China's frail historical claims to the South China and East China Seas
J. Bruce Jacobs | American Enterprise Institute Ngày 140626
Một Giáo sư Đại học tại Úc phân tích cơ sở lịch sử mong manh của những điều Trung Quốc đòi hỏi tại biển Hoa Nam và biển Hoa Đông (Nguyên văn từ American Enterprise Institute)
 |
| Reuters - Guided missiles are launched during a drill of the Chinese East Sea Fleet. |
Article Highlights
- China attempted to use military force to back up alleged historical claims to the South China and East China Seas.
- China's belligerent attempts to enforce its claims endanger peace in Asia.
- Southeast Asian nations must maintain a military presence to deter Chinese aggression while attempting negotiations with China.
Key points:
- China has recently attempted to use military force to back up alleged historical claims to the South China Sea and East China Sea; however, upon closer examination, the claims do not hold up.
- China’s belligerent attempts to enforce its claims in the South and East China Seas endanger peace in Asia. China appears unlikely to accept any reasonable proposals that respect history and geography.
- Southeast Asian nations and other interested countries, like the United States and Australia, must maintain a military presence to deter Chinese aggression while attempting to negotiate a peaceful settlement with China.
Recently, China has used military aircraft and ships to threaten Japan in the East China Sea near the Senkaku Islands (which the Chinese call the Diaoyu Islands and the government in Taiwan calls the Diaoyutai). Similarly, in the South China Sea, Chinese ships have claimed areas very far from China but very close to such Southeast Asian countries as the Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam. China argues that these places belong to China, owing to long historical circumstances. But an examination of the evidence demonstrates that China has no historical claims to either the South China Sea or the East China Sea.
China makes its historical
claims to the South and East China Seas in two key documents. "Historical
Evidence to Support China's Sovereignty over Nansha Islands," issued by
the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on November 17, 2000, makes China's
claims for the South China Sea.1 The Chinese government white paper entitled
"Diaoyu Dao, an Inherent Territory of China," issued in September
2012, makes the historical case for the East China Sea.2
The Chinese claim places in
the South and East China Seas because Chinese historical books mention them.
For example, during the Three Kingdoms period (the years 221-277), Yang Fu (楊阜) wrote about the South China Sea: "There are
islets, sand cays, reefs and banks in the South China Sea, the water there is
shallow and filled with magnetic rocks or stones (漲海崎頭. 水淺而多磁石)."3 Despite the assertions in part A of
"Historical Evidence," this passage simply describes a sea and does
not make any claim for Chinese sovereignty.
These references in Chinese
historical books have four additional difficulties. First, names in historical
books are not necessarily the same as the place claimed today. Second, many
places are described as the location of "barbarians" (for example, yi
夷 and fan 番), who by definition were not Chinese. Third, some of
the mentions describe a "tributary" (附庸) relationship with China, but in these tributary
relationships China and the tributary nation sent each other envoys (使臣).
Furthermore, these foreign and tributary nations
most clearly were not under the rule of the Chinese emperors, nor were they
part of the Chinese nation or empire.
Finally, the Chinese
historical claims refer to the Mongol (1279-1367) and Manchu (1644-1911)
empires when China was defeated and under foreign rule. China's defeat becomes
clear when reading the despair of Chinese scholars in those times, yet the
rulers in China today distort China's history by pretending that this rule was
simply by Chinese "minority nationalities." China today making a
claim on the basis of the Mongol or Manchu empires is like India claiming Singapore
because both were simultaneously colonies of the British Empire or Vietnam
claiming Algeria because both were simultaneously colonies of the French
Empire.
Let us now consider more
specific claims with respect to the South and East China Seas.
The South China Sea
Figure 1 shows the
conflicting claims over the South China Sea. China makes by far the largest
claim to the South China Sea, a claim that runs along the Vietnamese coast and
approaches the coasts of Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines. The
Chinese claim, which extends about 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) to the south
of China's Hainan Island, is difficult to defend in geographic terms.
Figure 1. Conflicting
Maritime Claims in the South China Sea
Source: US Central
Intelligence Agency (available from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Schina_sea_88.png).
