China’s nine-dash line historical claim to 85.7 percent of the South China Sea has been exposed as the fake history of the millennium. An arbitral tribunal formed under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos) has ruled with finality that China’s claim has no basis in fact and in law. However, China and its propagandists have also invoked other falsities to claim the islands enclosed by its nine-dash line.
First, China and its propagandists claim that the Cairo Declaration of Nov. 27, 1943 awarded the Spratlys and the Paracels to China. The Cairo Declaration was the official statement resulting from the Cairo Conference among US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Chinese President Chiang Kai-Shek. One of the purposes of the conference was to strip Japan of the territories it illegally seized from other countries in the last two world wars.
The Cairo Declaration, however, never awarded the Spratlys and the Paracels to China. The Cairo Declaration stated that “all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, including Manchuria, Formosa, shall be restored to the Republic of China.” The Spratlys and the Paracels were not seized or stolen by Japan from China. Japan seized the Paracels from the French and the Spratlys were unoccupied by any state when Japan established a submarine base in Itu Aba in 1939. In fact, in the 1943 China Handbook, an official publication of the Republic of China delineating China’s territory, China did not claim the Spratlys. The Cairo Declaration stated that “Japan will also be expelled from all other territories which she has taken by violence and greed.” The Spratlys and the Paracels fall under these “all other territories,” which were not awarded to any state in the Cairo Declaration.
Read more: https://opinion.inquirer.net/134067/chinas-other-false-claims-in-the-scs#ixzz6ZlP3X4yw
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