One must study China closely for years to understand how the Nine-Dash Line and Taiwan Independence, within the CCP, are intrinsically linked. The cultural connection is emotional, not logical. It is at times eccentric but some would say fanatical. Solutions lie ahead for the freedom of navigation in the Asian Seas but there is only One China.
The anger at Joe Biden and his vow to go to war with China in order to breach the One China policy is immeasurable. The absolute rage we encountered in preparing this article left us with no civil quotables. The world is abandoning America and its currency—even France tried to get a seat at the recent BRICS summit but wasn’t alone.
“The fact that the stupid condemned administration of brain-dead belligerent Joe Biden has declared America would interfere again and go to war with China over Taiwan’s independence has most of the Asian community terrified, Filipinos fleeing their country which America now occupies in order to make war on China, and Xi Jinping furious enough to spend, spend, spend on military hardware,” said Dale Carter, security director for The RINJ Foundation, a global women’s rights and safety NGO.
“Biden and his people are psychopaths threatening the world with global nuclear war and scaring the crap out of the Pentagon. In fact China and Russia now lead the largest amalgamation of nations in the world’s south, ever imagined, spanning most of Africa, Asia and South America. BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa] is growing like a snowball rolling down a snowy Chinese mountain,” she added.
The frustration and anger at America’s warmongering is about fearing for millions of families’ lives in Asia. Photo credit: Micheal John / FPMag.
There is an equivalency between the Nine-Dash-Line (NDL) and the Flat-Earth-Theory—they are both based on wandering thought. What is that?
In China people run outside to watch dragons dance past crowds on festive occasions; colourful dragons both in the air and in the sky. Beautiful. Joyful.
In Canada Canadians hide chocolate eggs for the children claiming they are from the folkloric ‘Easter Bunny’. Is that irrational fantasy? The real world is not actually like that.
‘Santa Claus’, another folkloric character, travels the world in a toy-laden sled drawn by flying reindeer from the North Pole in Canada leaving a delightful gift for every child everywhere on Earth. One naturally doesn’t cringe at the thought of such goodness befalling our children—but it is indeed irrational thought. It didn’t happen. Ask Tim Allen. “It’s just a beautiful, God-given fantasy,” said a Rabbi friend.
Attacking the Nine-Dash-Line is like hunting Mother Goose and attacks on other nursery rhymes. All are an irrational waste of time, just like the NDL which was once loathed by the CCP.
China’s argument for ownership of the islands it claims is rock solid history but the Nine-Dash-Line claim to an extended economic zone (or 12-mile limit in some cases) is a worthless idea in a world Court. The law of the sea based on historical conventions and UN-CLOS do not say this at all. Chinese scholars are aware of these facts but fear being outspoken. It’s better that scholars argue the thousands of years of history that prove China’s island ownership claims. The counter claims are just as faulty as the NDL
“Islands” must support human life to be islands. Otherwise they are no better than flotsam, at, above, or below the low tide.
The greatest fault of the NDL is that the elements it charts do not support human life. Most don’t support any life visible to the unassisted eye. This is an historic convention, a common law and it was also the conclusion of a tribunal that heard a claim by the Philippines made in 2013 and ruled upon in July 2016.
It’s nowhere near being an Earth shattering decision. But quelling some of the stupid banter could be accomplished if government officials actually read and understood then told the truth about the 500 page ruling.
Disputes involve both island and maritime claims within the region of the Asian Seas by several sovereign states, namely Japan, Brunei, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Photo Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective-Magazine
It began as the 11-Dash Line but that was wrong too.
The fabled but worthless nine dash line had eleven dashes until Mao Zedong, in 1952, realized it was madness to claim Vietnam’s Gulf of Tonkin. Initially that did not matter. The purpose of the map was to deal with the agressions of the Japanese.
The scratchings on the map were created by an esteemed Chinese geographer named Yang Huairen. Mr. Yang did this work on maps for the Chinese ‘Nationalist Kuomintang” government. The Japanese had become a brutal annoyance to the people of China hence China declared its possessions which the Japanese seized.