Figure 2, an official
Chinese map of Hainan Province, demonstrates that figure 1 does in fact
accurately represent China's claims to the South China Sea.
Figure 2. An Official Map
of China's Hainan Province
Source: Hainan provincial
government (www.hainan.gov.cn/code/V3/en/images/map-of-hainan-large.jpg).
The Chinese document
"Historical Evidence" begins to provide more evidence about the South
China Sea as of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).4 Yet for centuries prior to the
Ming Dynasty, ships of Arab and Southeast Asian merchants had filled the South
China Sea and the Indian Ocean. China, too, was involved in this trade, though
the trade was dominated by Arabs and Southeast Asians. In the words of Edward
Dreyer, a leading Ming Dynasty historian, "Arabic . . . was the lingua
franca of seafarers from South China to the African coast."5
The importance of Arab
traders is clear in a variety of ways. During the Tang Dynasty (618-906), a
"largely Muslim foreign merchant community [lived] in Canton (Guangzhou).
Canton was sacked in 879 by the Chinese rebel Huang Chao, and the most vivid
account of the ensuing massacre is in Arabic rather than Chinese."6
Before the Song Dynasty,
non-Chinese dominated trade in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. In the
words of Dreyer, "Despite the importance of China in this trade, Chinese
ships and Chinese merchants and crews did not become important participants
prior to the Song (960-1276). Well before then, voyages between China and India
were made in large ships accompanied by tenders. The Chinese Buddhist pilgrim
Faxian [法顯]
travelled in 413 aboard a large merchant ship. . . . The largest ships of
Faxian's day were . . . very large . . . [b]ut they were Indonesian, not
Chinese."7
The Mongol Empire sent a
Chinese man, Zhou Daguan (周達觀), as envoy to Angkor (modern Cambodia) in 1296-97. Zhou's writing
provides an important source of information about daily life in Angkor at this
time, and two different English translations have now been published.8 Of
course, Angkor was a foreign country outside of the Mongol Empire, and Zhou did
not pretend otherwise.
Early in Ming Dynasty,
during the reign of the Yongle (永樂) Emperor (r. 1403-24) and his successors, the Ming
court sent the famous commander, Zheng He (鄭和), on seven major expeditions to Southeast Asia, South
Asia, and the east African coast between 1405 and 1433. Zheng He had huge
fleets with many "treasure ships" (baochuan 寶船), which were probably the largest wooden ships ever
constructed. But Zheng's voyages were not voyages of exploration. In fact, Dreyer
wrote, "Zheng He's destinations were prosperous commercial ports located
on regularly travelled trade routes and . . . his voyages used navigational
techniques and details of the monsoon wind patterns that were known to Chinese
navigators since the Song Dynasty (960-1276) and to Arab and Indonesian sailors
for centuries before that."9 Zheng's voyages, like those of the Portuguese
who came a few decades later, "were attracted by an already functioning
trading system."10 Like the later Portuguese, Zheng most likely used Arab
navigators in the western half of the Indian Ocean.
Zheng's voyages had the
purpose of bringing various foreign countries into China's tributary system.
This proved successful as long as Zheng's voyages continued, but the immense
military force of Zheng's fleets, with over 27,000 men (mostly soldiers), meant
that potential force was always an element in these voyages and violence was
used on three occasions.11
The biography of Zheng He in
the official History of the Ming Dynasty (Mingshi 明史) demonstrates the importance of the "iron hand
in the velvet glove": "Then they went in succession to the various
foreign countries. . . . Those who did not submit were pacified by force."12
Zheng's voyages did have some influence. The rise of Malacca (Melaka) as a
trading port to some extent owes to support from Zheng.13 But, "After the
third ruler of Malacca converted to Islam in 1436, Malacca attracted to its
port an increasing amount of the Indian Ocean and South China Sea trade, much
of which was carried on ships sent by Muslim merchants and crewed by Muslim
sailors. . . . [After Zheng He] this pattern of trade, now largely in Muslim
hands, persisted until the arrival of the Portuguese."14
Owing to the great expense
of Zheng He's voyages, as well as the Ming Dynasty's concern with the Mongols
on its northern borders, China turned inward and northward: "The [Ming]
prohibition against building oceangoing ships and conducting foreign trade
remained in force, and Chinese private citizens who violated this prohibition
went beyond the borders of the Ming empire and ceased to be objects of
government solicitude."15 With a northward-oriented foreign policy and the
prohibition of building oceangoing ships and conducting foreign trade, Ming
China withdrew from the oceans. As I will show, this policy also affected the
East China Sea.
