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(A)Chinese peace:
Other Chinese Affairs
I)Law respecting offshore islands or islets
12 Dec 98/Sat/11:31pm
In the case of conflicts in either(a) or 1(b),the line has to be withdrawn back to a point midway between one's own costal line and the other party's costal line unless lesser is claimed by the other party.
2) The ownership of any disputed land is settled on basis of a
very simple principle of natural law: the right of ownership by
the natives and therefore its very first inhabitants or claimants.
When others intrude by force into a land originally claimed or
inhabited by the indigenous peoples, that would be an act of aggression
and conquest by the newcomers.
Therefore, in the case of the disputed Mai Ji Islet, because China had had since ancient times claimed the south China Sea and particularly the Nanshang Islets as hers, while the practise and concept of drawing "exclusive economic zone into the high seas surrounding one's own costal lines" has been a rather recent, for the Philippines only after World War II, development; obviously China had had the first claim to that islet long before the Philippines ever had any notion of extending any sort of claims to that place. It is a case of a new party wanting to claim something already long claimed by another indigenous people.
13 Dec 98/Sun/11:51am
3) Combining 1) and 2) above, an example can be made to illustrate why these rules of common sense are correct and reasonable. Suppose now another party has recently claimed an economic zone all the way extending into the inner provinces of China or Hong Kong, should this new party have that right of claim too? Can one party unilaterally use a recent way of doing things to go around to grab another nation's territories? This is not so evident in the case of off shore islets such as Mai Ji, but the principle is there. Once Mai Ji had been for a long time rightfully or first claimed by China to be its territory, it became an integral part of Chinese territory, not just its "exclusive economic zone"(EEZ)which by definition is not a nation's "territory," but something extending from one's territory into the international seas.
As a nation's territorial integrity is inviolable, another nation's
"economic zone" cannot extend into the former's territories.
Since no adjacent pieces of land can overlap one on top of the
other, there can be no overlapping of [land] territories. Hence,
territories of neighbouring nation's can be exactly defined without
having one extending into the other. However, once there is this
"economic zone" extending from one's costal lines, how
far can such a boundary be extended is not just "200 miles,"
but "200 miles" into international sea without violating
others' territorial and similar(economic zone) rights. That
is why, the line between China and the Philippines has to be drawn
at the midpoint between the Mai Ji Islet and the nearest[ to Mai
Ji Islet] Filipino costal line.
Imagine the situation in the reverse. Suppose now China claims also an EEZ extending 200 miles from its costal lines or territories, it can use Mai Ji as the outermost territory and begin there, extending 200 miles toward the Philippines. That inevitably would include a part of the latter. Could China claim, by way of such an EEZ, that the included part of the Philippines(in China's EEZ) being a part of Chinese territory? Definitely not! The whole world would be and rightly so, in that event, up in arms accusing China of aggression. Therefore, likewise, the Philippines definitely cannot extend its EEZ to include China's MaiJi Islet and claim it to belong to the Philippines either.
4)The other obvious determinant is the very fact that the Philippines
only extended its EEZ into MaiJi Islet. From the definition we
all know and cited above, that automatically disqualifies the
Philippines from claiming Mai Ji to be its own. That is because
an EEZ is an extension into the international sea from one's own
territory or costal lines. In other words, the underlying premise
in claiming Mai Ji being an integral part of the Filipino EEZ,
is that the Philippines admitted its own territory being way back,
about 200 nautical miles back in the Philippines Islands, not
including Mai Ji Islet. Otherwise, the Philippines would be claiming
from MaiJi that all islets around it belong to it--- because they
all fall within its own EEZ as extended for 200 miles from MaiJi.
More and more Chinese territories would belong now to the Philippines
by way of the latter's extending an EEZ. That cannot be. China
has its rights to its territories not to be violated by another
nation's disregard for them while drawing its own EEZ. Like alluded
to in the above, should China do the same and claim a part of
the Philippines too?
18 Dec 98/Fri/10:13am:
5) The universally accepted practise
is for any indigenous people to use the outermost islets of their
islands as the national boundary, e.g. Japan, the Philippines,
England, Indonesia, . . . . Based on this convention, however,
still there is a misconception on how China could have its offshore
islets way out there, reaching into the entire South China Sea.
That is because, based on the rule of "indigenous peoples
having been the first inhabitants or discoverers of land and islands
in nature," China had had that navigational expertise and
advantage to discover these islands first, before other peoples
whose costal shores are even closer to them than Chinese mainland.
It is wrong in this regard to say that since these islands are
closer to other nations than China, the latter has no right to
discover or claim them first. After all, at the beginning of
time, we naturally migrated toward one another. The faster we
move east, the more land we get than you moving westward. You
can claim that we have moved next to you to claim territories
next to you. But is it not true also that you have moved to claim
l¦ to me? The Chinese simply had come to them before
others had a chance to discover or claim them. According to the
practise of having the right to use the outermost islets of an
island nation as its national boundary, of course China has that
same right to claim these Nanshang Islets an integral part of
Chinese territory. The misconception arises
from the misperception that since China is predominantly a continental
mainland nation, it has no right as island nations to claim its
outermost islets as its national boundary. Hence, when viewed
and practised fairly, equally(equal amongst nations) and correctly,
South China Sea included within and including these peripheral
Chinese islets are not international waters, but Chinese
"inland" oceans, the same as any straits between
two islets of England are British waterways.
6) The proof of Chinese ownership lies in China's having ancient maps claiming them to be Chinese territories. Unless the Chinese had discovered them and had been there, how could they have "dreamed" up these islets? It's not essential for their owners to inhabit there to make them theirs.
II)Maintain world and national peace
1998©Kuan-Chyun Cheng
Can be reproduced or published for settling this dispute.