The conflict between the Philippines and China over
the Scarborough Shoal may seem to be a minor dispute over an
uninhabitable rock and the surrounding waters. But it is hugely
important for future relations in the region because it showcases
China's stubborn view that the histories of the non-Han peoples whose
lands border two-thirds of the South China Sea are irrelevant. The only
history that matters is that written by the Chinese and interpreted by
Beijing.
The Philippine case for Scarborough is mostly presented as one of
geography. The feature, known in Filipino as the Panatag Shoal and in
Chinese as Huangyan Island, is some 130 nautical miles off the coast of
Luzon, the largest island in the Philippine archipelago. It's well
within the Philippines' Exclusive Economic Zone, which, as per the U.N.
Law of the Sea Convention, extends 200 nautical miles off the coast. On
the other hand, the shoal is roughly 350 miles from the mainland of
China and 300 miles from the tip of Taiwan.
China avoids these inconvenient geographical facts and relies on
historical half-truths that it applies to every feature it claims in the
South China Sea. That's why it's now feuding with not just the
Philippines, but other nations too. Beijing's famous U-shaped dotted
line on its maps of the South China Sea defines territorial claims
within the 200-mile limits of Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and
Brunei, and close to Indonesia's gas-rich Natuna Islands.
In the case of the Scarborough Shoal, China's Ministry of Foreign
Affairs gives the historical justification that the feature is mentioned
in a Chinese map from the 13th century—when China itself was under
alien Mongol rule—resulting from the visit of a vessel from China. This
"we were there first" argument is nonsense. Chinese sailors were
latecomers to the South China Sea, to say nothing of onward trade to the
Indian Ocean. The seafaring history of the region at least for the
first millennium of the current era was dominated by the ancestors of
today's Indonesians, Malaysians, Filipinos and (less directly)
Vietnamese.
As China's own records reveal, when Chinese traveled from China to
Sumatra and then on to Sri Lanka, they did so in Malay ships. This was
not the least surprising given that during this era, Malay people from
what is now Indonesia were the first colonizers of the world's third
largest island, Madagascar, some 4,000 miles away. (The Madagascan
language and 50% of its human gene pool are of Malay origin). They were
crossing the Indian Ocean 1,000 years before the much-vaunted voyages of
Chinese admiral Zheng He in the 15th century.
Malay seafaring prowess was later
overtaken by south Indians and Arabs, but they remained the premier
seafarers in Southeast Asia until the Europeans dominated the region.
The Malay-speaking, Hindu-ized Cham seagoing empire of central Vietnam
dominated South China Sea trade until it was conquered by the Vietnamese
about the time the European traders began to arrive in Asia, while
trade between Champa (present-day southern Vietnam) and Luzon was well
established long before the Chinese drew their 13th century map.
The Scarborough Shoal, which lies not only close to the Luzon coast
but on the direct route from Manila Bay to the ancient Cham ports of Hoi
An and Qui Nhon, had to be known to Malay sailors. The Chinese claim to
have "been there first" is then like arguing that Europeans got to
Australia before its aboriginal inhabitants.
Another unsteady pillar in China's claim to the Scarborough Shoal is
its reliance on the Treaty of Paris of 1898. This yielded Spanish
sovereignty over the Philippine archipelago to the U.S. and drew
straight lines on the map which left the shoal a few miles outside the
longitudinal line defined by the treaty. China now conveniently uses
this accord, which these two foreign powers arrived at without any input
from the Philippine people, to argue that Manila has no claim.
The irony is that the Communist Party otherwise rejects "unequal
treaties" imposed by Western imperialists, such as the McMahon line
dividing India and Tibet. Does this mean Vietnam can claim all the
Spratly Islands, because the French claimed them all and Hanoi has
arguably inherited this claim?
China also asserts that because its case for ownership dates back to
1932, subsequent Philippine claims are invalid. In other words, it uses
the fact that the Philippines was under foreign rule as a basis for its
own claims.
Manila wants to resolve the matter under the U.N. Law of the Sea
Convention, but Beijing argues that its 1932 claim isn't bound by the
Convention, which came into effect in 1994 since it preceded it. That's a
handy evasion, most probably because China knows its case for ownership
is weak by the Convention's yardsticks.
China is making brazen assertions that rewrite history and take no
account of geography. Today's naval arguments won't come to an end until
the region's largest disputant stops rewriting the past.
Mr. Bowring is a Hong Kong-based journalist.
Source
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