A. Many countries, world public opinions and
publications of other countries recognize the Nansha Islands
as Chinese territory.
1. The United Kingdom of
Great Britain and the Northern Island
a) China
Sea Pilot compiled and printed by the Hydrography Department
of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom in 1912 has accounts
of the activities of the Chinese people on the Nansha
Islands in a number of places.
b) The Far
Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong) carried an article on
Dec. 31 of 1973 which quotes the British High Commissioner
to Singapore as having said in 1970: "Spratly Island
(Nanwei Island in Chinese) was a Chinese dependency, part of
Kwangtung Province… and was returned to China after
the war. We can not find any indication of its having been
acquired by any other country and so can only conclude it is
still held by communist China."
2.
France
a) Le Monde Colonial Illustre mentioned
the Nansha Islands in its September 1933 issue. According to
that issue, when a French gunboat named Malicieuse surveyed
the Nanwei Island of the Nansha Islands in 1930, they saw
three Chinese on the island and when France invaded nine of
the Nansha Islands by force in April 1933, they found all
the people on the islands were Chinese, with 7 Chinese on
the Nanzi Reef, 5 on the Zhongye Island, 4 on the Nanwei
Island, thatched houses, water wells and holy statues left
by Chinese on the Nanyue Island and a signboard with Chinese
characters marking a grain storage on the Taiping
Island.
b) Atlas International Larousse
published in 1965 in France marks the Xisha, Nansha and
Dongsha Islands by their Chinese names and gives clear
indication of their ownership as China in
brackets.
3) Japan
a) Yearbook of
New China published in Japan in 1966 describes the coastline
of China as 11 thousand kilometers long from Liaodong
Peninsula in the north to the Nansha Islands in the south,
or 20 thousand kilometers if including the coastlines of all
the islands along its coast;
b) Yearbook of
the World published in Japan in 1972 says that Chinese
territory includes not only the mainland, but also Hainan
Island, Taiwan, Penghu Islands as well as the Dongsha,
Xisha, Zhongsha and Nansha Islands on the South China
Sea.
4. The United States
a)
Columbia Lippincott World Toponymic Dictionary published in
the United States in 1961 states that the Nansha Islands on
the South China Sea are part of Guangdong Province and
belong to China.
b) The Worldmark Encyclopaedia
of the Nations published in the United States in 1963 says
that the islands of the People's Republic extend southward
to include those isles and coral reefs on the South China
Sea at the north latitude 4°.
c) World
Administrative Divisions Encyclopaedia published in 1971
says that the People's Republic has a number of
archipelagoes, including Hainan Island near the South China
Sea, which is the largest, and a few others on the South
China Sea extending to as far as the north latitude 4°,
such as the Dongsha, Xisha, Zhongsha and Nansha
Islands.
5. Viet Nam
a) Vice
Foreign Minister Dung Van Khiem of the Democratic Republic
of Viet Nam received Mr. Li Zhimin, charge d'affaires ad
interim of the Chinese Embassy in Viet Nam and told him that
"according to Vietnamese data, the Xisha and Nansha
Islands are historically part of Chinese territory."
Mr. Le Doc, Acting Director of the Asian Department of the
Vietnamese Foreign Ministry, who was present then, added
that "judging from history, these islands were already
part of China at the time of the Song
Dynasty."
b) Nhan Dan of Viet Nam reported
in great detail on September 6, 1958 the Chinese
Government's Declaration of September 4, 1958 that the
breadth of the territorial sea of the People's Republic of
China should be 12 nautical miles and that this provision
should apply to all territories of the People's Republic of
China, including all islands on the South China Sea. On
September 14 the same year, Premier Pham Van Dong of the
Vietnamese Government solemnly stated in his note to Premier
Zhou Enlai that Viet Nam "recognizes and supports the
Declaration of the Government of the People's Republic of
China on China's territorial sea."
c) It
is stated in the lesson The People's Republic of China of a
standard Vietnamese school textbook on geography published
in 1974 that the islands from the Nansha and Xisha Islands
to Hainan Island and Taiwan constitute a great wall for the
defense of the mainland of China.
B. The maps
printed by other countries in the world that mark the
islands on the South China Sea as part of Chinese territory
include:
1. The Welt-Atlas published by the
Federal Republic of Germany in 1954, 1961 and 1970
respectively;
2. World Atlas published by the
Soviet Union in 1954 and 1967 respectively;
3.
World Atlas published by Romania in 1957;
4.
Oxford Australian Atlas and Philips Record Atlas published
by Britain in 1957 and Encyclopaedia Britannica World Atlas
published by Britain in 1958;
5. World Atlas
drawn and printed by the mapping unit of the Headquarters of
the General Staff of the People's Army of Viet Nam in
1960;
6. Haack Welt Atlas published by German
Democratic in 1968;
7. Daily Telegraph World
Atlas published by Britain in 1968;
8. Atlas
International Larousse published by France in 1968 and 1969
respectively;
9. World Map Ordinary published
by the Institut Geographique National (IGN) of France in
1968;
10. World Atlas published by the
Surveying and Mapping Bureau of the Prime Minister's Office
of Viet Nam in 1972; and
11. China Atlas
published by Neibonsya of Japan in 1973.
C.
China's sovereignty over the Nansha Islands is recognized in
numerous international conferences.
1. The 1951
San Francisco Conference on Peace Treaty called on Japan to
give up the Xisha and Nansha Islands. Andrei Gromyko, Head
of the Delegation of the Soviet Union to the Conference,
pointed out in his statement that the Xisha and Nansha
Islands were an inalienable part of Chinese territory. It is
true that the San Francisco Peace Treaty failed to
unambiguously ask Japan to restore the Xisha and Nansha
Islands to China. But the Xisha, Nansha, Dongsha and
Zhongsha Islands that Japan was asked to abandun by the
Peace Agreement of San Francisco Conference were all clearly
marked as Chinese territory in the fifteenth map A Map of
Southeast Asia of the Standard World Atlas published by
Japan in 1952, the second year after the peace conference in
San Francisco, which was recommended by the then Japanese
Foreign Minister Katsuo Okazaki in his own
handwriting.
2. The International Civil
Aviation Organization held its first conference on
Asia-Pacific regional aviation in Manila of the Philippines
on 27 October 1955. Sixteen countries or regions were
represented at the conference, including South Viet Nam and
the Taiwan authorities, apart from Australia, Canada, Chile,
Dominica, Japan, the Laos, the Republic of Korea, the
Philippines, Thailand, the United Kingdom, the United
States, New Zealand and France. The Chief Representative of
the Philippines served as Chairman of the conference and the
Chief Representative of France its first Vice Chairman. It
was agreed at the conference that the Dongsha, Xisha and
Nansha Islands on the South China Sea were located at the
communication hub of the Pacific and therefore the
meteorological reports of these islands were vital to world
civil aviation service. In this context, the conference
adopted Resolution No. 24, asking China's Taiwan authorities
to improve meteorological observation on the Nansha Islands,
four times a day. When this resolution was put for voting,
all the representatives, including those of the Philippines
and the South Viet Nam, were for it. No representative at
the conference made any objection to or reservation about it.