In recent decades, the rival claimants to the disputed atolls in the South China Sea have asserted their territorial claims in different ways. Most dramatically, they have deployed military force to the islands and reefs. Less dramatically, but just as significantly, states have also mobilized historic documents in support of their legal claims. All the claimants have done this, but the People's Republic of China (PRC) has been particularly entrepreneurial in this regard. Over the past few years, academics and officials have re-discovered a number of ostensibly ancient documents that appear to provide evidence of historic Chinese sovereignty over the region. These are the genglubu 更路簿 (route books) of fishermen from the island province of Hainan.Footnote 1 These, PRC officials have asserted, provide evidence of the centuries-old presence of Chinese in the islands, reefs and shoals of the South China Sea.
The legal argument over whether territorial claims can be based upon ancient texts is a matter of contention between Chinese and Western legal experts.Footnote 2 This is not the focus of this essay. Instead, it will explore the nature of these route books as folk navigation guides and also their application in the maritime politics of the PRC.Footnote 3
Route Books in Official Proclamations
The route books came to particular prominence in July 2016, in the aftermath of a ruling by an International Arbitration Tribunal in favour of the Philippines. The day after the ruling was issued, the State Council of the PRC published a white paper on the South China Sea giving the route books a prominent position in its arguments. The main points emphasized in the white paper were that the route books showed “that the Chinese people lived and carried out production activities on, and how they named” the islands, reefs and shoals in the South China Sea. It also argued that the route books had a history of several hundred years dating back to the Ming period, and that since they were still “in use,” they constituted proof that Chinese fishermen had been familiar with the islands for a long time.Footnote 4
The first route book ever used by the PRC authorities to support a territorial claim in the South China Sea was not identified as a genglubu but rather was described as a shuilubu 水路簿 (sea passage log). Its existence was publicized in 1974 following an investigation conducted on the Paracel Islands (Xisha qundao 西沙群岛) in the immediate aftermath of their seizure by the Chinese from the Vietnamese. In the spring of 1974, researchers from the Guangdong Provincial Museum found a number of artefacts on the islands, from which they concluded that Chinese people had occupied the Paracels since at least the Tang dynasty.Footnote 5
As a by-product of their efforts, they found a sea passage log in the possession of an elderly fishermen from Hainan, Su Deliu 苏德柳. An article published by Renmin ribao 人民日报 in August 1976 declared Su Deliu's sea passage log to be important because it gave vernacular names to many places in the Paracels and Spratly Islands (Nansha qundao 南沙群岛). The article claimed that Hainan fishermen had visited the islands for “several hundred” years.Footnote 6
A second investigation was carried out on the Paracel Islands between March and April 1975.Footnote 7 The investigation report made only a brief and general reference to the collection of more sea passage logs, without specifying their owners.Footnote 8 In this report, the sea passage logs were linked to the Ming and Qing dynasties through the relics found in the Paracel Islands, which allegedly dated from those periods.Footnote 9
It was not until five years later, however, that the first official proclamation referring to route books was issued by the Foreign Ministry of the PRC. The article, published on 30 January 1980 in the Renmin ribao, asserted that the route books dated back to the Qing dynasty period.Footnote 10
In late 2000, the Foreign Ministry reinforced the PRC's legal claims over the Spratly Islands with a document entitled “Historical evidence to support China's sovereignty over Nansha Islands.”Footnote 11 The proclamation highlighted the importance of route books, referred to as “road maps.” The purpose of the text was to state China's case for its claim to the Spratly Islands. Route books had clearly gained in status as a valuable historical source in the PRC over the course of the two decades between 1980 and 2000.
