China’s Capital Admits To Naming Islands Arounds South China Sea
CHINA ADMITS – The giant Asian country’s capital asserted their claim that the islands around the South China Sea were named long before.
The dispute on the resource-rich regions of the South China Sea has been going on for quite some time. In another news, Philippines and China have already agreed to seek peaceful conflict resolutions in the future.
Director of the Chinese Ministry of Defense Security Cooperation Center – Senior Colonel Zhou Bo released statements about the artificial islands around the South China Sea during his talk at the 2019 Shangri-La Dialogue held in Singapore.
Collin Koh of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore raised questions on colonel Zhous claims during the annual event for security discussions.
Koh made a tweet on June 1 raising a question:
“#SLD19 on the artificial islands in SCS, Zhou mentioned that the features have been named long time ago, so “if they are artificial islands, where did their names come from?”
Britain-based journalist BIll Hayton, an associate from Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House, revealed that a few of the islands around the disputed waters were tagged with Chinese and English names.
Hayton mentioned in a tweet that the Chinese referred to as Jin Yin Dao or Money Island had its name based on William Money. William Money was an English Naval captain from the East India Company.
Lin Yang Jiao or Antelope Reef was named after a ship from the British East India Company.
Money Island and Antelope Reef also had counterparts in Vietnamese names: Dao Quang Anh and Da Hai Sam respectively.
Koh also shared Zhous statements regarding the UNCLOS’ article on artificial islands. Zhou apparently said the article “has nothing to do with China’s artificial islands” around the SCS.
This is according to an article from PhilStar.
UNLCOS article 60 basically sats that coastal states “shall have the exclusive right to construct and to authorize and regulate the construction, operation and use of” artificial islands.
That is all there is to it, at least for now. We’ll post updates as soon as we got them.