Beijing has completed construction of an underwater archeology center off the coast of the South China Sea as a new tool to assert its territorial claims over islands in the region.
The facilities inaugurated this Saturday in the city of Qionghai, on the southern island of Hainan, represent a new step for the Asian giant to consolidate its claims of sovereignty in these waters, which on Chinese maps appear delimited by a line of nine points. in the form of an OR.
At the opening ceremony, the director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, Li Qun, said that the South China Sea is an “important section of the Maritime Silk Road”, reported today. today the South China Morning Post, based in Hong Kong.
According to the academic, the waters in question are home to a wide variety of “underwater artifacts” essential to the country’s cultural heritage, and “of particular importance for the transmission of traditional Chinese culture, as well as for the safeguarding of national sovereignty, security and human rights”. ”maritime interests”.
The center, whose construction began in 2018 and for which 250 million yuan (36.4 million dollars, 34.1 million euros) has been budgeted, includes facilities for archaeological research and restoration of shipwrecks and of their artifacts.
The institution is just the latest example of the many resources that Beijing has devoted in recent years to recovering archaeological remains, especially shipwrecks in its seas, especially in the disputed South China Sea, which, as transit point of the old Route Marítima de la Seda, hides a great number of historical treasures under its waters.
China has a dispute over the sovereignty of several islands and atolls in the South China Sea, which Beijing claims almost entirely on “historical grounds”, with some of these territories also disputed with the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan and Brunei.
The Asian giant’s claims received a major blow in 2016 when the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague (PCA) determined that the nine-point line with which China claims the disputed islands “has no legal basis”.
The ruling, not respected by China, argues that the Asian country has no historic rights to the waters it claims as its own.
Meanwhile, the United States is seeking to thwart Beijing’s moves in key global trade and natural resource-rich waters, amid the two countries’ struggle to increase influence in the Pacific.