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DISPATCH FROM BEIJING
With Jeff J. Brown
Shadow of Truth Radio Show:
“The Truth Behind U.S. Military Aggression in the South China Sea”
“The U.S. will never stop trying to destroy China as long as the Communist Party (CPC) is in power. And the only reason the Chinese people are free and benefit directly from their own labor and natural resources, is because the CPC represents its citizens’ interests and protects the country from Western colonialism and imperial exploitation…”
LISTEN TO JEFF’S PODCASTS ON 44 DAYS RADIO SINOLAND OR DIRECTLY ON THE GREANVILLE POST
2 comments
Obviously your guest, Jeff Brown, knows very little about the history of Spratly Islands, both in terms of recent history, or in terms of economic importance.
At the end of the Spanish American War, the Philippines was ceded to America by Spain and an addendum map was included in the territory of the Philippines clearly including the Spratly Islands. Hence from the end of the Spanish American War and until the turnover of the Philippines to the Filipinos in 1946, the Spratly Islands were clearly US controlled territory.
Now, as to their economic and commercial value, these islands and their surrounding waterways hold very valuable natural resource deposits in the form of oil and natural gas. This has been widely known throughout Southeast Asia for decades. And, beyond the regional politics articulated by your guest, this economic driver is the core issue fueling the current territorial claims over these islands. While most of the ASEAN member countries who hold claim to these islands are more than willing to divide them among themselves in a peaceful, orderly, and lawful manner, they all fear China, who lays claim to all of the Spratly Islands, and indeed to the sea that surrounds them. This will no doubt be a topic of hot discussion in next week when leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) member countries (21) convened in Manila for their annual summit, starting on November 18. The Presidents of both China and the USA will also be attending this summit.
Mark Van Steenwyk
Davao City, Philippines
Mr. Van Steenwyk, American, has spent a career spanning 44 years living and working in Asia in the field of economic development. He has completed over 100 short and long-term work-related missions in over 20 countries within the Asia-Pacific region working for USAID, The Asian Development Bank, AusAID, JICA, IDB, UN-FAO, and the EU. He has resided in the Philippines (26 years), Indonesia (3 years) and Sri Lanka (3 years) during the course of his career work in Asia.
THE AUTHOR REPLIES:
Obviously, Mr. Van Steenwyk doesn’t know his Filipino history. The internationally recognized treaties demarcating the Philippines’ western boundary have set it at the 118th parallel. This just lets in Palawan and what used to be Filipino Borneo, before it was lost to Malaysia 50 years ago.
Most importantly, the Spratlys are just west of the 118th parallel. This is why Manila is cravenly forced to try its hand at the Western sock puppet Hague Court, which is like trying a divorce case in a bankruptcy court. The Filipinos know they’d get their clocks cleaned at ITLOS, the only globally recognized adjudicator of maritime claims.
I will even include this historical tidbit in my upcoming book, Red Letters – The Diaires of Xi Jinping.
Mr. Van Steenwyk’s sweeping generalization is classic colonial empire. We are America, so what we say must be true.