China's South Sea claims were always about emotion, not history
Date
7/13/2016 12:55:14 AM
(MENAFN- Asia Times) British troops battle Chinese during First Opium War
The problem for the region is that, despite the arbitration ruling, those misunderstandings and emotions will not easily go away. Far from it: Chinese schools are continuing to inculcate young minds with the same muddled views of the past, and the national media is reinforcing the message for adults. To those Chinese who care about the issue, the arbitration will appear as yet another episode in the story of national humiliation. If we could trust the Chinese leadership to allow the free flow of information and an open debate about history, we could hope for a new understanding to emerge. For the time being, that is about as likely as China dismantling its giant artificial islands.
The tribunal's award is 501 pages long. I'm still reading it, but my favorite line so far comes in Paragraph 270, where the judges say, 'The Tribunal is unable to identify any evidence that would suggest that China historically regulated or controlled fishing in the South China Sea, beyond the limits of the territorial sea.' This destroys the implicit misunderstanding at the heart of China's attitude towards the regionthat it, and only it, has been the sole user of the waters between its coast and those of its neighbors. Read more
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