Nearly 300 pieces of coral, rock and turf were catalogued laboriously by Mr. Yang. He gave then names and grids thereafter called this lot the ‘South China Sea Islands’ according to Robert D. Kaplan in his book “Asia’s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific (Amazon)” and other historic records of note.
In the meantime, the CCP turned on Chinese geographer Yang Huairen saying his theories were nonsense and persecuted Yang Huairen for being a member of the roguish dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek of the Nationalist Kuomintang Party (a.k.a. Guomindang) which while it held an authoritarian rule over most of China’s mainland, the CCP overthrew the Guomindang after WWII. Mr. Chiang fled the mainland on 7 December 1949, to Taipei where Chiang maintained a dictatorship over the Taiwan island claiming it as the capital of all of China for years to come until his death 5 April 1975.
Any way one spells the names it was and is only ‘One China’ regardless of America’s interference and attempts at militarizing the small island over Beijing’s increasingly loud protests including thus-far peaceful military demonstrations of power and control of Taiwan.
Even Chiang Kai-shek agreed on One China and never let go of that belief, despite his overthrow, claiming he was the leader of One China from Taipei after his ouster. Many historians conclude that a military dictator with an iron fist, Mr. Chiang’s life was that of a defacto madman.
Canada with 3 million miles of Coastline has many experienced experts on laws of the sea conflicts. Canada’s archipelago sovereignty has been attacked by America many times, so much so that Prime Minister Brian Mulroney considered buying nuclear submarines in 1987 for under-ice sovereignty patrol.
Canadian scholars are quite familiar with the Law of the Sea conventions because of the number of times Canada has gone to battle with arrogant Americans over archipelago waters related to the Arctic and the Atlantic fisheries. The Americans have in fact nearly claimed half of Canada as theirs because of the seasonal nature of Arctic archipelago ice.
At the same time, Canada has happily treasured a warm relationship with France (Vive la France et la Canada) and harbours sovereign islands of France in the Gulf of the Saint Lawrence a few kilometers from Newfoundland island and smack dab in the middle of the Canadian continental shelf by one argument although the Gulf is part of Canada’s mainland, another argument. Who cares? Collectivité territoriale de Saint-Pierre et Miquelon, is a self-governing territorial overseas collectivity of France in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean near the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
China’s claim over its islands in the Asian Seas has some legitimacy. It’s claim over the waters between the rocks and coral is not legitimate. Those islands capable of supporting human life in their natural state are perhaps worthy of a 12 mile limit. They are very few and that’s all they get. No EEZs wrap up the South China Sea for China.
That was the opinion of the experts in July 2016.
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, is an area of the sea in which a sovereign state has exclusive rights regarding the exploration and use of marine resources, including energy production from water and wind. It stretches from the outer limit of the territorial sea (12 nautical miles from the baseline) out to 200 nautical miles (nm) from the coast of the state according to Wikipedia and other sources.
Over the past few thousand years, Beijing has not always shown great interest in the islands of the Asian Seas but the officials of Hainan, a nearshore island, and Guangdong province of China, plus the fisherfolk of these regions of China, have ruled the Spratly islands and others for thousands of years according to historical records.
In fact, after WWII, Japan, having seized the islands, gave them back officially not to Beijing but to Hainan and Guangdong. Why? Because the Japanese were once Chinese and they know the history. Guangdong is an undisputed province of the People’s Republic of China and whatever Guangdong owns, China owns.
- Download The 500 pg Decision in favour of the Philippines)
- Download: Explanation of the July 2016 court decision in favour of the Philippines
- Download if you wish, the referenced Convention on the Law of the Sea: UNCLOS
- Download the Civil Society South China Sea Agreement Proposal which could walk this issue back to a peaceful resolution for the people of Vietnam, The Republic of the Philippines, Brunei, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Taiwan (Republic
of China/ROC), Indonesia and Malaysia.
- Read: “There are many strokes of madness in this bizarre folly.“