The Historical Review And International Law Analysis Of China's Recovery Of South China Sea Islands In The Past 70 Years

The South China Sea Islands(the Dongsha Islands,the Xisha Islands,the Zhongsha Islands and the Nansha Islands)have been China's inherent territory since ancient times.China has indisputable sovereignty over the South China Sea Islands and the adjacent waters.In the 1930s,France and Japan began to invade some parts of the South China Sea Islands.Finally,Japan took control of the South China Sea Islands in 1939.After the Second World War,Chinese Government resumed exercise of sovereign over the South China Sea Islands according to the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation in 1946.And then,China took a series of measures to declare its sovereignty over the Islands to the whole world.However,Japan renounced all right and claim to the Xisha Islands and to the Nansha Islands in San Francisco Peace Treaty in 1951,and some countries surrounding the South China Sea deliberately misinterpreted it as these islands' sovereignty unresolved,which provided them an excuse to seize these islands.Later,some countries surrounding the South China Sea occupied more and more islands along with the discovery of rich oil and gas resources,the formation of the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf system,and the drafting of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea(hereafter referred to as UNCLOS).Since the UNCLOS came into force,these surrounding countries unilaterally declared their 200 nautical miles' Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf in order to make sovereignty claims to some islands and waters of the South China Sea.In the past 70 years,the Chinese Government has been consistently and actively maintaining its sovereignty over the South China Sea Islands.This paper has a focus study on the main international legal documents in the past 70 years,discussing whether thees documents violate or maintain China's sovereignty over the South China Sea Islands,and analyzing what kind of role do these documents play in the surrounding countries' action of invading islands.This paper is divided into three parts in chronological order:the later part of the Second World War,the cold war period,and the period after the cold war.The important events and legal documents during these three periods will be analyzed in the paper to form a systematic theoretical achievement.