Talk:Spratly Islands dispute/Archive 1

Malaysia's claim
Before I edited the section regarding Malaysia's claim, the only references I've seen are from spratlys.org (which is heavily biased towards China's claims). After removing those references, there's no sources left and I considered blanking the section altogether. Could anyone search for better sources for Malaysia's claims? Alexius08 (talk) 00:21, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I've edited the Basis of Malaysia's claim subsection to better address the topic, citing a supporting source cited elsewhere in the article. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 05:27, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Mao Zedong quote
Apparently, Mao Zedong once said that "(Chiang Kai-shek) is a true patriot" (the original words might have been "蔣先生是重民族大義的人"), when supposedly, Chiang ordered lighthouses on ROC-controlled islands in the South China Sea (such as Taiping Island) lit in order to guide People's Liberation Army Navy ships to their destination to expel a landing force by the Vietnamese navy due to the South China Sea island disputes, during the naval skirmishes in the 1960s. Is anyone able to verify this story by finding a reliable reference? --  李博杰   | —Talk contribs email 08:32, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it make much sense. There was a chance that Republic Navy get vanquished by PLA for that. The lighthouse could be for ROC and PLA use it "along the way," or Chiang use this strategy to avoid loss on ROC Navy side? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 111.243.39.133 (talk) 02:19, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Neutrality
I don't necessarily claim that the author(s) show(s) any bias in their construction of this section, but the sheer volume of information on China's and Taiwan's claims, in comparison to the noticeable lack of information on other country's claims (which has been noted by an editor before me), leaves an impression heavily favoring those countries to a casual reader. This article cannot be neutral and objective until the other countries' claims have been given the same amount of attention as China's and Taiwan's. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ko2929 (talk • contribs) 05:19, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
 * If you have sources discussing the other claims, feel free to add them into the article. CMD (talk) 04:55, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Citations are what this article really needs at the present time
I feel worried about this article. It's such a pile of unsourced information. Look at "Tabular listing of features showing country possessions" section. Where did writers take this amount of statistics from? How did they know how many features each country occupy? And where do they get those exotic "terms": virtually occupied/controlled, largely controlled by the Philippines, etc. I can't find any book or prestigious website defining these terms at the present time. If these problems haven't been fixed soon, I'm worried that they may negatively affect Wikipedia's prestige. Autumnyear (talk) 06:11, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Split Section
Tagged because the section concerned seems too cumbersome to read owing to its very long nature. A better way to lay-out the section is to split them into new articles that bear a list of these claims which only differ in name, but usually involve the same island.

Pcbyed (talk) 04:46, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Poor English
Whomever wrote this made at least two major English errors throughout it. Firstly, the word state is not a synonym or simile for the words country, nation, and nation state. A state is a sub-government, like in the states of the United States of America. It is a very big insult to call a country a state, as it implies they bow to a higher government, which is illegal to be true (doing so would be treason, and indicate guilty politicians needing to be swiftly dealt with). Secondly, a word or name that ends in the letter y, when it is pluralized, you replace the y with ie. If you want to shorten the name of the islands to "Spratlys," the correct spelling is Spratlies. "Spratlys" becomes an entirely different name, of an entirely different language, as it makes no sense in English, and ends up looking Slavic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.117.208.118 (talk) 08:07, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Google search for "Spratlies" and you will get "Did you mean: Spratlys". Your "rules of English" don't apply to proper nouns. Second, refer to sovereign state; the sole definition of "state" isn't the subnational entity. --  李博杰  &#124; —Talk contribs email 10:12, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Um..it should be "whoever" wrote this. Because "he wrote this", not "him wrote this" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jimmydreads (talk • contribs) 12:58, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Vietnamese fears of Cham autonomy over South China sea disputes
Vietnam fears that if the issue of Cham relations to the disputed south China sea islands are brought up, Cham would demand atuonomy from Vietnam since they were violently conquered by the Vietnamese. Vietnam has put more restrictions of Cham culture and customs recently.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/06/140616-south-china-sea-vietnam-china-cambodia-champa/

