To realize its ambition of controlling the entire East Sea, Chinese newspapers have published articles to excite public opinion, slander countries in the region, especially Vietnam.

China's greedy U-shaped line in the East Sea.

Dr. Tran Cong Truc, former head of the Government Border Committee, analyzed China’s plot to monopolize the East Sea in his newly-published book entitled “Vietnam’s Imprints in the East Sea.” Below is an extract from the book.

To implement its marine strategy and its ambition to totally control the East Sea, China has applied many domestic and foreign measures, on negotiation table and on the field, to confirm its sovereignty in the East Sea.

China officially raised its U-shaped line claim in May 2009, by attaching a map with this line to a diplomatic note to the United Nations in protesting Vietnam’s report and the joint report of Vietnam and Malaysia on the boundary of the continental shelf. Accordingly, China claimed sovereignty over Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa (Spratly) Archipelagos and the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and continental shelf of the two archipelagos.

China used the regulations on island nation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 (UNCLOS) to outline the baseline for Paracel Islands. It stated to draw the baseline for the Spratly Islands, to claim EEZs and continental shelves for the two archipelagoes.

However, China’s claim is contrary to the UNCLOS; so in general, other countries did not agree with the claim.

To speed up propaganda on China’s sovereignty claims over the East Sea, the Chinese media has systematically published articles to excite the public opinion and slander countries in the region, especially Vietnam--of appropriating China’s marine resources.

China has published many maps and publications, organized international contests and supplied online maps related to China’s marine sovereignty.

This country has also collected documents associated with the East Sea and built up historical evidences to prove its sovereignty in the East Sea.

China has been seeking any measure to prove and defend its legal viewpoint on its process of establishing and implementing historical sovereignty over Hoang Sa and Truong Sa.

However, China’s ambition contradicts its documents. A lot of ancient documents clearly described and outlined that Hainan Island is China’s southern-most territory.

Mr. Pham Hoang Quan, an independent researcher on China’s history and geographic history, said that from the Han Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, all official historical books did not note a single word about Hoang Sa and Truong Sa. It is the evidence that China has never considered the two archipelagoes as its territory. All books noted that Hainan Island is China’s southern-most territory.

After researching documents showed off by China, Prof. Monique Chemillier Gendreau, from the Paris VII Denis Diderot University, former Chair of the European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and World Human Rights, concluded: Chinese knew about islands scattered in the East Sea along time ago, but China’s evidence is not enough to defend the argument that China was the first country that discovered, explored, exploited and managed the two islands.

Source: VNN