How the Victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan Established the Legal Foundations for China's Sovereignty over its Territories in the South China Sea

By: Deng Duo, Director of the Center for State and Region Studies at the China National Institute for South China Sea Studies

Throughout history, the South China Sea has remained a stage for the flow of trade, freedom of navigation, the exchange of knowledge, and the convergence of cultures. China, despite its naval power and growing national capabilities, was not known to have exploited this vital location to threaten neighboring countries or impede their development.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, with the escalating pace of colonial invasion of China and Southeast Asia by Western powers, Britain, Germany, France, and Japan began to covet China's Nansha Islands. Before and during World War II, Japan gradually occupied most of the reefs and islands in the South China Sea that belonged to China. These aggressions were met with a firm official and popular rejection in China, as some of Japan's aggressive movements failed.

Following the victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan, China relied on the principles of international law and the outcomes of World War II to begin the process of restoring the islands of the South China Sea. It renamed them and erected sovereignty markers on them, which constituted clear legal foundations for its sovereignty over these islands. In November 1943, the leaders of China, the United States, and Britain declared in the "Cairo Declaration" that "the purpose of the three countries is to strip Japan of all the territories it has seized or occupied since 1914, including territories it has stolen from China such as Manchuria, Taiwan, and the Penghu Islands, which must be restored to the Republic of China." On July 26, 1945, the eighth clause of the "Potsdam Declaration" stipulated that "the terms of the Cairo Declaration shall be carried out and Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku, and such minor islands as we determine."

At that time, the international community, including the countries bordering the South China Sea, did not object to China's sovereignty over these islands in the sea. The Chinese forces even restored them using warships supplied by the United States. For example, Yongxing Island—which today constitutes the seat of the government of Sansha City and the seat of the government of the Xisha District belonging to Hainan Province—is one of the most prominent of these islands. It was named after the American patrol ship "Yongxing." In 1946, Yao Ru-Yue, the deputy commander of the "Yongxing" ship of the then National Government, along with the assistant officer Zhang Junran, led the operation to restore the Xisha Islands from the same ship, accompanied by the ship "Zhongjian." This clearly reflects that the American government was aware of the affiliation of those islands to China and even showed its support for this reality.

In late 1946, the Chinese government dispatched a fleet to the Xisha and Nansha Islands to hold official restoration ceremonies and erect sovereignty markers. Professor Zheng Ziyue from the Department of Geography at Northwest University participated in this mission under official mandate, where he undertook the determination of administrative boundaries and the organization of the names of the islands, reefs, rock formations, and beaches. Based on the field survey, he prepared detailed maps of the islands of the South China Sea, including maps of the Xisha, Zhongsha, and Nansha Islands, as well as the islands of Taiping and Yongxing, and Shidao Island, in addition to tables showing the old and new names of the islands. In 1947, the Chinese government re-adopted the names of 172 islands and island groups, including 102 in the Nansha Islands, and drew a map of the South China Sea that included the "dashed line" reflecting the scope of sovereignty.

A few years after World War II, amid the division of China across the Taiwan Strait, the outbreak of the Cold War, and the conflict between the two blocs, the sixth paragraph of Article II of the Treaty of Peace with Japan signed in San Francisco, which aimed to resolve the issue of defeated Japan's territories and its international status after the war, stipulated that "Japan renounces all rights and claims to the Nansha and Xisha Islands," without specifying the new sovereign party. This ambiguity prompted the Chinese government to issue a statement on August 15, 1951, in which it affirmed its rejection of the treaty because it failed to mention the restoration of sovereignty to China, reiterating its assertion that the islands of the South China Sea, including Nansha, "have been Chinese territory since ancient times," and that they were "fully restored after Japan's surrender," and that the sovereignty of the People's Republic of China over them "is not subject to any discussion or influence."

In fact, China has had a stable historical sovereignty over these islands, as Chinese fishermen have practiced their activities there for hundreds of years, and a stable system for naming the islands has developed among them. Many foreign sources have documented this fact, including a Japanese book published in 1940 titled "Storm Island," and the American navigation manual issued in 1925 by the Hydrographic Office, which confirmed that the Chinese alone were practicing activity in the Nansha Islands for long periods. Even at the beginning of the twentieth century, no country challenged China's sovereignty over these islands. As for the 1930s and 1940s, France and Japan resorted to occupying some of the Nansha Islands by force, which was met with firm Chinese resistance and governmental measures to protect sovereignty.

The Cairo and Potsdam Declarations represent two legal pillars of the post-World War II international order, especially with regard to territorial arrangements in East Asia, and they possess undeniable international legal force. In the specific context of the South China Sea, the principle of restoring territories seized by Japan applies clearly and unequivocally to the Nansha Islands, which Japan illegally occupied during the war. According to this principle, these islands automatically return to the state that owned them before the war—namely, China. From here, China's defense of its sovereignty over the islands of the South China Sea, especially Nansha, is based on one of the clearest and strongest international legal arguments associated with the global order that emerged after the war.

Although China carries deep scars in its national memory from past violations of its territorial sovereignty, it has not practiced a policy of imposing power on small countries and will not allow its historical pain to be re-ignited through attempts of "exploitation of weakness for blackmail" by some countries in the South China Sea. China's sovereignty and rights in the region are rooted in a long history and embodied in the results of a bloody struggle that established the post-war global order. China's position on the South China Sea issue not only reflects a defense of its sovereign, security, and development interests but also embodies its adherence to the principles of justice, the spirit of the rule of law, and the ideas of peace established by the post-war international order. As for China's efforts to defend sovereignty and promote peaceful solutions to disputes, they are a living extension of the spirit of victory in World War II in peacetime.

(Originally from CGTN Arabic)