Rajmaan (talk) 17:30, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Added missing tag
I have added the {missing} tag, as the only mentions of the United States were regarding old contracts and criticism of other countries' claims. American oil companies, operations, missions and influence in the area should be noted. A lot of US sources are currently used, and as with WP:COI they are bound to more often than not be anti-China and pro-Philippines/Vietnam/Taiwan. I'm European, if that's of anyone's concern. Bataaf van Oranje (talk) 20:18, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Hear, hear! A beautiful tag, a pity it can't be applied to more articles ... 118.93.12.153 (talk) 14:24, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090528091434/http://www.fmprc.gov.cn:80/eng/xwfw/s2510/2535/t561454.htm to http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/xwfw/s2510/2535/t561454.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20100430165347/http://biz.thestar.com.my:80/news/story.asp?file=/2010/4/27/business/6136931&sec=business to http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/4/27/business/6136931&sec=business
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090327150654/http://paracels.info/luuvanloi_1996_sinovietnamesedifference.pdf to http://paracels.info/luuvanloi_1996_sinovietnamesedifference.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20080409012835/http://www.paracelspratly.com:80/home/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=79 to http://www.paracelspratly.com/home/index.php?Itemid=79&id=14&option=com_content&task=view

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External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 one external links on Spratly Islands dispute. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Attempted to fix sourcing for http://www.philippinenews.com/read/latest-news/8067-vietnams-angry-at-taiwan-as-it-stages-live-fire-drill-in-the-spratlys.html
 * Attempted to fix sourcing for http://www.philippinenews.com/read/latest-news/8067-vietnams-angry-at-taiwan-as-it-stages-live-fire-drill-in-the-spratlys.html

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Pro-China bias
What is up with the blatant pro-China POV on this article? For example, the article spends no less than three paragraphs attempting to pretend that China and Taiwan are on the same side in the dispute (note: just because you claim the exact same territory doesn't mean you're on the same side; far from it.) Then the article spends a full SEVEN paragraphs going off on a tangent about the MNLF, which is at best tangential to and at worst completely irrelevant to this issue. Why?

Sources that support the Chinese side are given more mention and more space than sources that support the positions of the other claimants, such as Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia, and are detrimental to China's case. Quite intriguing.

The fiction of China "discovering" the islands "in 2 BC" is bandied around as if it were fact, as if the ancient Austronesians wouldn't have stumbled across these islands in the course of their seaborne migration from Taiwan throughout Southeast Asia circa 3000-2000 BCE, a migration in the course of which they surely sailed over the South China Sea. More to the point, discovery does not equate ownership, making this fiction irrelevant and unworthy of mention, unless the aim is to persuade people who do think that discovery equals ownership that China is the rightful owner of the Spratlys. Isn't anyone monitoring the POV on this article at all? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.27.49.162 (talk) 16:18, 17 December 2015 (UTC)


 * The insertion of the Moro and Cham people's plights is irrelevant and violate WP:NOT. It seems like it is written by a supporter of these groups and the sources used back it up (they are all biased towards them). I support chopping it down to a few paragraphs (one at most). What surprises me is that only Philippines and Vietnam mention this yet no info on Malaysia, Indonesia and China (all of the claimants had been criticized for treatment of ethnic minorities at some point in time). This article mentions little criticism about China's claims while multiple criticism about other claimants' claims; there should be criticism about the Chinese claim, particularly with the 9-dash line to be neutral. Ssbbplayer (talk) 07:06, 31 January 2016 (UTC)


 * The 50 Cent Party and nationalist Chinese contributors had worked hard for years on all articles related to the South China Sea, Spratly and Paracel islands etc. They erase what they don't like. In result Wikipedia is filled with:

