In-depth
Truth about South China Sea dispute: expert
English.news.cn 2014-06-14 14:01:11
BEIJING, June 14 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam says it has evidence to prove its claim in the South China Sea but is ignoring its own historical documents that vindicate China's position,
Ling Dequan,
a researcher with Center for World Affairs Studies affiliated to Xinhua, said on Saturday.
The following is
the full text of Ling's article titled "
The truth about the sea dispute" and published on China Daily on Saturday:
Vietnam says it has evidence to prove its claim in South China Sea but is ignoring own historical documents that vindicate China's position. Vietnam has been using China-Vietnam clashes in the South China Sea, and distorting facts, fanning passions and playing up the "China threat" theory, to vilify China. Ignoring the overall development of Beijing-Hanoi relationship, Vietnam is pretending to be a "victim" in the South China Sea dispute, saying it is prepared to seek international arbitration on the issue.
Vietnamese leaders have said that they have enough historical evidence to justify Vietnam's sovereignty over "Huangsha" and "Changsha" islands, claiming that Vietnam has been the "master" of the two islands since the 17th century. It seems like they have lifted their remarks straight out of a
white paper "
Truth of China-Vietnam Relationship over 30 Years", issued by the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry
in 1979 when bilateral ties were not normal.
Worse, almost all the arguments in that 1979 document were copied from a "white paper" issued by the Saigon-based puppet South Vietnam regime (or the Republic of Vietnam) in February 1974.
Now the Vietnamese leaders, using the so-called historical documents, are trying to claim that Vietnam's "Huangsha" and "Changsha" islands are actually China's Xisha Islands and Nansha Islands. The fact is that, the islands recorded in Vietnamese documents refer to some other islands surrounding Vietnam instead of the Xisha and Nansha islands.
To encroach on China's territory in the 1970s, the South Vietnam regime distorted historical facts, which were adopted by later Vietnamese leaders for political purposes. This has complicated the issue and caused serious damage to Sino-Vietnamese ties.
A look at the evidence presented in China's diplomatic documents in the late 1970s and early 1980s will reveal the truth. In fact, even some Vietnamese scholars have said that the documents cited by Vietnam to claim sovereignty over the Xisha and Nansha islands are not genuine historical records but edited versions of originals, confirming China's sovereignty over the islands.
Vietnamese leaders said China forcibly occupied the entire "Huangsha Islands" in 1974, which were then controlled by the Saigon regime. The Saigon regime had kicked up a row over the naval battle that broke out in 1974 in the waters around China's Xisha Islands and sought military support from its ally, the United States, and requested the UN Security Council's intervention. But neither the US nor the UN Security Council acceded to the Saigon regime's request. This means the international community, including the US, has never believed in Vietnam's complaints or claims.
On Sept 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh announced the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi. In January 1950, the People's Republic of China became the first country to establish diplomatic relations with Ho Chi Minh-led Vietnam. For China and a vast majority of the other countries, the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (later the Socialist Republic of Vietnam), was (and has been)
the only legitimate government of Vietnam, and the government of
South Vietnam, a puppet regime installed by French colonialists and American imperialists.
So now, about 39 years after defeating the Americans, why does the Socialist Republic of Vietnam want to use the Saigon regime's claim to create trouble in the South China Sea? Aren't the current Vietnamese leaders betraying Ho Chi Minh and other freedom fighters, profaning the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of their compatriots who laid down their lives to resist foreign aggressors, and negating the valued support of their allies in the battle against colonialism by citing the comprador Saigon regime's claim?
The Vietnamese government must not violate the principle of estoppel in the Xisha and Nansha islands' sovereignty issue. Vietnamese leaders claim that no country recognizes that the Xisha and Nansha islands belong to China. This is a brazen lie, because the Democratic Republic of Vietnam topped the list of countries that accepted China's sovereignty over the islands.
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam's position was unequivocal in the 1950s and 1960s. The position remained unchanged even after the death of Ho Chi Minh and the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Documents with the Chinese Foreign Ministry from the 1970s and 1980s show the position of the Ho Chi Minh-led Vietnamese Communist Party on the Xisha and Nansha islands. The most important of these documents is a note given by former Vietnamese premier Pham Van Dong to Zhou Enlai and the declaration of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1965.
On Sept 4, 1958, the Declaration of the Government of the People's Republic of China said that the breadth of the territorial sea of the country shall be 12 nautical miles and that this provision
should apply to all territories of the PRC, including all the islands in the South China Sea. On Sept 14, 1958, Pham Van Dong solemnly stated in his note to Zhou Enlai that Vietnam recognizes and supports the Declaration of the Government of the PRC on the country's territorial sea. On Sept 22, 1958, the diplomatic note was publicly published in Nhan Dan, the official newspaper of the Vietnamese Communist Party.
On May 9, 1965, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam issued a statement on the US' definition on the "theater of war" in Vietnam. The statement said that by defining the whole of Vietnam and the waters up to 100 nautical miles off its coast as well as part of the territorial sea of China's Xisha Islands as the operational area of the US armed forces, Lyndon Johnson, then US president, has directly threatened the security of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and its neighbors.
