By denying China’s legitimate claims, US rips off ‘fig leaf’ used to cover its vile intention in South China Sea
2020-07-17 10:04:38 source：Global Times
July 16, 2020
Editor's Note:
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday made a statement laden with harsh criticism against China on the South China Sea issue. The US claimed many of China's claims in this region are "illegal," despite it not even being a signatory of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Washington claimed it would not allow China to build a maritime empire in the South China Sea, but the US usually trudges over thousands of miles to show off its muscle in this region.
Many analysts believed this is the first time the US formally rejected China's claims in the South China Sea region, which has altered its previous stance.
What are the fallacies and misleading rhetoric from Pompeo's statement? And what is the agenda behind Washington's change of attitude? The Global Times reporters Li Sikun and Zhao Yusha (GT) conducted an exclusive interview with Wu Shicun (Wu), president of the National Institute for the South China Sea Studies, to explain those questions.
GT: Pompeo said in a statement issued Monday "Beijing has offered no coherent legal basis for its 'Nine-Dashed Line' claim in the South China Sea since formally announcing it in 2009." Is this claim true?
Wu: This statement reflected the ignorance of Pompeo and his team. Anyone with basic historical knowledge would know that it was not the People's Republic of China who claimed the right for the "Nine Dash Line (also known as dashed lines)." In 1946, under the support of the US, the then-Republic of China government took back the South China Sea islands according to international conventions, and made a map with the dashed lines based on geographic mapping of islands in the South China Sea. In February 1948, the then-Chinese government published a map with 11 dashed lines of South China Sea islands, and officially announced the dashed lines to the international community. The old versions of the maps included eight and 10 dashed lines. The Taiwan island authority is still using 11 dashed line mapping.
After the establishment of the People's Republic of China, it inherited dashed line mapping, and the international society accepted it. Many maps in Soviet Union and maps published by nongovernmental organizations in the US cited the 11 dash lines, and labeled Nansha and Xisha islands as belonging to China.
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