Emergence of Route Books
The route books entered Chinese official discourse through the efforts of different researchers. The first two research campaigns were led by the Guangdong Provincial Museum in 1974 and 1975. Then, between March and May 1977, Han Zhenhua 韩振华 and his colleagues from the Nanyang Research Institute of Xiamen University collected a second batch of route books. Among them was an edited text (zhengliben 整理本), apparently authored by the fisherman Su Deliu, as well as a map.Footnote 12
Between 1976 and 1981, a team of researchers from South China Normal University in Guangzhou carried out astronomical research along the southern coast of China in the provinces of Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong and Hainan (then part of Guangdong province). The researchers also gathered texts held by Hainan fishermen Wang Guochang 王国昌, Mai Xingxian 麦兴铣, Li Genshen 李根深 and Lin Mingjin 林鸣锦 (the name is most likely an error for Lin Hongjin 林鸿锦).Footnote 13
By 1980, researchers had amassed ten texts, one oral report and one map. Knowledge of the contents of the route books was restricted to a small circle of people, and while scholars did write on the topic, hardly anything was published.Footnote 14 One of the earliest published pieces dealing with route books was authored by He Jisheng 何纪生, an archaeologist from the Guangdong Provincial Museum.Footnote 15 He Jisheng explained that the sea passage logs (shuilubu) had been handed down through successive generations of Hainan fishermen since the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. For He Jisheng, the texts represented “a scientific record of the development of the Xisha and Nansha Islands by our fishermen” (woguo yumin kaifa Xisha Nansha qundao de kexue jilu 我国渔民开发西沙南沙群岛的科学记录).Footnote 16 Some of the texts had been preserved orally: He Jisheng specifically focused on a report that fisherman Meng Quanzhou 蒙圈洲 had given in 1974.Footnote 17 The oral transmission of the texts suggests that the probably illiterate fishermen memorized the route books, and that the transfer from the memorized form to the written text must have occurred very late.Footnote 18
The use of route books to substantiate Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea is as old as China's claims themselves. In spring 1909, tempers in China flared over the discovery of a Japanese business operating on Pratas Island (Dongsha qundao 东沙群岛). One nationalist group, the Yueshang zizhihui 粵商自治會 (Guangzhou merchants’ self-governing association) “collected various sorts of evidence, from old published accounts of travellers to the oral testimony of local fishermen, to prove that the islands were historically Chinese.”Footnote 19 Whether the oral testimony of the fishermen included route books cannot be verified, but at that point route books may not have existed in written form. Nor were written route books mentioned in 1933 when the Chinese protested the annexation of some of the Spratly Islands by France.Footnote 20
In 1985, Liu Nanwei 刘南威, one of China's top geographers, described an extensive set of route books that in their entirety designated the South China Sea islands and island groups with names in the Hainan vernacular. According to Liu, eight of the route books that he used for his study, along with a map produced by Fu Hongguang 符宏光 in 1935, had been collected during the 1974 investigation.Footnote 21 There seems to be a contradiction here because Han Zhenhua claimed to have been the one who discovered Fu Hongguang's map in 1977. As described above, a further four texts had appeared during the investigation carried out by South China Normal University between 1976 and 1981.
Wu Fengbin 吴凤斌, a prominent historian of the South China Sea, opined on the basis of Meng Quanzhou's 1974 oral testimony that route books originated in the Ming dynasty but underwent further refinement over the course of the following centuries.Footnote 22 However, Wu did not provide a single piece of verifiable evidence to support that idea.
The 2012 Scarborough Stand-off and Route Books
The Scarborough Shoal Stand-off in 2012 was a decisive moment for the political use of route books. In April of that year, a Philippine navy vessel arrested Chinese fishermen in the Scarborough Shoal, and the subsequent tensions between the Philippines and the PRC lasted several weeks. The conflict over the sovereignty of the feature is still unresolved at the time of writing.
The public arguments between the two governments over the ownership of the shoal thrust Su Chengfen 苏承芬, an old fisherman and resident of Tanmen 谭门, to the centre of international attention as he became instrumental in China's rhetorical claim to the Scarborough Shoal. Su acted as a witness to a long history of Chinese activities in the South China Sea islands,Footnote 23 and he underlined his position on the South China Sea with a compass (luopan 罗盘) and his route book.Footnote 24 Since Su had been the captain of a fishing boat, he was presented as living proof of the practical application of the allegedly centuries-old route books.
The year 2015 saw the publication of Nanhai tianshu: Hainan yumin “genglubu” wenhua quanshi 南海天书: 海南渔民更路簿文化诠释 (Arcane Book of the South China Sea: Cultural Interpretations of the Hainan Fishermen's Route Books), an 820-page publication compiled by Zhou Weimin 周伟民 and his wife Tang Lingling 唐玲玲.Footnote 25 The book provides the full texts of 27 route books, together with commentaries, as well as Fu Hongguang's map. In the foreword, Zhou and Tang explain that in 1989 Zhou was appointed editor of the Hainan sheng diming cidian 海南省地名词典 (Dictionary of Geographical Names in Hainan Province) and was instructed by the deputy governor of Hainan province, Wang Yuefeng 王越丰, to research the origins of the names of islands and reefs in the South China Sea. Xin Yejiang 辛业江, another high-ranking provincial official, encouraged Zhou to form a “South China Sea regional research and development symposium” (Nanhai quyu yanjiu ji kaifa kentanhui 南海区域研究及开发恳谈会). Zhou explains that from the start there had been a plan to work with material that had circulated only internally (neibu faxing 内部发行). Among the 12 route books gathered by Zhou from 2010 onwards were those used by Hainan fishermen Chen Zeming 陈泽明, Huang Jiali 黄家礼 and Peng Zhengkai 彭正楷.Footnote 26 He only discovered in March 2015 that these route books had been the subject of an article co-authored by Liu Nanwei, then head of the geography department at South China Normal University, and his deputy, Zhang Zhengsheng 张争胜, which had been published in the second issue of Redai dili 热带地理 (Tropical Geography) in that same year.Footnote 27
Until this point, the history of the “discovery” of route books had appeared relatively straightforward. In March 2016, however, Yu Weihui 于伟慧, a reporter with the Hainan ribao 海南日报, presented an alternative account.Footnote 28 Yu described how his interest in route books had grown since first hearing about them in 2005. Surprisingly, when he contacted the head of the fishermen's office in Tanmen in 2005, the latter claimed to have little knowledge of them (ta dui genglubu liaojie buduo 他对更路簿了解不多). According to Yu, local people in Hainan referred to route books as either Nanhai genglu jing 南海更路经 or Nanhai shuilu jing 南海水路经.
