Vietnam condemns China commemorations of island 'grab'

By Bennett Murray

HANOI (AA) - Vietnam has expressed “resolute opposition” to Beijing’s commemoration of the anniversary of the first Chinese seizure in the modern era of a disputed South China Sea island.

“After World War II, China’s claim over the two archipelagos was rejected by the international community,” said foreign ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh in a statement issued late Monday, referring to the contested Paracel and Spratly island chains.

The islands are rightfully Vietnamese, said Binh, adding China’s celebrations go “against the development trend of the relations between the two countries and complicates the situation”.

Vietnam’s protests refer to Dec. 8 reports from China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency, which stated that the Chinese navy officially celebrated the 70th anniversary of the “recovery” of the Spratly and Paracel islands.

Dec. 12, 1946 marked the first militarily-backed territorial claim to the hotly contested islands in the post-war era when Chinese Kuomintang nationalists landed on Taiping Island in the Spratly chain.

The island, which is only 46 hectares and has never had any known native inhabitants, had been occupied by Japan during World War II and France beforehand.

Its pre-colonial history of occupation is disputed.

The Kuomintang held onto the island even after the nationalist party was expelled from the mainland to Taiwan by Mao Zedong’s communist forces at the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949.

While Taiping Island has remained in Taiwanese hands, Beijing’s one-China policy, which considers Taiwan a renegade province, treats Taipei’s maritime claims in the South China Sea as an extension of its own.

Both China and Taiwan claim most of the South China Sea, which contains some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes and potentially lucrative deposits of fossil fuels, as integral parts of their maritime territory.

Their claims, however, overlap with multiple neighboring countries.

Control of the Spratly Islands is divided among China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia.

The Paracels, which are also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan, have been under Beijing’s full control since the Chinese military seized it from the former South Vietnamese government in 1974.

While ownership of the individual islands remain unresolved under international law, a July international arbitration court ruling in the Hague stated that there was no “legal basis” for China to claim historic rights in the waters.