China claims sovereignty over the Spratlys and Paracels islands in the South China Sea. By China, we should understand not just the People’s Republic in Beijing, but its post-1911 predecessor, the Republic of China (i.e., the government on Taiwan), and the great China’s imperial dynasties dating back at least 1000 years. The claim is based inter alia on discoveries by the Ming dynasty admiral Zheng He and by occupation of islands and exploitation of the surrounding waters for fishing by Chinese fishermen for hundreds of years.
The famous “nine-dash line†is an expression of China’s historical claims. It was first transposed on Chinese maps in 1947 when France (then still the suzerain of Vietnam) and the Philippines began a diplomatic campaign to assert their claims in post-WWII forums dealing with Japan’s imperial conquests (which included the islands).
Five times–in 1970, 1971, 1978, 1980, and 1999–Philippine armed forces took actions that have placed nine islands claimed by China under foreign occupation. Since occupying the islands, the Philippines has proceeded to build military installations and station some 1000 men on them.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenharner/2014/06/22/the-nytimes-china-threat-myth-the-pivot-to-asia-and-obamas-foreign-policy-legacy/If this is the case, then we should already abandon all diplomatic process and start asserting our claim aggressively. If what it says here is true then China is simply doing what we have done to them. Though I still think they know how illogical their claim is, they are simply saying it's payback time.
