China News
Chinese Territorial Strife Hits Archaeology
China Has Begun Asserting Ownership of Thousands of Shipwrecks in the South China Sea
Updated Dec. 2, 2013 1:35 a.m. ET
A boatman paddles away from the Sarangani, a ship on
which archaeologists became embroiled in a standoff with China, in
Manila Bay.
Jeremy Page/The Wall Street Journal
Underwater archaeologist
Franck Goddio's
team was exploring the wreckage of a 13th-century Chinese junk
off the coast of the Philippines when it made an unwelcome discovery
about China's maritime muscle in the 21st century.
As
a twin-prop plane swooped overhead, a Chinese marine-surveillance
vessel approached the team's Philippines-registered ship and began
broadcasting instructions in English over a loudspeaker.
"They
said this area belonged to the People's Republic of China, and they
told us to scram," recalls one of the people on board last year. "It was
pretty scary." Chinese officials confirm the incident took place but
say the archaeologists' mission was illegal.
With territorial disputes escalating
in the waters off China, the Chinese government has begun asserting
ownership of thousands of shipwrecks within a vast U-shaped area that
covers almost all of the South China Sea, which it says has been part of
its territorial waters for centuries.
China
has ordered its coast guard to prevent what it considers illegal
archaeology in the waters it claims, and it is pouring money into a
state-run marine-archaeology program. Chinese archaeologists are
preparing their first comprehensive survey of undersea sites, including
in disputed areas.
Chinese officials say
their efforts will curb the theft and treasure hunting they say has
destroyed numerous sites and flooded the global market with looted
Chinese antiquities.
There is a political dimension to
China's plans. Chinese archaeologists openly aspire to bolster their
country's historical claims to the contested South China Sea, which
overlap with those of Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Taiwan and the
Philippines.
"We want to find more
evidence that can prove Chinese people went there and lived there,
historical evidence that can help prove China is the sovereign owner of
the South China Sea," says
Liu Shuguang,
head of the Chinese government's Center of Underwater Cultural
Heritage, set up in 2009 to oversee underwater archaeology in the
country.
Tensions have been running high
in the region over China's intensifying campaign to assert territorial
claims, not only in the South China Sea, but in the East China Sea,
which is contested by Japan. On Nov. 23, China proclaimed a new
air-defense identification zone over islands claimed by both China and
Japan but controlled by Tokyo.
The South
China Sea, one of the world's busiest trading routes, is littered with
wrecks from the last two millennia, including Chinese junks, Indian and
Arab dhows, Dutch and British trading schooners and World War II
warships. Chinese archaeologists say they have gathered coordinates for
70 shipwrecks in those waters but estimate there are at least 2,000, and
possibly many more.
A team working with French underwater archaeologist
Franck Goddio, shown in 2010, was exploring the wreckage of a
13th-century Chinese junk off the coast of the Philippines when a
Chinese marine-surveillance vessel ordered them to leave the area.
Associated Press
In the early 15th Century, the Ming dynasty's Yongle
Emperor dispatched an unprecedented series of naval expeditions to the
Indian Ocean. Commanding them was a eunuch admiral known as Zheng He.
Mr. Goddio, a Frenchman who is one of
the world's leading marine archaeologists, had worked in the area since
the 1980s, excavating 15th-century Chinese junks, 16th-century Spanish
galleons and 18th-century British merchant ships. In addition to the
trip last year, his team had visited the cluster of reefs and rocks off
the Philippines, called the Scarborough Shoal, in 2011. Both expeditions
were part of a joint research project with the National Museum of the
Philippines, which collaborates with foreign archaeologists because of a
shortage of state funding.
Different countries refer to the disputed islands by different names.
People
involved in the project say it has no political or commercial agenda.
During last year's trip, they say, they were examining pieces of
celadon, a form of green-glazed ceramic, from a wreck that long ago
broke apart on the sharp coral.
Chinese officials see ulterior motives.
"The
Philippines sent some French archaeologists to do what? To drag away
this shipwreck," says Mr. Liu of China's Center of Underwater Cultural
Heritage. "Because this was material evidence that Chinese people first
found the Scarborough Shoal, they wanted to destroy evidence that was
beneficial to China." The archaeologists deny that.
Chinese
archaeologists haven't started excavating sites at the Scarborough
Shoal, but they have begun work on Chinese wrecks around the Paracel
Islands, which lie about 200 miles from the coasts of China and Vietnam
and are claimed by both countries. China has controlled the islands
since 1974, when it defeated Vietnam in a brief naval battle.
A stone statue in Nanjing of Chinese voyager Zheng
He, who sailed an armada of treasure ships as far as Africa about 600
years ago. The admiral is celebrated in China as the face of an era when
it projected power far beyond its shores.
Imaginechina/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Mike Hatcher prepares to dive from his ship in the
South China Sea in 1986. On the expedition he found the 'Nanking cargo,'
a haul of Chinese porcelain and gold from the wreck of the
Geldermalsen, an 18th-century Dutch East India Co. ship that raised more
than $20 million at auction in Amsterdam.
Associated Press
"Marine archaeology is an exercise
that demonstrates national sovereignty,"
Li Xiaojie,
the vice minister of culture, was quoted as saying by state media
in September 2012 as he examined porcelain retrieved from a wreck off
the Paracels.
Chinese archaeologists say the survey encompassing other disputed areas will begin this year or next.
They
also say they hope to support the government's efforts to re-establish
China as a world maritime power, by focusing their research on the
"Maritime Silk Road," which connected China by sea with India and Africa
beginning in about the second century B.C.
