Recently, the Xinhua Institute (under China’s Xinhua News Agency) released a 33-page report titled “Historical and Legal Basis of China's Territorial Sovereignty and Maritime Rights in the South China Sea.” Xinhua Institute claims that this is a “comprehensive historical-legal assessment” intended to reinforce China’s positions in the South China Sea. However, beneath its veneer of “scholarship,” the document is fundamentally a political product, filled with historical sophistry and arbitrary interpretations and applications of the law. This article examines the report’s approach and key arguments, assessing its methodology as well as the legal reasoning and historical evidence it employs. Despite our attempts to “separate fact from fiction,” the 33-page document offers little that is substantively new beyond reiterating “post-World War II world order” arguments. Most of the content in this “so-called report” follows a well-worn path, recycling “time-worn” narratives in an attempt to justify...
05/12/2025