In recent years, however, some Vietnamese government officials and "scholars"
have tried to "reinterpret" the two government documents, only to end up making fools of themselves.
And after their attempts failed, the Vietnamese government started pretending as if the two documents never existed.
Vietnam has said that it is fully prepared with historical and legal evidence to prove its claim in the South China Sea, and it is waiting for the appropriate time to take China to the international court of justice. If that is so, then Vietnam should not forget to attach Pham Van Dong's note and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam's statement, as well as the maps and textbooks published by Vietnam before 1975, with its complaint.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/indepth/2014-06/14/c_133407130.htm
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Full story
====================================
Seeing on how during the last decade the various governments of Vietnam have been lying outright incl. having some amnesia of the true history related to the Xisha Islands 西沙群岛 (internationally better known as "Paracel Islands") and Nansha Islands 南沙群岛 (better known as "Spratly Islands" internationally), readers should have less wonder if they are also aware of this historical denial by the Vietnamese government.
IS any reader here aware of the following historical fact that Hồ Chí Minh indeed got married to a Chinese wife? 
#BELOW IS JUST A BRIEF EXCERPT#
The sacrosanct leader of the New Vietnam, Hồ Chí Minh, got married to a Chinese woman, Zeng Xueming （曾雪明）, known in Vietnamese as Tăng Tuyết Minh in 1926.
Hồ Chí Minh's wife, Zeng Xueming （曾雪明）aka. Tăng Tuyết Minh
Zeng Xueming (
Chinese:
曾雪明, 1905–1991), known in Vietnamese as
Tăng Tuyết Minh, was a Chinese midwife who married
Vietnamese leader
Hồ Chí Minh. She was a Catholic from
Guangzhou and married Ho in October 1926. They lived together until April 1927, when Ho fled China following an anti-communist coup. Ho returned to Vietnam in 1940 to lead the pro-Communist
Viet Minh, the communist rebels against the French colonial authorities. He became president of
North Vietnam in 1954. Despite several attempts to renew contact by both Zeng and Ho, the couple was never reunited. Ho and Zeng were never legally divorced nor was their marriage ever annulled.
Her existence has never been acknowledged by the Vietnamese government.
[...]
In May 1950, Zeng saw a picture of Ho in a newspaper and learned that he was now president of the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which later became the government of North Vietnam. She then sent a message to the DRV ambassador in Beijing. This message was unanswered. She tried again in 1954, but her letter was again unanswered. Representatives of the Chinese government told her to stop trying to contact Ho and promised to provide for her needs.
By this time, a cult of personality had arisen around Ho and the North Vietnamese government had an investment in the myth of his celibacy, said to symbolize his total devotion to the revolution. For his part, Ho asked the North Vietnamese consul in Guangzhou to look up Zeng in 1967, but without success. Ho died in September 1969. Zeng retired as a midwife in 1977 and died 14 November 1991 at the age of 86.
Research and reaction
The claim that Ho had a Chinese wife first appeared in a book by Chinese author Huang Zheng published in 1987. This claim went unnoticed until the book was translated into Vietnamese in 1990.
Also in 1990, French author Daniel Hémery found Ho's letters to Zeng in the Centre des Archives d’Outre-Mer, the French colonial archive. In May 1991, the editor-in-chief of
Tuoi Tre Vũ Kim Hạnh was summarily dismissed from her post after the newspaper published a story about Ho's marriage.
William Duiker's
Ho Chi Minh: A Life (2000) presents additional CAOM documentation for the relationship. The government requested substantial cuts in the official Vietnamese translation of Duiker's book, which was refused. In 2002, the Vietnamese government suppressed a review of Duiker's book in the
Far Eastern Economic Review.
Chu Đức Tính, Director of the
Hồ Chí Minh Museum, in an interview with the newspaper
Tuổi Trẻ said that he and his colleagues at the museum have debated many times with Huang Zheng, the first person who published about Zeng Xueming's marriage to Ho. He characterized it as a rumor heard on the Internet and concluded that "this is a hypothesis that is more fiction than not" and said "the facts have proven that it is not true."
The legal witnesses of this marriage were the two top women's personalities of the New China:
Cai Chang （蔡畅) and
Deng Yingchao （邓颖超 | 鄧穎超）, wife of future Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai.
Zeng was 21 and Ho was 36. The wedding took place in the same building where Zhou had married Deng earlier.
P.S:
Cai Chang was the future President of the All-China Women's Federation as well as the
future Vice Chairman of the Fifth NPC Standing Committee.
Just imagine, with all the historical facts and documents, the govt of Vietnam would still deny such marriage of Hồ Chí Minh and Zeng Xueming did exist!!! What one may expect about the South China Sea issues then 
LOL
Knowing who were the legal witnesses of this marriage, i.e. the two of the most influential women in the history of modern China, not just ordinary personalities, such official denial by the Vietnamese government is becoming even weirder! Showing what a cunning character and lacks of trustworthiness!!
Note: It was not the fault of Hồ Chí Minh himself regarding his marriage denial, it's the subsequent political and party forces that created a myth around Ho who made such blatant denial, and remains uncorrected until today. Showing about a nation living under myth and lies...
Read the FULL article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeng_Xueming
