RR 7/6
CONFIDENTIAL
Main files:
V/Mult, V/China Phil/Mult.
Referencie
кору
RESEARCH DEPARTMENT MEMORANDUM
THE SPRATLY ISLANDS
DS (L) 530
pa
Departmental Series
Research Department D.S. No. 5/75
Bringing up to date the Memorandum RR 7/2 of 27 January 1972.
REASSERTION OF CLAIMS SINCE 1972
1.
China restated her claims to extensive areas in the East and South China Seas, including the Spratly Islands, in the UN Seabed. Committee on 10 March 1972. The Philippines delegate placed on record his Government's reservations to the claim concerning both the Spratly Islands and those islands in the area which his Government called 'Freedomland' (see para 6 below). There is no record of any immediate response to these statements by other claimants to the Spratlys.
2.
The Nationalist Chinese authorities claim to have successively lodged protests on 25 January, 9 and 27 August, and 26 October 1973 with the governments of the countries claiming the Spratlys and other islands in the South China Sea, and to have reaffirmed their own claim to these islands.
3.
FBI'S · Icuper 19 Jim.74 V/Ment
25/9/73
Viralt
Shortly after the South Vietnamese authorities had awarded the first off-shore exploration concessions (none of which were in the Spratlys area) to four international oil companies in August 1973, they issued an Order (in September) incorporating eleven of the Spratly Islands into Phuoc Tuy Province. The explanation given by Sason to FCO the Vietnamese to our Embassy in Saigon was that through an administrative oversight the Spratlys, which has been attached to Ba Ria Province, had never been made part of Phuoc Tuy Province when that province had been renamed. However, the Spratlys had originally been attached to Ba Ria Province by a French decree of 21 July 1933. The 32 provinces of South Vietnam were reorganised into 41 by decrees in June and August 1956. It is therefore more likely that the decree of 22 October 1956 incorporated the Spratlys into the newly-formed province of Phuoc Tuy, as the South Vietnamese claimed in 1959 (see para 24 of memorandum) rather than into Ba Ria Province, as they later claimed in 1971 (see para 23 of memorandum). Whether or not it was superfluous, the South Vietnamese Order of September 1973 prompted a positive and unwelcome response from the Chinese.
Swi3 FC/4499/A3/1 V/Climies
4. In a statement of 11 January 1974 which referred to the South Vietnamese administrative Order as an infringement of China's sovereignty, the Chinese Government reasserted its claims to the Spratlys and other islands in the South China Sea. The South Vietnamese Government in turn restated its own claim to the Spratlys on 12 January, rejecting the claims of all other states to the Islands. The same month rival claims to the Paracel Islands, lying north of the Spratlys (see Map 2), resulted in an armed confrontation between Chinese and South Vietnamese forces there and led to renewed claims by both sides to the Paracels and the Spratlys. After the
CONFIDENTIAL