General Daniel Schaeffer, former French military attaché to China, Thailand and Vietnam said that the new map was an unreal curtain to hide the truth inside. What is that truth?
Gen. Daniel Schaeffer said that before 2009, the Chinese government had never officially referred to the cow tongue line as the impregnable boundary of Chinese sovereignty in the East Sea.
They had always maintained the symbol of this line, from 11 to 9, and then 10 dashes, causing confusion over China’s claims, making it difficult for the countries in the region to cope with.
In 2009, in a note sent to the UN Secretary General, China attached the 9-dotted line map without clear explanation.
Back in 1909, the governor of Guangdong sent some warships to conduct surveillance in Vietnam’s Hoang Sa Archipelago (Paracel Islands) in the name of the Qing Dynasty, but it was actually the local government.
The French learned a serious lesson from the vague behavior of China. If facing fierce reaction from France, they would blame the incident as the “mistakes” of the local government. If not, they would take stronger acts. In the 1990s, China repeatedly used the same trick against Vietnam in the East Sea. They created tensions and blamed the local authorities.
The vertical map published by the Hunan publishing house is also a product of a province in China, with the 10-dash cow tongue. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, “The world should not pay attention to this map”. And others understand the reason.