Province was in part the beginning of a dispute between China and the South China Sea. The domineering behavior of the French provoked a strong protest from the Nationalist Government, but the protest of the Nationalist Government was not a matter at all in the eyes of the French Indochinese authorities. What really prevented France from further aggression in the South China Sea was in fact Japan, which has a rival relationship with France in the South China Sea.
(Nankai)
In the face of strong protests from the Japanese government, France agreed not to use the "nine small islands" for military purposes, but refused to withdraw. After the outbreak of World War II, the entire South China Sea was occupied by Japan. After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the government decided to formally establish the mainland's sovereignty over the South China Sea, so in 1946 it established the Department of the Ministry of the Interior, which was responsible for the establishment of sovereignty in the South China Sea.
On November 29, 1946, with the support of the United States, the Nationalist Government dispatched the "Forward" fleet to carry out demonstrative patrols in the waters of the South China Sea along the 11-dash line, and left garrison troops on some islands and reefs in the South China Sea.
3. The final formation of the nine-dash line
In 1947, the Nationalist Government determined the extent of the territorial waters of the South China Sea. In 1948, the Nationalist Government of Nanjing, which was already in turmoil, publicly released the "Map of the Administrative Region of the Republic of China", which officially designated the South China Sea within the 11-dash line as China's territorial waters.
In other words, in fact, the South China Sea demarcated by the Republic of China is actually larger than it is today, and the Taiwan Province is still using the 11-dash line.
(11 sections of the line on the beach in Vietnam)
The government's oath of sovereignty over the South China Sea was unanimously endorsed by the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union, with only France disagreeing with it. However, due to the gradual tension in Vietnam, France later also recognized the sovereignty of the eleventh line. In 1953, New China removed two sections of the Beibu Gulf in the 11-dash line to support North Vietnam in the war of resistance against France, and the 11-dash line became the nine-dash line.
Note that the revised nine-dash line was in fact endorsed by the Ho Chi Minh government, which means that Vietnam's claims to the South China Sea today are legally untenable. In 1964, the Atlas of Vietnam published by the International Bureau of Surveying and Mapping of Vietnam explicitly used Chinese names such as "Dongsha Islands", "Nansha Islands" and "Xisha Islands".
On page 19 of the World Atlas published by the Bureau of Surveying and Mapping of the Prime Minister's Office in 1972, the Chinese names of the islands in the South China Sea were explicitly used, which shows the position of the Vietnamese government at that time.
(The nine-dash line made some concessions in the Gulf of Tonkin
The part of the 11-dash line related to the Beibu Gulf directly extends China's maritime border to the sandy beaches along the northern coast of Vietnam, which can be said to be a direct export of shame...... In fact, we also used the concessions in the Gulf of Tonkin in exchange for Vietnam's recognition of the nine-dash line.
In addition to Vietnam, the Philippines actually recognized the nine-dash line in the early days.
Until 1969, the relevant maps of the Philippines still used the 11-dash line instead of the 9-dash line for the marking of the South China Sea, which means that after the New China had made a clear concession to the Beibu Gulf, the Philippines was still following the mainland Taiwan to use the old version of the South China Sea map, which shows that the Philippines did not have any objection to the sovereignty of the South China Sea in the early days.
Japan and some Western European countries, even in the 70s, still used 11 dash lines in map labeling, which also proves that sovereignty in the South China Sea is universally recognized by the international community.
Today's sovereignty dispute in the South China Sea is essentially a farce, an abstract politics that should not exist.
Resources:
[1] Cheng Yuxiang. The demarcation of the discontinuous line in the South China Sea after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War[J].Archives of the Republic of China,2021,(03):98-107.)
[2] Qi Shuangling. Research on the historical rights of the nine-dash line in the South China Sea[D].Qufu Normal University,2018.
[3] Pan Simin. The ins and outs of the nine-dash line in the South China Sea[J].Counseling for junior high school students,2017,(Z5):54-58.)
[4] Zhao Ren. The origin of the nine-dash line in the South China Sea:A review of the wind and rain rights protection road in the past century[J].Pearl River Water Transport,2016,(07):52-53.)