Before moving to the East
China Sea, however, let us consider another argument used to prove that China
owns the areas around the South China Sea. This argument emphasizes the discovery
of Chinese ceramics and pottery shards. As noted earlier, the South China Sea
was a trading hub filled with ships carrying various valuable cargoes,
including Chinese ceramics and Southeast Asian spices. But most of the ships
carrying this cargo were Southeast Asian or Arab. This failure to distinguish
between a trade good and the ships carrying the good affected the analysis of
at least one senior Chinese leader. In his speech to the Australian Parliament
on October 24, 2003, Chinese President Hu Jintao said, "Back in the 1420s,
the expeditionary fleets of China's Ming Dynasty reached Australian
shores."16 President Hu was referring to Zheng He, but we know the
itineraries of Zheng's voyages, and we know that they did not include
Australia.17 In fact, Australian aborigines had long carried on trade with
Macassans, who came from Sulawesi in modern Indonesia, and such Chinese
ceramics most likely came from this trade, which included trepang and northern
Australian timbers.18 This trade between the northern Australian indigenous
peoples and the Macassans resulted in several Macassan words becoming an
integral part of north Australian indigenous languages,19 but it provides no
evidence that Chinese ever visited Australian shores before the 19th century.
"Historical
Evidence" does not address one more important historic claim: the
so-called "Nine-Dash Line" in the South China Sea. The origins of
this line date back to 1933, when the then Republic of China's Land and Water
Maps Inspection Committee was formed. Conventionally, the public appearance of
the so-called Nine-Dash Line map (figure 3) is dated 1947, though some sources
date its publication as early as December 194620 or as late as February 1948.21
After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Premier Zhou
Enlai (周恩來) accepted the Nine-Dash
Line as valid for the People's Republic as well, though sources vary as to when
this took place. Since then, the Nine-Dash Line has varied, with different
official versions having 9, 10, and 11 dashes. Yet this cartographic claim adds
nothing to the historical evidence about any "sovereignty" over the
South China Sea.
Figure 3. Original
Nine-Dash Line Map Issued by the Republic of China in the Late 1940s.
Source: 1947 Nanhai Zhudao
(available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-dash_line#mediaviewer/File:1947_Nanhai_Zhudao.png).
The East China Sea
Chinese historical claims to
the East China Sea were clarified in the September 2012 white paper
"Diaoyu Dao, an Inherent Territory of China." The paper begins its
historical argument by stating that the Diaoyu Islands 釣魚島 (or, to use their Japanese name, the Senkaku Islands 尖閣諸島)
were mentioned in a Chinese book published in 1403, Voyage with a Tail Wind
(Shunfeng xiangsong 順風相送).22 As noted earlier, specific identification of
modern locations with places mentioned in Chinese historical books remains
uncertain, and in any case, the naming of a foreign country or place does not
in any way say that China made a claim to these places. It is noteworthy that
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China in Taiwan made a
similar claim in September 2012, but that this claim had been deleted from the
Ministry's website in June 2013.
The white paper then goes on
to mention that the Kingdom of the Ryukyu Islands began to pay the Ming tribute
in 1372.23 As noted earlier, a tributary relationship is not the same as a
claim of ownership. Tribute nations were foreign states, and the Ming sent
envoys to and received envoys from these foreign countries. Tributary relations
gave the tribute nation substantial foreign trade privileges with China.
