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Chinese use faked historical maps to advance case in the South China Sea

By Hoang Truong Sa and Tony Le
28 May 2008

As China’s economy grows and its desire for regional and world dominance peaks, the South China Sea continues to play an essential role in whether China’s dreams become a reality. Ever since China decided that this sea and the islands in it were necessary to China’s progress, few efforts have been spared by China to seize control of this region and to convince the world that this control is legitimate, even if China’s claims would find it extremely difficult to stand up in an international court of law.

In order to grab (actually to steal, we should say) a large chunk of the South China Sea that belong to South East Asian countries such as Vietnam, the Phillipines, Malaysia, and Brunei, China has resorted to a number of rather dishonest tactics. Firstly, it gave all islands in the South China Sea Chinese names, then it used a number of dashed lines to arbitrarily draw a large area encompassing all those islands (including the Paracel and Spratly archipelagoes) in a “cow tongue” looking shape, and then declared that this constituted Chinese historical waters and land territories.

In a tireless effort to persuade the world that China’s claims are legitimate, it constantly, loudly and unashamedly insists that these islands belong to China ever since “time immemorial,” that Chinese people were the first to discover them and to administer them, and so on and so forth… However, when China is pressed to present concrete evidence, it can hardly come up with any acceptable ones, apart from vigorously insisting on its ancient historical might as justification for why it would make complete sense for anything that ever crossed the path of Chinese people to naturally belong to China. When such sort of worldview is rejected by those who demand a more reasonable explanation for sovereignty, China resorts to other tricks to make its case. Even if other people do not buy China’s explanations, the Chinese themselves are eager to believe in the government’s arguments and even collaborate in suck trickery. An instance of this collusion may be seen in the case of using faked maps to advance the Chinese position as pointed out below.

In an article posted on http://www.spratlys.org/maps/5.htm on the Chinese Website nansha.org, a number of maps, from the 11-dashed lines “cow tongue” map of 1947 to various maps of China during the feudal period of the dynaties of Qing (Ching), Ming, Song, Tang, Sui, Tan etc… are posted as “historical documents”. On every such map the author deliberately added a rectangular box representing the “cow tongue map” and pretends that those maps are original ones depicting Chinese territories as known during those days. In this manner, the area of South China Sea (delineated by cow tongue shape) has always been considered a part of China, even during these early dynasties.

For instance, following is the map of China during the Qing’s dynasty as it appears on the popular site

qing map

Map 1 : Map of China - Qing (Ching) Dynasty as in nansha.org’s article

If we look more closely at this map, we will see that this is not an ancient original map drawn during the Qing period, rather it is a modern (perhaps high school?) map about the era of Qing dynasty where the “cow tongue” has been added to create an impression that even during the Qing Dynasty, this region was considered Chinese territory. More astonishingly, this little boxed-off “cow tongue” map had been added even to the maps of much earlier periods in Chinese feudal times such as Ming, Song, Tang, etc…

How can such blatant misrepresentation take place? We all know that the so called U-shape 9-dashed line (i.e. the cow tongue) map appeared not before 1946 when the then Chiang Kai Sek’s government first introduced it. In the feudal time in Chinese history, nothing such as the Paracel or Spratly islands were mentioned in Chinese documents.

To prove this, we will produce below 4 official maps on Chinese territory drawn by the court of the Qing (Ching) dynasty. Similar things can be given for earlier periods, but the scope of this article does not permit us to do so here.

1) 皇朝府廳州縣全圖 (1862) : (Hoàng triều phủ, sảnh, châu, huyện, toàn đồ = General Map on palace, town hall, prefecture, district of the Reigning Dynasty)
(see above).

2) 皇朝一統輿地總圖 (1894) : (Hoàng triều nhất thống dư địa tổng đồ = Geographical Map of the Unified Reigning Dynasty)

3) 大清帝國位置區劃圖 (1909) : (Đại Thanh Đế Quốc Vị Trí Khu Hoạch Đồ = Map on the plan of regions of the Great Empire of the Qing)

4) Da Qing Di Guo Quan Tu (1905) : (Đại Thanh Đế Quốc Toàn Đồ = General Map of the Great Empire of the Qing)

[Maps 2, 3 and 4 are Maps 2.40, 2.41, 2.43 taken from the Doctoral Dissertation of Nguyễn Nhã, entitled “The process of affirming sovereignty of Vietnam over the Hoang Sa and Truong Sa archipelagoes” National University of Ho Chi Minh City, 2002 (page 258, 259 and 261 respectively).
Map 5 is taken from page 154 of Lưu Văn Lợi book “The Sino-Vietnamese Difference on the Hoang Sa and Truong Sa Archipelagoes”, Thế Giới Publishers, Hanoi, 1996.]

