Two crucial treaties

Reacquainting ourselves with recent history helps in understanding why China is acting the way she presently is in the West Philippine Sea (WPS).

And we needn’t go back deep into history’s long shadows, limiting ourselves instead to Asian history of the 1946-1952 period.

Understanding these tumultuous years following the Second World War is necessary since these formed the basis for the paradoxical and often complex tensions now engulfing the WPS and the whole South China Sea (SCS).

To cut to the chase, most scholars agree that most of the present problems in the SCS stem from the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty signed by Japan and 48 other countries, including the Philippines.

The purpose of the treaty was to formally end the war between the Allies and Japan and to make post-war arrangements in the Asia-Pacific region, including on the ownership issues now plaguing the suddenly important Spratlys and Paracel Islands, which Japan seized and occupied in 1939.

Under the treaty, Japan renounced its sovereignty over the Spratlys and Paracels. It, however, did not reassign these islands to any country after renouncing her claim.

As a consequence, one scholar says these islands remain legally under the collective custody of the treaty’s 48 other parties — including two claimants to the islands, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Taiwan, however, as early as 1947 officially asserted her claim to these islands by issuing the “nine-dotted line,” which later became the infamous “nine-dash line.”

China has since claimed this “nine-dash line.” China, however, refuses to clarify the limits of the “nine-dash line” and also rejects the claims of other claimant countries.

Taiwan had also signed a separate bilateral peace treaty with Japan just hours before the San Francisco Treaty entered into effect on 28 April 1952.

This bilateral treaty basically reaffirmed the San Francisco Treaty’s terms, including the non-reassignment status of the Spratlys and Paracel Islands.

Many now believe, including China, that the 1952 Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty is strongly linked to the sovereignty status of the Spratlys and Paracels.

A historical aside: China, which was then in the third year of Communist rule, was not invited to participate in the San Francisco peace conference largely because conference organizers disagreed about which government — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in Beijing or the Republic of China (ROC) in Taipei — truly represented China.

The late Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai angrily denounced and rejected the treaty. Zhou didn’t realize then, says his recent biographer Chen Lai, that his rejection was “one of the deepest underlying causes of the territorial disputes that now embroil China and the other countries in the East and South China Seas.”

At any rate, such historical dealings complicate China’s expansive claims since China presently is noticeably silent and hesitant about the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty and its preceding San Francisco Peace Treaty.

China’s silence and hesitation likely means that China won’t acknowledge the legitimacy of these treaties. But China also partly relies on these two treaties.

A Chinese scholar says the silence and hesitancy are because the two treaties complicate China’s position on Taiwan.

“Without the historical agreement signed by the ROC, Beijing’s claim to the South China Sea is potentially more vulnerable to attack from other claimants. But at the same time, if Beijing takes advantage of the treaty, then there is at least some validity to the idea that the ROC, as a legal entity, continued to exist beyond 1949. This is something Beijing also rejects,” says the Chinese scholar of the legal complexities China faces.

The two treaties, meanwhile, also relate to the Philippines’ victory at the Permanent Court of Arbitration.

After our arbitration win, Beijing issued a declaration which conspicuously carried provisions from the two treaties, which only goes to show that China wants to take advantage of the two treaties she doesn’t even recognize.

Such are some of whims of recent Asian history which we must again reacquaint ourselves with, if only to contend with all the overwhelming pro-China propaganda consuming some of us Filipinos.