As shown in the discussion
of the South China Sea, following the deaths of the Yongle Emperor and Zheng
He, the Ming Dynasty focused inward and northward and forbade "building
oceangoing ships and conducting foreign trade."24 Han Chinese from Fujian
did temporarily visit Taiwan, primarily southwestern Taiwan, to fish, trade
with the aborigines and hide, in the case of pirates. Yet Taiwan remained a
foreign place,25 and no permanent Han Chinese settlements existed in Taiwan
until the Dutch imported Chinese for labor after the establishment of their
colonial regime in 1624. When the Spanish arrived in 1626, they found virtually
no Han Chinese in northern Taiwan.26
Taiwan received little
attention in Chinese documents until late in the Ming Dynasty. In the words of
Laurence G. Thompson, one of the earliest Western scholars on Taiwan history:
"The most striking fact about the historical knowledge of Formosa is the
lack of it in Chinese records. It is truly astonishing that this very large
island . . . should have remained virtually beyond the ken of Chinese writers
until late Ming times (seventeenth century)."27 The Diaoyu(tai)/Senkaku
Islands were much smaller than Taiwan, much farther from the Ming to Taiwan's
east, and uninhabited. Thus, when Ming documents ignored much larger and closer
Taiwan, they almost certainly did not mention the much smaller and more distant
Diaoyu(tai)/Senkaku Islands.
In fact, both the People's
Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan stated that the
Diaoyu(tai)/Senkaku Islands belonged to Japan until the possibility of
hydrocarbons in the seas near the islands was mentioned in a 1968 United
Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East survey of coastal mineral
resources. On January 8, 1953, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist
Party, the People's Daily (Renmin ribao 人民日報), published a report stating that the Senkaku Islands
belonged to Japan's Ryukyu Archipelago.28 Figure 4 shows this article on the
lower-left of page 4. Figure 5 shows the article itself. The article begins:
The Ryukyu Archipelago is
distributed on the sea between the northeast of China's Taiwan and the
southwest of Japan's Kyushu Island. It has seven groups of islands including
the Senkaku Islands. . . . The Ryukyu Archipelago stretches one thousand
kilometres. On its closest side (內側) [to us] is China's East China Sea. On its furthest
side (外側) are the high seas of the
Pacific Ocean. (琉球群島散佈在我國台灣東北和日本九州島西南安之間的海面上,包括尖閣諸島...琉球群島綿亙達一千公里.它的內側是我國東海,外側就是太平洋公海.)29
This suggests that the
Senkaku Islands are outside of China's sovereignty, an interpretation that
other pieces of evidence also support.
Figure 4. View of People's
Daily.
Source: Renmin ribao, January
8, 1953, 4.
Figure 5. People's
Daily Article Stating That Senkaku Islands Belong to Ryukyu Archipelago
Source: Renmin ribao, January
8, 1953, 4.
In 1958 China published a World
Atlas (Shijie dituji 世界地图集) that demonstrates that the Senkaku Islands belonged
to Japan.30 The map of Japan (figure 6) has a separate map of the Ryukyu
Archipelago in the lower right-hand corner. On this map, the international
boundary is to the east of Taiwan but to the west of the Senkakus, which are
clearly labeled in Chinese characters as Uotsuri Island 魚釣島 and as the Senkaku Islands 尖閣群島.
Three other maps in this
collection verify that the Senkaku Islands fall to the east of China's
proclaimed international boundary to Taiwan's northeast. These maps are Asia
Political 亚洲政区
(figure 7), China Topographical 中国地形 (figure 8), and China Political 中国政区 (figure 9). In figures 8 and 9, the international
border is also shown to be west of the 123° longitude line while, as shown
below, the Senkaku Islands are all to the east of that line. The government of
Taiwan under Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石 also repeatedly published official maps that showed the
Diaoyu(tai)/Senkaku Islands as belonging to Japan until 1971.31
Figure 6. Map of Japan
Source: Shijie dituji 世界地图集 [World Atlas], 1958,
25-26.
Figure 7. Asia Political
Map
Source: Shijie dituji 世界地图集 [World Atlas], 1958,
11-12.
Figure 8. China
Topographical Map
Source: Shijie dituji 世界地图集 [World Atlas], 1958,
14-15.
