Thread by @bill_hayton

A thread about the historical explanation for Indonesia’s current stand-off with China in the South China Sea.

The dispute is over who has the right to fish in an area of sea off the Natuna islands. The area is defined by an overlap of China’s ‘U-shaped line’ with Indonesia’s Exclusive Economic Zone drawn from Natuna.

Indonesia’s EEZ is claimed in line with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Indonesia has the rights to the resources up to 200 nautical miles from inhabited territory. But where does China’s ‘U-shaped line’ come from? (Map: @madeandi )

@madeandi China’s ‘U-shaped line’ was first published by the government of the Republic of China in early 1948. Discussions about how to draw the line began after the Second World War. @Chris_PC_Chung has told the story here journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…

@madeandi @Chris_PC_Chung Two key figures, employed by the Republic of China Ministry of Interior to advise it on the post-war territorial claims, were geographers: Zheng Ziyue 鄭資約 and Fu Jiaojin 傅角今

@madeandi @Chris_PC_Chung These two men drew the first version of the U-shaped line – a ‘sketch map’ presented to an ROC inter-ministry meeting on 25 September 1946

@madeandi @Chris_PC_Chung But where did this line come from? Both Zheng Ziyue and Fu Jiaojin were students of a self-taught Geography professor Bai Meichu at Beijing Normal University in the late 1920s. They copied a line he had drawn in 1936.

Bai Meichu had published his ‘New Atlas of China’s Construction’ 中華建設新 圖 in 1936 in which he asserted claims to China’s modern territory – which was in dispute in many areas. He drew a bold red line around his idea of China’s rightful boundary.

But Bai didn’t know much about the South China Sea. His map is full of non-existent islands – around which he drew his red boundary line. They included Vanguard Bank off Vietnam, James Shoal off Borneo and Seahorse Shoal off the Philippines.

The Chinese names for all these features were simply translations or transliterations of the English names: Vanguard Bank = Qianwei Tan; James Shoal = Zengmu Tan; Seahorse Shoal = Haima Tan.

Bai took these names from a list of translations made by an RoC government committee in 1934. The committee chose to translate the English words ‘bank’ and ‘shoal’ with the ambiguous Chinese character ‘tan’ 灘 which means ‘sandbank’.

Bai seems to have assumed that all these ‘tans’ were above-water islands and drew his red line around them. But all were, in fact, underwater features. This is why China now claims non-existent islands as its territory. [Picture shows a PLAN oath-taking ceremony at James Shoal]

Why did the RoC Committee choose that list of island names? They simply copied it from the UK Hydrographic Office China Sea Directory of 1906!

They also seem to have relied on a map published by the London company @StanfordsTravel in 1918. [Compare the 1918 map with the RoC 1948 map below]

@StanfordsTravel The line that Bai Meichu drew around Seahorse Shoal, James Shoal and Vanguard Bank in 1936 was based on underwater features drawn on the Stanford’s map of 1918

@StanfordsTravel This line was taken up by his students, Zheng and Fu, and passed on to the ROC government in 1946. This is the line which is now causing problems for the whole region, including Indonesia.

@StanfordsTravel So, ridiculous as it sounds, Indonesia’s current problems with China in the South China Sea are the results of poor translation and bad map-making in China in the 1930s. Beijing’s claim is based on ignorance.

I tell the full story in my article for Modern China here journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…

I will also flesh out some of the characters involved, in my next book for @yalepress ‘The Invention of China’ due to be published in September.

END OF THREAD!