Staff Reporter
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A map from 1774 depicts Scarborough Shoal as Philippine territory, then known as Panacot Shoal. (Internet photo)
Earlier this year, the Philippine government took its South China Sea dispute with Beijing to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea regarding its claim to Scarborough Shoal, the site of a month-long standoff between Chinese and Philippine vessels last year, reports Huanqiu, the Chinese-language website of the Chinese tabloid Global Times.
The Philippine claim to the reef, known as Panatag to the Philippines and Huangyan island to China, is based on map dating back to 1820 which has been called into question by Zhen Cheng, who presented on May 25 a US-made map of the Philippines from 1908 which suggests that the reef belongs to China, the report said.
Access to the reef, located between Macclesfield Bank and the Philippines’ Luzon island has reportedly been restricted by China since last year’s standoff.
The map presented by Zhen was published in 1908 by the New York-based Yonkers-on-Hudson company. The map shows the Philippine territorial boundary near Luzon and indicates that the contested reef is located west of the Philippine boundary marked with “China Sea,” the report said.
Zhen said this was the only map in the early 20th century showing the reef to belong to China, and it clearly showed that the US, which controlled the Philippines at the time, acknowledged China’s sovereignty over the reef.
He said that Huangyan island had been discovered as early as 1279, during China’s Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) and it had been marked on their map more than 500 years earlier than the Philippines with their map in 1820. In the 1890 Spanish-American Treaty of Paris, the Philippine territory ceded by Spain to the US also made no mention of the island, the report said.
The disputed territory was also excluded in the Philippine territory taken after the 1898 Spanish-American Treaty of Paris, the 1900 Spanish-American Treaty of Washington, and the 1930 Anglo-American Treaty, Zhen said.
“No one can change history, we must respect it instead,” Zhen said, adding that the Philippines should respect historical facts.
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