Figure 9. China Political
Map
Source: Shijie dituji 世界地图集 [World Atlas], 1958,
17-18.
Only after both the 1968
United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East survey of coastal
mineral resources suggesting hydrocarbons in the area of the islands and the
Diaoyutai movement in Hong Kong, the United States, and elsewhere did either the
government of the People's Republic or the government of Chiang Kai-shek evince
any interest in the islands. Furthermore, all Chinese assertions of sovereignty
based on the Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895) or the San Francisco Peace Treaty
(1951) have no credibility since these treaties do not even mention the
Diaoyu(tai)/Senkaku Islands.32 These islands did not belong to China and could
not be returned.
Claims that the
Diaoyu(tai)/Senkaku Islands have "always been affiliated to China's Taiwan
Island both in geographical terms and in accordance with China's historical
jurisdiction practice"33 also have no historical basis. The Republic of
China government under Chiang Kai-shek accepted the surrender of the Japanese
in Taiwan on October 25, 1945. The Taiwan Provincial Executive Commander's
Office 臺灣省行政長官公署 under Chen Yi 陳儀 published a major book with 540 tables and 1,384
pages translating 51 years of Japanese statistics about Taiwan into Chinese.34
Using statistics dated August 1946, this book suggests that the eastern most
parts of "Taiwan Province" were Taiwan island (122°00′04″E), Pengjia
Islet 彭佳嶼 (122°04′51″E), and
Mianhua Islet 棉花嶼
(122°06′15″E).35 These are the only locations east of 122°E. Yet, the
westernmost of the Diaoyutai/Senkaku Islands is more than 1°24′45″ further east
at 123°31′0″E. Thus, under the Japanese colonial rule over Taiwan (1895-1945),
the Diaoyu(tai)/Senkaku Islands were never administered as part of Taiwan. This
situation is quite different from that of the South China Sea, where Japan did
administer some islands through its colony in Taiwan.36
The Chinese government has
also expressed anger over the so-called "nationalization" (Japanese: kokuyūka
国 有化) of the Senkaku Islands, a subject mentioned in both
the foreword and conclusion of the "Diaoyu Dao" white paper. The
Chinese assert that the Japanese government gained sovereignty through this
nationalizing process. In fact, this is a misunderstanding. As we have seen,
the Japanese government exercised sovereignty over the Diaoyu(tai)/Senkaku
Islands before the nationalization process and the process did not change
sovereignty at all. Rather, by nationalizing, the Japanese government converted
Japanese land from private ownership to land held by the national government.
This happens frequently in many societies when, for example, a government
converts private property into a national park.
At the recent international
China Pacific Forum 2013 held in Beijing in October 2013, Chinese scholars
continued to provide further "historical evidence" that the so-called
Diaoyu Islands belong to China. One scholar showed a Ming Dynasty map that
purported to show both the coast of Fujian Province and the Diaoyu Islands. The
map, however, did not show Taiwan. Clearly the so-called Diaoyu Islands on this
map were not the islands to the northeast of Taiwan.
Another scholar asserted
that a Japanese military map stated that the Diaoyu Islands belong to China,
but the Japanese writing on the map simply referred to "Taiwan and
associated islands." The evidence presented in this paper clearly shows
that the Diaoyu(tai)/Senkaku Islands were not associated with Taiwan. Thus,
Chinese scholars today continue to make historical claims for the Senkaku
Islands, but poor history and leaps of logic underpin their "research."
Conclusion
China's belligerent attempts
to enforce its claims in the South and East China Seas endanger peace in Asia.
In dealing with the Chinese about these issues, the United States and countries
with claims to these seas should make crystal clear that they do not accept
China's so-called historical claims. We must note that these claims have no
historical basis and that the Chinese use these false claims in their efforts
at territorial expansionism in the South and East China Seas.
