Vera Files contradicted President Rodrigo Duterte’s earlier statement saying that the name ‘South China Sea’ showed that China’s claim is a historical one by enumerating several ancient names over the disputed body of water.
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On April 27, Vera Files noted how Duterte said this to the media:
“They really claim it as their own, noon pa iyan. Hindi lang talaga pumutok nang mainit. Ang nagpainit diyan iyong Amerikano. Noon pa iyan, kaya (It goes way back. The issue just did not erupt then. What triggered the conflict were the Americans. But it goes all the way back. That’s why it’s called) China Sea… sabi nga nila (they say) China Sea, historical na iyan. So hindi lang iyan pumuputok (It’s historical. The issue just had not erupted then) but this issue was the issue before so many generations ago.”
You can read the transcript of the ambush interview of the President in Malacañang.
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However, Vera Files revealed that Duterte was wrong, so wrong, because South China Sea was not originally named as such. It took on several names from several groups of people before it had its current name.
Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio wrote in his book The South China Sea Dispute: Philippine Sovereign Rights and Jurisdiction in the West Philippine Sea that it was called the Champa Sea and Laut Chidol before it was called what it is now.
“Before Portuguese navigators coined the name South China Sea, the sea was known to Asian and Arab navigators as the Champa Sea, after the Cham people who established a great maritime kingdom in central Vietnam from the late 2nd to the 17th century.”
“The ancient Malays also called this sea Laut Chidol or the South Sea, as recorded by Pigafetta in his account of Ferdinand Magellan’s circumnavigation of the world from 1519 to 1522. In Malay, which is likewise derived from the Austronesian language, laut means sea and kidol means south.”
Even the ancient Chinese called it “Nan Hai,” which meant “South Sea,” instead of the current name South China Sea.
Vera Files also reported that a research paper published in the American Journal of International Law by Zhiguo Gao of the China Institute of Marine Affairs and Bing Bing Jia of the Tshinghua University School of Law that the Chinese’ standard name for South China Sea is “Nan Hai.”
“The term Nan Hai (Southern Sea) appeared in the classic poetry book Shi Jing (The Classic of Poetry), a publication of the Spring and Autumn Period (475–221 BC), and it has remained the standard appellation in Chinese for the South China Sea ever since.”
“The Portuguese captains saw the sea as the approach to this land of China and called it Mare da China. Then, presumably, when they later needed to distinguish between several China seas, they differentiated between the ‘South China Sea,” the ‘East China Sea,’ and the ‘Yellow Sea.’”
China claimed around 80% of the South China Sea as part of their nine-dash-line map. However, the Philippines won in the arbitration case versus China over the West Philippine Sea in the South China Sea.
Sources: ( verafiles.org , globalnation.inquirer.net )
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