China Sea Hong Kong Islands In The South: Fill & Download for Free

Let me explain Beijing's rationale, which is fundamentally different from the US's:The People's Republic is the successor to the Chinese imperial Qing dynasty. For a long time, China was weak, and the British seized Hong Kong, forced the Treaty Ports system on China, and sold opium to the Chinese. Because the central government was weak, it was unable to protect the interests of the Chinese people for nearly 200 years.Following the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, then China's reforms in 1979, China now has the second largest economy in the world. In order to help China's rejuvenation, the central government exercised control over Hong Kong in 1997 and over Macau in 1999.The exercise of these claims in the South China Sea is simply the central government in Beijing re-exercising control over islands which Beijing was previously too weak to control. Following WWII, the US Navy patrolled the South China Sea because China was too weak.In imperial times, what are now Vietnam and the Philippines were all Chinese tributary states. They would all offer gifts to the Chinese emperor every year, and the Chinese emperor would let them run their countries as they saw fit. The Chinese always allowed free trade and transport in the region.China is now saying that since it is back and is powerful again, it is natural that it will make moves to restore its control over lands and seas it considers to be its own territory.What appears to Americans as a suddenly aggressive move really should not be considered as such. The US should have expected this to happen ever since China's economy started to take off.It was only a question of when it would happen.Further reading:Paul Denlinger's answer to Has western foreign policy in East Asia misgauged historical trends over the past 150 years, and if so, how?

The UK does not “own" either. The 1973 border referendum in Northern Ireland showed 98.9% of people voting for UK sovereignty whilst the 2013 Falklands referendum showed 99.8% of people voting for UK sovereignty.This is democracy, not “ownership”.Conversely, China DOES own Hong Kong against the will of the Hong Kongers who wish to return to UK sovereignty, and by building islands in the South China Sea, China is in breach of UNCLOS laws, especially as it is using it to deliberately encroach upon the sovereignty of others.

