Merkel gifts China’s leader Xi with map of ancient Asia

German Chancellor Angela Merkel. AP Photo

MANILA, Philippines—German Chancellor Angela Merkel had gifted Chinese President Xi Jinping with an old map of ancient Asia that did not carry China’s nine-dash line, foreign affairs officials said on Friday.

Xi, in one of his visits to Germany early this year or late last year, received a 17th century map of Asia as a present from Merkel, said Henry Bensurto Jr., consul general in San Francisco.

“What is very telling in that 17th century map is that there is no nine-dash line, and that Hainan does not belong also to China,” Bensurto, one of the leading experts on the West Philippine Sea, told the Senate finance subcommittee.

Under its nine-dash-line policy, China claims 90 percent of the 3.5-million-square-kilometer South China Sea. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan claim parts of it.

China’s southernmost province, Hainan, passed in November 2013 a new fisheries law requiring foreign vessels to seek permission from regional authorities before conducting fishing or surveying activities in its waters.

The Philippines has filed a memorandum questioning China’s nine-dash-line policy with an arbitration tribunal in The Hague under the United Nations on Law of the Sea.

Bensurto also told the committee that the Chinese ambassador in London tried to set up a private dinner with the president of the five-member tribunal when it was constituted to look into the Philippine case in 2013.

The president later issued an open letter that the parties could not unilaterally approach the tribunal, and “everything will be treated aboveboard,” he said.

“This is a good indication of the level of high integrity of the judges, especially the president of the tribunal,” he said.

Bensurto volunteered the information when Sen. Loren Legarda asked about the implication of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s recent visit to Germany on the Philippine case. A tribunal member comes from Germany.

Legarda chaired the finance subcommittee that deliberated on the 2015 budget of the Department of Foreign Affairs.

After the hearing, Bensurto confirmed submitting voluminous documents, including several maps, to bolster the Philippine case.

“We have maps and everything. If you have one thousand maps, you only need what is sufficient to bring in your point,” he said when asked if the map given by Merkel to Xi was among the evidence. “One thing for sure, in our memorial, we said it (China’s claim) was not really historical.”

Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario said the tribunal was expected to issue its resolution in early 2016 before President Aquino steps down.

Del Rosario said China has been given until Dec. 15 to respond to the Philippine submission. If it fails to respond to this, the tribunal would set oral questions for the Philippines in March 2015.

“By July, this would conclude. We hope to have an award by 2016,” he told the committee.

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