With the help of the fishermen's office chairman, Yu was able to meet a number of old captains, mariners and their families. Yu finally chanced upon a genglubu at the home of Su Chengfen in September 2006 and published his finds in a special cultural issue (wenhua zhuanban 文化专版) of the Hainan ribao on 18 and 25 December 2006.Footnote 29 Consequently, Fu Cechao 符策超, the official responsible for representing Hainan's intangible cultural heritage, approached Yu and suggested that he apply for the genglubu to be included in the second list of intangible cultural heritage that was then being prepared by the central government. In 2008, genglubu made it onto the intangible heritage list.Footnote 30 Although Yu acknowledged the previous research done on route books, he claimed rediscovery of these texts for himself.
In April 2016, Su Chengfen and his route book were the subject of a follow-up article, four years after he had come to public attention during the Scarborough Shoal crisis.Footnote 31 In late May 2016, Su's route book was held to be “undeniable proof of China's sovereignty over Huangyan Island” in an article written by China Daily reporters Li Xiaokun and Liu Xiaoli.Footnote 32
In June 2016, John Sudworth, a BBC reporter, visited Su Chengfen to inquire about the route book referred to by Li Xiaokun and Liu Xiaoli in the previous month. The text had been described as “iron-clad proof” of China's claims by Gao Zhiguo 高之国, a senior legal figure in the PRC and a member of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea since 2008. To his surprise, Sudworth discovered that Su had thrown away his route book, apparently because it was damaged.Footnote 33 Sudworth therefore questioned its credibility. Sudworth was unaware of Su Chengfen's prominent role in 2012, and similarly he had not seen Zhou and Tang's book.
Since the Philippines’ victory in the international arbitration case in 2016, there has been an upsurge in state-sponsored research on route books (genglubuxue 更路簿学). In September 2016, it was announced that a centre had been founded for their study (Genglubu yanjiu zhongxin 更路簿研究中心) at Hainan University.Footnote 34
Conclusion
Publications about route books emerged in connection with political events in the South China Sea. The 1974 expedition by members of the Guangdong Provincial Museum should be seen against the background of the seizure of the Paracel Islands from Vietnam in January of that year. The results of the investigation, including the discovery of fisherman Su Deliu's text, served to provide evidence for the legitimacy of Chinese occupation of the islands. In 1988, PRC forces took over six reefs and atolls in the Spratly Islands; in that same year a major volume containing historical materials on the islands, including route books, was also published. In a similar vein, fisherman Su Chengfen was thrust into the limelight in 2012 following the Scarborough Shoal stand-off.
Research on route books is heavily dependent on their value as evidence of Chinese occupation and long-standing use of the islands. Different authors attribute different dates of origin to the texts. All of the suggested dates seem to be based on conjecture. The handwritten copies that survive today date from the first half of the 20th century.
Route books only became an area of study after the first works had been used as proof of occupation in the South China Sea disputes. Some of the texts that are now categorized as route books were originally not called so. In some cases, researchers declared the texts to be route books because the untitled originals were relatively similar in content and structure.
The idea that these texts had their origins in the early Ming dynasty stems from Meng Quanzhou's 1974 report, and it is based on this claim that Chinese scholars and newspaper reporters refer to a history of over 600 years for the route books. However, to date, no evidence has been produced to support this claim.
Biographical note
Johannes L. KURZ is a senior lecturer in the historical studies programme at Universiti Brunei Darussalam, where he teaches East Asian history and other courses. His research interests include the South China Sea, the history of the Five Dynasties and Ten States period in China, and pre-modern Chinese texts as sources for modern South-East Asian national histories. He has published in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde and the Journal of the American Oriental Society, among others.