I’d like to comment on territorial disputes in the South China Sea, and who the aggressors really are in these cases. I am in a particularly advantaged position to talk about this since I am from Taiwan as it will be made clear soon. In the plethora of Asian territorial disputes, there are really not so many true aggressors who are consciously and deliberately expansionary and aggressive. Usually the claimants of a territory truly believe in their rights to that piece of land or water due to some history, and will not make claims where they don’t think they have anything to do with it. This in my opinion is already much more noble than the European colonialists who simply took whatever they pleased. In this sense there have only been two true aggressors in Asia: Japan and Russia. All other countries believe to some extent they are entitled to their claim for some historical reasons. This is very important to remember when one makes a statement about aggressors in Asia. There have only been two in the real sense of the word, taking territories well-known not to be theirs: Japan and Russia, if one doesn’t count the old-time colonialists.When it comes to the South China Sea, China really, truly believes it has a historical claim to it. This is backed by historical records of Chinese governmental activities, together with mercantile and fishing enterprises in the entire region dating back 1000 years when the other countries around it had no provable records of activity. OK, let’s dismiss all these as folklore and focus only on the contemporary. After WWII, with the vacuum created by a defeated Japan and departing colonial powers from the South China Sea, the Chinese Nationalist government, or Republic of China (ROC), which was in the victorious Allied camp, having suffered a loss of 20 million human lives and multiple trillions in property damage, and which was allied to the US, staked a claim to the entire South China Sea and all islands in it based on this historical entitlement. This claim was fully backed by the US. The ROC Navy sent a fleet navigating around the entire South China Sea and erected territorial monuments on all the major islands, with full endorsement by the US and zero protest from neighboring countries. The very ships in the fleet were given to ROC by the US. Subsequently this territorial claim was recognized by the international community and no country in the region raised any objection for a long time. Today the largest natural island in the South China Sea, the Tai-Ping Island, is still controlled by ROC, or Taiwan as it is unofficially known.Now let me come to the aggressors. These would be Vietnam and The Philippines. They are the ones that violated the status quo by stealing islands from Taiwan/ROC. In the years following the above event, these two countries have consistently infringed on the islands in the South China sea, stealing them one by one from ROC/Taiwan. The second largest natural island in the South China Sea, the Chung-Yeh Island, was stolen in the 70’s by the Philippines when the Taiwanese personnel stationed on the island temporarily evacuated to evade a typhoon. Vietnam has stolen literally 100’s of islands in a similar manner, from which it is running a lucrative off-shore oil industry. Taiwan does not have the resource and military capability to protect its interest in this area, so it can only watch its maritime possession stolen by these two countries in front of its eyes. You might say, well, that’s how it goes. If you can’t keep it, you lose it. Very well, if that’s the logic, then there is nothing wrong if one day China retakes these islands by force from the hands of Vietnam and the Philippines, right?The Prime Minister of Vietnam has openly announced to China in the 1970’s his consent to Chinese claims to all islands in the South China Sea. This document is public knowledge and the Vietnamese do not deny it. Vietnam then reneged on this position when it saw an opportunity to swallow its words in order to keep its loot. This is due to the US switching its position on Taiwan, roughly coinciding with the expulsion of Taiwan from the United Nations, in fear that the claim to these islands by Taiwan would one day translate into that by China. This was a switch purely based on US interest, not on any international law or principles of justice. With this switch, Vietnam and the Philippines were let loose on an island grabbing frenzy, which resulted in the confrontation with China, and in a minor way with Taiwan, we are seeing today.If one really goes by international rules and norms, none of the islands in the South China Sea belongs to Vietnam or the Philippines. But of course, there are no international rules and norms, only geopolitical interests. That’s fine. But then I don’t want to hear any lecturing on obeying international rules and norms, or the violation thereof by some so-called aggressors. If there were such a thing, then these islands should belong to Taiwan/ROC, and Vietnam and the Philippines are the aggressors, period. The US dictates the norms in the South China Sea now because it has the biggest fleet. No one bullies the top dog, but everyone can bully the number 2 dog if backed by the top dog. It is as simple as that.Neither do I want to hear statements like “The Chinese claim is right up the coast of Vietnam or the Philippines”. If such criteria were applicable, then there would be no Falkland Islands, no Diego Garcia, no Gibraltar, no Guantanamo Bay. In some of these cases even an adjacent coastal area is carved away for good measure, as if that made the claim more legit, whereas it is even more aggressive than taking the islands alone. How about the Island of Hong Kong, snugly against the Chinese mainland and given up grudgingly only under the threat of a takeover by force after 150 years as a British possession? And if you look at the map, for example, you will see that Greece has claimed all the islands in the Aegean Sea right up to the doorstep of Turkey. So what? Greece was backed by Britain and France when this happened, and that’s that. China or Taiwan are only following all these examples. Actually Taiwan/ROC claims all the islands right up to the doorstep of Vietnam as well. In a gesture of friendship in the 1970’s, China conceded part of these islands to Vietnam. You can see this subtle difference between the maps of China/PRC and Taiwan/ROC. Let me just ask this one simple question: "If the current claim by the People's Republic of China in the South China Sea were so aggressive and unreasonable on the grounds of international rules and norms, then why did the US fully support the even more aggressive claim by the Republic of China from 1945 to 1975 based on the same international rules and norms?". Can't you see the answer is obvious?Note added on December 01, 2020: It just came to my attention that as late as 1994, the authoritative Rand McNally World Atlas* published in the US showed basically all the “disputed” islands in the South China Sea to be unequivocally Chinese territories, with “(China)” marked under these islands. It would be tremendously hard for someone to argue that Rand McNally did this in violation of or in oblivion to the US national policy at that point, being the foremost up-to-date authority on world political geography in the US. U.S. atlas published in 1994 shows South China Sea islands part of Chinese territory* The link I cited here seems corrupted, but thanks to Max Legend, who just forwarded this scan. I cannot confirm this is exactly the same map of the same edition, but it matches my memory of that map as claimed on the web, which I did see first hand.