This is not my POV but from a study of the CNA by Raul (Pete) Pedrozo: China versus Vietnam: An Analysis of the Competing Claims in the South China Sea. Thanto19 (talk) 14:03, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Fake geography: According China, shoals are islands. Artificial islands illegally built on submerged feature by illegal dredging and pumping sand... are islands. "Eight of the Spratly Islands are under Chinese control." fake geography and UNCLOS re-writing!
 * Fake history:
 * "discovering" the islands "in 2 BC."
 * "The first example (of sovereignty claim) cited by China is an 1883 incident involving a German ship conducting surveys in the South China Sea without China’s consent. According to China, the Qing government lodged a protest with Berlin and the Germans terminated the survey. Western scholars have determined, however, that this “incident is not based on verifiable references” and is inconsistent with other Chinese inaction during the same time period given that, in 1885, the German Admiralty published a two‐sheet chart entitled Die Paracel‐Inseln (The Paracel Islands). The chart documented the work of a German expedition to the Paracels between 1881 and 1884. For three months each year during this time period, the German Navy sent the SMS Freya and the warship Iltis “to study and map the Paracel Islands without either seeking the permission of or incurring protest by the Chinese government.” Based on these events, it is doubtful that China lodged the protest as alleged. Alternatively, if the protest was made, it was obviously ignored by the German government."
 * "The 1887 Chinese-Vietnamese Boundary convention signed between France and China after the Sino-French War said that China was the owner of the Spratly and Paracel islands. (Islands east of a line from Sa Vĩ Cap (vi) in Trà Cổ (vi) island is the North-Easternmost promontory of Vietnam 21.48972°N, 108.07333°W are Chinese.); ref "Wortzel, Higham 1999" ; ref "NordquistMoore1998" ; ref Severino2011" is fake history as the convention deal only about islands in the vicinity of Móng Cái in Tonkin gulf. As Vietnam is S shaped, the coastal Danang city 16.06667°N, 108.23333°W on the same parallel as Paracel Islands is east of the French Tonkin border line. After reviewing the text of the treaty, Professor Zou Keyuan concurs with the French assessment, noting that," …upon careful examination of the texts of the Treaty, …the meaning of the…Chinese version indicates that the red line drawn on the attached map was a line to divide the islands in the Gulf of Tonkin rather than a line of maritime boundary. The line, which ended at about 21°23' north latitude on the map, involved only the land and coastal islands of the two sides."
 * The Cairo Declaration, drafted by the Allies and China towards the end of World War II, listed the territories that the Allies intended to strip from Japan and return to China... But despite China being among the authors of the declaration, this list did not include the Spratlys and French colonies was returned to France.
 * Charter of the United Nations re-writing. Conquest (the acquisition of territory by force or colonial wars) was historically considered a lawful mode of acquiring sovereignty, but has been illegal since October 1945 following the entry into force of the United Nations Charter (see Article 2(4)). France annexed the Spratly Islands as terra nullius in the 1930s—at the time, occupation by force was a valid method of acquiring sovereignty over territory. Great Britain, which had controlled some of the Spratly Islands in the 1800s, abandoned its claims following the French annexation and effective occupation, so French title to the Spratlys was legally and soundly established. France’s title to the archipelago was ceded to the State of Vietnam in the 1950s and the South Vietnamese government (and subsequently the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) and then to united Vietnam) effectively and peacefully controlled the islands until ROC forces illegally occupied Itu Aba Island in 1956 and PRC forces illegally occupied a number of reefs in the archipelago in 1988. The ROC’s occupation of Itu Aba Island in 1946 and 1956, and the PRC’s invasion of the Spratlys in 1988, violate Article 2(4) of the UN Charter and cannot confer clear title to the Spratlys to either Taiwan or China. The fact that China may have challenged Vietnamese sovereignty over the Spratlys between 1951 and 1988, rights that were legally ceded by France to Vietnam, does not in and of itself create a clear title for China. Strangely not noticed in Wikikipedia articles because of pro-China editors erasing.
 * UNCLOS III re-writing: China had declared no baseline points in the Spratly. (See No. 117 Straight Baselines Claim: China - US Department of State. This document in public domain but never cited by pro-China editors. They say in Spratly Islands dispute: "The People's Republic of China (PRC) claims all of the Spratly Islands as part of China based on UNCLOS and history."

Nanshan Island on map is wrong
Nanshan Island is Phillipine-occupied, not China-occupied. Please fix this and double-check the other islands.

You can use this map for comparison: http://www.philstar.com/news-feature/2016/03/02/1558763/what-we-know-about-jackson-atoll-disputed-sea

162.237.228.60 (talk) 04:33, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

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