Unfortunately, to date China
has failed to indicate any willingness to take steps that might lead to genuine
peace in disputes over the South and East China Seas. For example, in response
to a recent Philippine initiative to go to an international tribunal, the
Permanent Court of Arbitration, a commentary in the People's Daily
responded, "The act of the Philippine side is against the international
law and the historical truth as well as against morality and basic rules
of international relations [italics added]."37 Such a broad-based Chinese
attack on the Philippine proposal, including the claim that the Philippines is
acting immorally, suggests that China is not prepared to make any concession
whatsoever and that it does not seek any genuine resolution of the dispute.
Similarly, the last
paragraph in the Chinese "Diaoyu Dao" white paper also expresses a
lack of willingness to make even the slightest concession:
China strongly urges Japan
to respect history and international law and immediately stop all actions that
undermine China's territorial sovereignty. The Chinese government has the
unshakable resolve and will to uphold the nation's territorial sovereignty. It
has the confidence and ability to safeguard China's state sovereignty and
territorial integrity.38
Yet, as we have seen,
China's claims in "history and international law" do not demonstrate
that China has sovereignty in the Senkaku Islands.
While policymakers must
continue to make efforts to reach a just peace in the South and East China
Seas, the prospects of China accepting any reasonable proposals that respect
history and geography seem remote. Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia,
Indonesia, and Brunei and other interested nations such as the United States
and Australia must also maintain a strong military capacity to deter Chinese
aggression simultaneous with attempts to negotiate a peaceful settlement with
China.
J. Bruce Jacobs (Bruce.Jacobs@monash.edu) is Emeritus
Professor of Asian Languages and Studies at Monash University in Melbourne,
Australia. His most recent books are Local Politics in Rural Taiwan under
Dictatorship and Democracy (EastBridge, 2008) and Democratizing Taiwan
(Brill, 2012). The four-volume Critical Readings on China-Taiwan Relations,
which he edited with an introduction, is being published by Brill in June
2014.
Notes
1. For the text of “Historical Evidence,” see www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/topics_665678/3754_666060/t19231.shtml.
2. State Council Information Office, the People’s Republic of China, “Diaoyu Dao, an Inherent Territory of China,” September 2012; for English text, see www.gov.cn/english/official/2012-09/25/content_2232763.htm, and for Chinese text, see http://news.xinhuanet.com/2012-09/25/c_113202698.htm.
3. “Historical Evidence.” For more information about Yang Fu, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Fu_%28Han_Dynasty%29 and http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%A5%8A%E9%98%9C. In fact, Yang’s main contributions were during the Three Kingdoms period rather than the Eastern Han.
4. “Historical Evidence,” especially Parts B and C.
5. Edward L. Dreyer, Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty, 1405–1433 (New York: Pearson Longman, 2007), 7.
6. Ibid., 37.
7. Ibid., 37–38.
8. Chou Ta-kuan (Zhou Daguan), The Customs of Cambodia (Bangkok: Siam Society, 1987, 1992, 1993); and Zhou Daguan, A Record of Cambodia: The Land and Its People, trans. Peter Harris (Bangkok: Silkworm Books, 2007). The Chinese title of Zhou’s book is Zhenla fengtuji真臘風土記.
9. Dreyer, Zheng He, 182.
10. Ibid., 175.
11. Ibid, 28–29 and others.
12. Mingshi 304.2b-4b, as translated in Dreyer, Zheng He, 187–88. The Chinese text in simplified characters is: “以次遍历诸番国…不服则以武慑之.” For the original Chinese Mingshi biography of Zheng He, see www.guoxue.com/shibu/24shi/mingshi/ms_304.htm.
13. Dreyer, Zheng He, 46.
14. Ibid., 175.
15. Ibid.
16. For the text of Hu Jintao’s speech to the Australian parliament, see Australian Parliament House of Representatives, “Address by the President of the People’s Republic of China,” October 23, 2003, 166–71, www.aph.gov.au/binaries/library/pubs/monographs/kendall/appendone.pdf. Quote is from 166.
