06/7/2015 | 9:52
Manila | China’s basis in claiming 90% of the South China Sea is its Nine Dash Line map published and released to public on December 1, 1947. The map since then underwent several modifications.
The Philippines on the other hand shocked the public when it announced earlier yesterday that it will be submitting to an almost 300 year old map to the United Nations Tribunal on the Law of the Sea in The Hague this week. The map debunks the so-called nine-dash-line China has been using as proof of its claim over the South China Sea.
The Jesuit priest Pedro Murillo Velarde had the map published in Manila in 1734. It surfaced in 2012 among the possessions of a British lord, who put it up for auction at Sotheby’s in London, where Filipino businessman Mel Velarde bid and got it for £170,500 ($266,869.46 or P12,014,463.09).
The first certified true copy of the map has been reserved for Malacañang. Velarde will personally present it to President Aquino on June 12, the anniversary of Philippine independence.
The map is considered to be the oldest and mother of all Philippine maps. Scarborough Shoal is clearly indicated on the map.
The map according to the Philippine Government serves as solid evidence that Filipinos owns most parts of Spratly Islands and the whole Scarborough Shoal.
Almost 90% of Spratly Islands is inside the 200-mile Philippine Exclusive Economic Zone while it is more than 900 miles away from mainland China. Scarborough Shoal is around 80 miles from the Luzon Island.
China started to claim the Spratly Islands after the closure of Subic Base on 1999.
The Philippine Government is hoping that the presentation of its antique map to The Hague would clear everything up and undermine China’s handpicked and self-proclaimed Nine Dash Line map.