These 4 ancient historical and official maps of the Qing Dynasty all show that the extreme south of the Qing Empire is the island of Hainan. No mention is made of the Xisha (Paracel) or Nansha (Spratly) archipelagoes, let alone the whole chunk of the South China Sea in the cow tongue map. By comparing Map 1 and the 4 maps below, one can easily find out where the truth lies.

map 2

Map 2 : 皇朝府廳州縣全圖 (1862) : (Hoàng triều phủ, sảnh, châu, huyện, toàn đồ = General Map on palace, town hall, prefecture, district of the Reigning Dynasty)

Map 3 : 皇朝一統輿地總圖 (1894) : (Hoàng triều nhất thống dư địa tổng đồ = Geographical Map of the Unified Reigning Dynasty)

map 4

Map 4 : 大清帝國位置區劃圖 (1909) : (Đại Thanh Đế Quốc Vị Trí Khu Hoạch Đồ = Map on the plan of regions of the Great Empire of the Qing)

Map 5 : Da Qing Di Guo Quan Tu (General Map of the Great Empire of the Qing)

In conclusion, we would like to point out one specific instance deception aimed at misrepresenting the fact by the Chinese side in order to condemn a grand scale effort by the Chinese government and its so called South China Sea “institute” and “scholars” to propagate myths, half-truths, and even outright lies to the world in order to persuade unknowledgeable people that China has historical rights to the islands and waters in the South China Sea. Unfortunately, the Chinese point of view has been bought by many Western scholars who are unaware of China’s trickeries, and as a result, unintentionally help to advance China’s agenda. It is important that this sort of deception be pointed out in order to revert China’s miseducation of the public (both Chinese and non-Chinese) on who really has sovereignty over the islands is the South China Sea, and who has the right to control the resources in these waters.

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mao	\|05-28-2008 10:57:52

Whoever got the island would be decided by forces. Look at the British-Argentina war over the Falkland island in the 1980s.

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bibo	\|05-28-2008 12:56:40

what about the German, Japanese and Italian in WWII? What about the French at Dien Bien Phu battle? What about the Mongolian at Bach Dang river in Vietnam? What about the Chinese invading Vietnamese border in 1979?

What comes around will go around. Vietnam has always been a fraction of China, but she has always been able to protect her country and nation from foreign invasion, especially Chinese, for thousands of years. And yet, Vietnamese always welcome Chinese refugee every time Chinese history take its turn.

Vietnamese don't hate Chinese people. We just need to protect ourselves. You need to open your heart to see goodwill in life, Mao.

Using force is easy, but being kind and peaceful is so much harder and obtain much better result. Using antagonistic tone and foul language is easy, but will it get to people's mind and heart?

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mao	\|05-29-2008 09:10:31

what I mean is you can't judge things happened 30 or 40 years ago by today's standard.
of course as of now 2008, invasion is out of date, but at the same time you can't judge something and claimed that's invasion which happened more than 30 yrs ago because if you do then you would open a can of worms including the others not just vietnam and China.

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Tony - re:

|05-29-2008 15:41:47

Mao,

When you bring up a case, i.e. Falkland Islands, you have to present the information around the case in order to see if the situation between the two cases are similar. That is the scholarly way to examine a case. You can not say:

Whoever got the island would be decided by forces. Look at the British-Argentina war over the Falkland island in the 1980s.

and expect people to understand what you mean. Please present the facts for us to examine and compare

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Tony	\|05-29-2008 15:48:29

(you can't judge things happened 30 or 40 years ago by today's standard. - Mao)

Mao,

I am curious as to what your justification is for China's invasion of the Mischief Reef claimed by the Philippines in 1995, a mere 13 years ago.

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