5 Comments
User's avatar
S J Baker's avatar

It’s hard to know how positive one should feel about this planet’s, (Homo sapiens) inhabitants. Is “hardware” deterrence the only way to protect a Filipino fisherman?

Expand full comment
Andrew Craig-Bennett's avatar

I think that the claim to the South China Sea first made its appearance at the Chongqing dialogues between the USA and the ROC in the late 1930s which were concerned with the revocation of the Unequal Treaties.

Frankly it is astonishing that none of the legion of journalists writing on the South China Sea /East Philippine Sea issue seem to have dug into the basis of the Chinese claim.

The claim is extraordinary and unique.

There is a theory that it may have begun as a legal fiction promulgated by merchants in south China to evade the numerous bans on travel by sea.

Why is nobody looking into this?

Expand full comment
Bill Emmott's avatar

What makes you think they haven’t? I think Bill Hayton’s book “The South China Sea” goes into this extensively (2016) https://amzn.eu/d/0ge4RovG

My reference was specifically to the dashed line

Expand full comment
Andrew Craig-Bennett's avatar

Thank you for the recommendation. The copy that I bought from Amazon shows a copyright date of 2014 and a publication date of 2015. The Permanent Court of Arbitration under UNCLOS handed down its ruling in favour of the Philippines in PCA Case 2013-19 on the 16th July 2016.

It seems that it has not been worth while for Bill Haydon or Yale to bring things up to date.

Expand full comment
Bill Emmott's avatar

What makes you think they haven’t? I think Bill Hayton’s book “The South China Sea” (2016) goes into that extensively https://amzn.eu/d/0ge4RovG

My reference was specifically to the “dash line”

Expand full comment