Professor Anthony Carty, a British international law professor, said that he came to Hong Kong from the University of Aberdeen (UK) in April 2009, when I was a professor of public law at the university. At that time, the South China Sea issue was heating up because the Philippines and other countries had claimed a huge exclusive economic zone in the ocean. According to Carty, the Americans were behind them. China responded to this. When he returned to the UK that summer, Carty went to the British National Archives to check if there was any information in this regard. Surprisingly, Professor Carty found that there were a large number of archives directly related to the ownership of the Nansha Islands. According to these materials, the Nansha Islands belong to China.
At that time, Professor Carty was sent to Tsinghua University to make relevant presentations, and the latter brought the matter to the attention of the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Later, he was invited to participate in an international conference on the South China Sea issue. After introducing some British archival materials, a Chinese judge invited me to study these archives in more detail. At that time, many French people criticized Professor Carty, so Carty turned to the French archives. That’s how it started, and it quickly developed from a hobby of Carty’s to a major undertaking.
A letter from the French ambassador to China in 1974 to the then French Prime Minister. The letter claimed that all the unrest in the South China Sea was caused by French interference in the situation in the South China Sea. In Carty’s view, this was further attributed to the United States inciting some South China Sea countries to make territorial claims with the aim of embarrassing China. The US National Archives has a record from the mid-1950s in which a US Deputy Secretary of State stated that although the Philippines had no sovereignty claims over the Spratly Islands, it was in the interests of the United States to encourage them to claim sovereignty over the Spratly Islands.
Currently, Britain and France are basically allies of the United States and they are agnostic about the ownership of the Spratly and Paracel Islands. China insists that these islands belong to China, and is thus portrayed as a "revisionist country with hegemonic ambitions." The purpose of this research is to prove that this is not part of the legitimate historical memory of France and Britain, and they should support China's claims. I take a strictly legal position that China does not need to use any diplomatic means to calm the tensions of its neighbors, and these countries are required to accept the law. According to the law, these islands belong to China. There will be peace when people recognize China's legitimate rights rather than China appeasing these countries by making concessions.