Nine Dash Line: Deciphering the South China Sea Conundrum by Pooja Bhatt

Author:Pooja Bhatt [Bhatt, Pooja]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: KW Publishers
Published: 2020-06-28T18:30:00+00:00

Fig 4.2: Claims in the South China Sea

However, the claims made by Chinese scholars35 are based on the years between 1954 to 1975 when Vietnam was divided into North and South Vietnam under the Geneva Accords. During these years, senior ministers of North Vietnam in their statements mentioned: “Xisha (Paracel) and Nansha (Spratlys) Islands as a part of Chinese territory” at least thrice.*** In 1976, North and South Vietnam were reunited. Nevertheless, those statements have continued to be used by China as the basis of its sovereignty, invoking the principle of estoppel††† under the international law.36 These claims have been countered by Vietnamese scholars who have adhered to international declarations to support their own claims over the islands. The first was the French occupation of the islands in 1933 that were ceded to the state of Vietnam in 1950 when the former left the country; the Cairo Declaration of 1943, Potsdam Declaration of 1945, San Francisco Treaty of 1951 and joint communique between Japan and PRC in 1972 wherein Japan returned all the territories to China except the Paracels and Spratlys. The third reference that the scholars use is the refusal of the San Francisco Conference to the proposal of the former USSR to revise the text and to include the Paracel and Spratly Islands in the list of territories to be ceded to China.

Additionally, the historicity of the Chinese claims has been contested by Vietnam’s own historical claims over the islands. Vietnam is said to have provided 17th century maps to show that its Nguyen dynasty had its administration over both the Paracel and Spratly Islands and had also exploited the resources of these islands during that time. In contrast, Hanoi contends that the 1904 Qing maps produced by China point towards the Hainan Islands as its southernmost territory and do not show the Paracel and Spratly Islands in its territory.37

During the Vietnam War (1955-75), the North Vietnamese and Chinese had agreed to defer tackling their territorial issues until South Vietnam was defeated. The deferred issues also included the delineation of Vietnam’s territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin and sovereignty over the Paracel and Spratly Islands in the SCS. During the 1950s, the northern half of the Paracels was controlled by China and by 1974, it also acquired the southern half of the Paracel Islands from the control of South Vietnam although these were unoccupied at that time.

Vietnam’s claim over the Spratly Islands was for commercial reasons. Protection of its oil exploration rights in the Spratly Islands was the reason Vietnam awarded oil concessions to several oil companies such as Mobil, Exxon, and Shell in July 1973 after the US Congress voted to ban all US activities in Indo-China38 due to the ongoing war. The Vietnamese leadership formally occupied ten of the Spratly Islands in September 1973 and also deployed hundreds of troops. There were, however, sharp reverberations from Taiwan and Manila against Hanoi’s move. Nonetheless, this marked the initiation of Hanoi’s territorial claims over the islands in the Spratly group.

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