The recent tensions between China and the Philippines have been flared up by the Philippines to make illegal claims over South China Sea islands and maritime rights. Nonetheless, a book written by Anthony Carty, an Irish professor of international law and now a visiting professor at the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences of Peking University and a professor at the School of Law of Beijing Institute of Technology, shows China’s indisputable sovereignty in the South China Sea.
“The archives demonstrate, taken as a whole, that it is the view of the British and French legal experts that as a matter of the international law territory, which is a rather arcane subject, the Xisha Islands and the Nansha Islands are Chinese territory.”
“In the 1930s they recognized that these Spratlys [the Nansha Islands] had always been home to Chinese fisherman from Hainan Island and Guangdong. There had never been any Vietnamese or Philippine connection and French interference had only been in its own name and not that of Vietnam. It is the British who then drew a decisive conclusion, from all the French and British records available, that the Chinese were the owners of the Spratlys [the Nansha Islands], a legal position certified as part of British Cabinet records in 1974.”
“At the present time, the position of Britain and France, who are basically junior allies of the United States, is that they are agnostic as to the ownership of the Nansha Islands and Xisha Islands. […] They say that China should be prepared to submit the dispute to arbitration. China’s insistence that these islands are Chinese is apparently then viewed by them as an act of what is called “assertiveness” and even aggression. China is portrayed as a “revisionist” power with hegemonic ambitions.”
“I am adopting a rigorously legal position that it’s not up to China to do whatever is necessary diplomatically to calm the nerves of its neighbors. It’s up to all of these countries to accept the rule of law, and the rule of law says that the islands are Chinese.”
“And there is a record in the mid-1950s in the US National Archive, in which a US under secretary of state says that, while the Filipinos have no claim to the Spratlys [the Nansha Islands], it is in the US interest to encourage them to make a claim anyway to keep Communist China out of the area.”
“So, there will be peace when people accept China’s legal rights, not when China simply calms down these countries by making whatever concessions they demand.”
“There is absolutely no doubt that this whole dispute is entirely about the Americans trying to make life difficult for the Chinese. The aggression that is building up against China and the scapegoating of China by the whole of the so-called democratic community of the world is appalling.”
And then there’s this:
