The "cow tongue" or
"nine dotted line" or “U-shaped line” is a product that has surprised
the world, including some Chinese researchers, with some calling it
"incomprehensible".
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China's vertical map.
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A Chinese scholar had to
admit: "It's embarrassing when international colleagues ask me about the
nine dotted line!”
In 2009, China officially
announced the U-shaped line map. Immediately, a well-known commentator of the
Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV station – Tiet Ly Thai - warned: "China is
making a disaster for itself. The international community will never let that
happen."
And many Chinese scholars
in China have published articles about the origin of the "cow tongue"
with advice to the Chinese government, "Do not make a fool of
yourself."
According to two Chinese
scholars Li Jinming and Li Dexia, in an attempt to define and
declare “the extent of Chinese sovereignty around the Paracel and the Spratly
Islands”, in February 1948, the Geography Department in the Ministry of
Internal Affairs of the Republic of China published for the first time “the
Location Map of the South China Sea Islands”, in which an eleven-dotted
line was drawn around the Pratas Islands, the Paracel Islands, the Macclesfield
Bank, and the Spratly Islands in the East Sea. The southernmost line was
about 4º northern latitude.
The map was made after the
Republic of China organized a two-month-long illegal field trip on some islands
of the Hoang Sa Archipelago of Vietnam (Paracels Islands).
The Hong Kong-based Phoenix
Weekly met with a number of witnesses on the trip who currently live in Taiwan
and said that the one who drew the map was the director of the Geography
Department, based on the 11-dotted map submitted by members of the field trip
to Hoang Sa Archipelago.
According to several
newspapers in Hong Kong and China, the "process" to make the U-shaped
line map is illegal because no state can arbitrarily draw its own map that
covers the territory of other countries.
Li Linghua, a researcher of
the China National Ocean Information Centre, and some other Chinese researchers
objected to the map, saying that in 1946 Lin Zun led a naval fleet to recapture
the islands following Japan’s defeat.
“Some of the islands were
unknown to the world. Japan first occupied them and was forced to cede them to
us after surrendering. We were happy to receive them (...). Accompanying the
fleet was a man from the Ministry of Geology and Resources who demarcated an
imaginary line shaped like a bull’s tongue. Upon his return, the line was
printed on the national map and was publicized as a new boundary.....”
“There has been no unreal
land or marine border demarcating line in the history of international
cartography. The nine-dotted line in the East Sea is unreal. Our
predecessors invented the line without specific longitudes and latitudes, as
well as without legal evidence,” Li Linghua stressed.
Professor Zhang Shuguang,
Head of the Academic Committee under the Unirule Institute of Economics,
stated: “The nine-dotted line is not legal, a view once shared by Chinese
lawmakers and their colleagues from Taiwan. It was unilaterally claimed by
China.”
According to a document
entitled "The Legal Status of the South China Sea," published in
Taiwan in October 1998 by Huang Yi and Wei Jingfen, one of the “inventors” of
the "U-shaped line" who was still alive and lived in Taiwan, named
Bai, was invited to Beijing in the summer of 1990 to explain the origin of the
U-shaped line.
Bai, who was over 80 years
old, could not remember all details but he remembered the most important thing
is "to draw such a line to indicate that the islands belong to which
country having this line".
Commenting on the origin of
the U-shaped line, American Professor Mark J.Valencia said: "China's claim
of sovereignty over the South China Sea (East Sea) is vague and absurd. The
most absurd is the U-shaped line. When they were asked to explain the meaning of
this line, as the boundary line or something else, they always had a vague
answer that it may be or may not be a boundary line. The world does not have
any dotted lines like that!"
In 1949, the Republic of
China government was defeated, and had to flee to the island of Taiwan, so the
11 dotted line map fell into oblivion. The People's Republic of China was born
and it did not pay attention to the 11 dotted line.
On 4/12/1950, representing
the Chinese government, Minister of Foreign Affairs Zhou Enlai said he had
approved the Cairo Declaration which was signed on 27/11/1943 by the UK, the US
and the Republic of China.
The Cairo Declaration has a
paragraph related to Chinese territory as follows: "The Three Great Allies
are fighting this war to restrain and punish the aggression of Japan. They
covet no gain for themselves and have no thought of territorial expansion. It
is their purpose that Japan shall be stripped of all the islands in the Pacific
which she has seized or occupied since the beginning of the first World War in
1914, and that all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as
Manchuria, Formosa, and The Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of
China.”
It should be noted that at
the time of signing of the Declaration of Cairo in 1943, the Paracels and
Spratly islands were being occupied by Japan. Thus, the Paracels and Spratly
islands are unrelated to the Chinese territory occupied by the Japanese. And,
the Chinese government’s representative, Minister Zhou Enlai fully endorsed
this statement.
By 1953, however, the
U-shaped line which was thought to be dead along with the Republic of China
government suddenly appeared. In this year the government of the People's
Republic of China reviewed and approved the U-shaped line, reducing it from 11
dots to nine dots. But the boundary of the nine-dotted line is greedier and it
is closer to Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines. According to China's
argument, with the new nine-dotted line, Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia
"occupied" more China’s waters.
Like the Republic of China,
the People's Republic of China announced the nine-dotted line map without
explaining the legal, the geographical basis or making it public in the
international arena. They only referred it as "historic waters", "historical
territory".
More than 50 years later,
China revealed its ambition with the U-shaped line to the world.
On May 6, 2009, Vietnam and
Malaysia submitted to the UN Commission on the Limit of the Continental Shelf
(CLSC) a common report on their expanded continental shelves, and at the same
time, Vietnam also sent its own report to the CLCS.
On May 7, 2009, the
Government of the People’s Republic of China sent a note opposing the common
report on expanded continental shelves of Vietnam and Malaysia as well as Vietnam’s
own report on its expanded continental shelf. The note included a map with the
“U-shaped line.”
By now the whole world knew
about China’s ambition to monopolize the East Sea of China.
In March 2010, China
startled the world by declaring the East Sea as its "core interest".
The declaration was criticized by even Chinese scholars. However, their
warnings could not wake Chinese decision-makers up.
After pulling the oil rig
981 into Vietnam’s water, on June 25, 2014, Chinese newspapers published the
“vertical map" with the 10-dash line.
These moves have not only
been protested by the international community but also by many Chinese people.
On Weibo, the most popular
social network in China, many netizens disagreed with the Chinese government’s
vertical map, saying that the map is vague and contrary to international law.
Some of them recalled their embarrassment when traveling abroad and hearing
criticism of China by local residents.
To be continued…
Source: Duy Chien