17. Dreyer, Zheng He.
18. On the trade between the northern Australian indigenous peoples and the Macassans, see “Macassan Traders,” Australia: The Land Where Time Began, September 30, 2011, http://austhrutime.com/macassan_traders.htm; Rupert Gerritsen, “When Did the Macassans Start Coming to Northern Australia?,” http://rupertgerritsen.tripod.com/pdf/published/Djulirri_Rock_Art.pdf; and Marshall Clark and Sally K. May (eds.), Macassan History and Heritage: Journeys, Encounters and Influences (Canberra: ANU E Press, 2013), introduction, http://epress.anu.edu.au/apps/bookworm/view/Macassan+History+and+Heritage/10541/ch01.xhtml#toc_marker-4.
19. Kate Humphris, “Macassan History in Arnhem Land,” 105.7 ABC Darwin, July 29, 2009, www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2009/07/21/2632428.htm.
20. Erik Franckx and Marco Benatar, “Dots and Lines in the South China Sea: Insights from the Law of Map Evidence,” Asian Journal of International Law 2 (2012): 90–91.
21. Zhiguo Gao and Bing Bing Jia, “The Nine-Dash Line in the South China Sea: History, Status, and Implications,” American Journal Of International Law 107 (2013): 102–03.
22. “Diaoyu Dao, an Inherent Territory of China,” Section I.1. The Chinese text of Voyage with a Tail Wind can be found at http://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E4%B8%A4%E7%A7%8D%E6%B5%B7%E9%81%93%E9%92%88%E7%BB%8F.
23. “Diaoyu Dao,” Section I.1.
24. Dreyer, Zheng He, 175.
25. See the 1603 account by Chen Di陳第, “An Account of Eastern Barbarians” (Dongfan ji東番記), translated in Lawrence G. Thompson, “The Earliest Chinese Eyewitness Accounts of the Formosan Aborigines,” Monumenta Serica, no. 23 (1963): 172–78.
26. Tonio Andrade, How Taiwan Became Chinese: Dutch, Spanish, and Han Colonialization in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 83. See also sources cited in J. Bruce Jacobs, “Review Essay: The History of Taiwan,” China Journal, no. 65 (January 2011): 196–97.
27. Laurence G. Thompson, “The Earliest Chinese Eyewitness Accounts of the Formosan Aborigines,” Monumenta Serica, no. 23 (1964): 163.
28. “Ziliao: Liuqiu qundao renmin fandui Meiguo zhanling de douzheng 資料: 琉球群島人民反對美國佔領的鬥爭” [Reference: The Struggle of the Ryukyu Archipelago People Against American Occupation], Renmin ribao 人民日報 [People’s Daily], January 8, 1953, 4.
29. Ibid.
30. Shijie dituji 世界地图集 [World Atlas] (Beijing and Shanghai: Ditu chubanshe, 1958).
31. Ko-hua Yap, Yu-wen Chen, and Ching-chi Huang, “The Diaoyutai Islands on Taiwan’s Official Maps: Pre- and Post-1971,” Asian Affairs: An American Review 39, no. 2 (2012): 90–105.
32. “Diaoyu Dao,” Section IV. For the text of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, see www.taiwandocuments.org/shimonoseki01.htm. For text of the Treaty of San Francisco, see www.taiwandocuments.org/sanfrancisco01.htm. The Treaty of Taipei (1952), the Treaty of Peace between the Republic of China government under Chiang Kai-shek and Japan, which the Ma Ying-jeou government in Taiwan often cites, also does not mention the islands. For the text of the Treaty of Taipei, see www.taiwandocuments.org/taipei01.htm.
33. “Diaoyu Dao,” Section IV.
34. Taiwan sheng wushiyi nian lai tongji tiyao 臺灣省五十一年來統計提要 [Statistical Abstract of Taiwan Province for the Past Fifty-One Years] (Taipei: Statistical Office of the Taiwan Provincial Administration Agency, 1946; reprint, Taipei: Guting Shuwu, 1969).
35. Ibid., 52.
36. Ibid., 51, 54.
37. “Commentary Gives China’s Reasons for Refusing Arbitration on South China Sea Issue,” Xinhua, April 1, 2014, http://english.people.com.cn/90883/8584641.html or http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-04/01/c_133228152.htm.
38. “Diaoyu Dao.”
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