China's
five-year plan for 2011 to 2015 calls for the government to promote a
seafaring heritage embodied by
Zheng He,
a eunuch admiral who sailed an armada of treasure ships as far as
Africa about 600 years ago. The admiral is celebrated in China as the
face of an era when it projected power far beyond its shores.
Xi Jinping,
China's new president, has repeatedly emphasized the importance
of maritime power—at times invoking Zheng He—as part of a vision to
reclaim China's world prominence.
Zhang Wei,
one of China's first underwater archaeologists, says the nation
is "extremely focused on being a great and strong maritime power," which
he calls the "grand backdrop" to China's marine-archaeology program.
The program was launched, he says, under the auspices of President Xi's
father, who served as vice premier under
Deng Xiaoping
in the 1980s.
Photos
Two enameled globular teapots painted with peony and
bamboo below a border of trellis-pattern; the porcelain survived the
wreck and lasted more than two centuries under the sea so well because
it was packed inside the tea, which in turn was in wooden chests.
Christie
Mr. Zhang says interest was kindled
by commercial treasure hunters who operated in the South China Sea.
Among the most famous was
Mike Hatcher,
a Briton whose haul of Chinese porcelain from the wreck of the
Geldermalsen, an 18th-century Dutch East India Co. ship that sank in the
South China Sea, raised more than $20 million at auction in Amsterdam
in 1986.
Chinese leaders dispatched two
officials to that auction to try to buy some of the items with cash,
according to Mr. Zhang. "They only took about $30,000, and they couldn't
buy a single thing," he says.
China's
National Museum established its Underwater Archaeology Center the
following year and appointed Mr. Zhang to head it—mainly, he says,
because he was one of the few Chinese archaeologists who could swim.
The
first big find in Chinese waters—a roughly 800-year-old merchant ship
named the Nanhai One—was made in 1987 while a British salvage company
was searching for a Dutch East India Co. wreck. The British team was
forced to withdraw after the Nanhai One was identified as a Chinese
ship.
Since then, there has been almost
no foreign participation in marine archaeology in China, according to
Chinese and foreign archaeologists. And only Chinese wrecks have been
excavated in Chinese waters.
A replica of a treasure ship sailed by Zheng He about 600 years ago at a museum in Nanjing.
Getty Images
Chinese authorities, meanwhile, have
trained more than 100 marine archaeologists, built at least three
underwater-archaeology museums and invested millions of dollars in
research. On Thursday, they announced a new project to remove up to
80,000 artifacts from the Nanhai One, which was lifted off the seabed in
2007 and placed in a water tank in a museum.
Next
year, China plans to launch a 184-foot ship designed for marine
archaeology, the first of its kind in the country, according to
state-media reports.
China also is
funding joint projects in other countries' waters, focusing mostly on
locating wrecks linked to Zheng He. Last year, Chinese archaeologists
using sonar identified five wrecks they believe were part of his fleet
in the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz, according to Chinese state
media.
One reason Chinese authorities
are so interested in tracing Zheng He's travels is that he is said to
have visited several rocks and islands in the South China Sea.
Chinese archaeologists work with porcelain artifacts
from the Nanhai One shipwreck, which dated back to the Southern Song
Dynasty (1127-1279), in a structure in Yangjiang, China, in 2009.
Imaginechina/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Foreign experts say they welcome
China's new willingness to invest in underwater archaeology and relish
the prospect of learning more about sites in China's waters.
But
some say they are concerned that a political agenda might be driving
China's choice of sites, its exclusion of foreign archaeologists and its
relative lack of openness about its research.
"There's this strong sense of nationalism that flows through the Chinese program," says
Jeffrey L. Adams,
an anthropologist at the University of Minnesota who has written about Chinese archaeology.
Foreign
archaeologists mostly agree that Chinese-built ships and cargo account
for many of the sites in the South China Sea because of the
international trade in Chinese porcelain and silk.
But
many of the wrecks lie far from the Chinese mainland, around the reefs
and rocks off the coast of Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines, because
ships used to hug those shores to help with navigation and avoid bad
weather.
Even if a wreck isn't in a
disputed area, tracing its national "ownership" is often complicated. A
ship, its owner, its cargo and its crew all may have originated in
different countries.
Internationally,
the trend in recent years has been toward acknowledging "common
heritage," pursuing joint excavation and sharing results among academics
from different nations. A 2001 Unesco convention on underwater cultural
heritage encouraged states to cooperate when they had a shared interest
in a site, but offered no guidance on jurisdiction and no mechanism for
dealing with sites in disputed areas.
"If
there's a disputed site, what we recommend is just get together and
don't get into a fight over it," says
Ulrike Guerin,
who oversees protection of underwater cultural heritage at
Unesco, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization. "If you look around the world now, the majority of
projects are multinational ones."
None
of the countries involved in the South China Sea disputes have ratified
the Unesco convention. Only China has the resources to enforce its
claims to wrecks in the area and to excavate them.
China did little to enforce those
claims until March 2012, when the government announced its first-ever
crackdown on illegal salvage and archaeological work in China's
territorial waters.
The incident at the Scarborough Shoal occurred less than a month later.
China
says the standoff stemmed from an incident that April when a
Philippines navy ship detained some Chinese fishermen near the
Scarborough Shoal. But Chinese officials also have made it clear they
regarded Mr. Goddio's project as illegal.
The
Chinese marine-surveillance ship that approached the archaeologists was
one of three Chinese vessels that took turns monitoring them over the
next week or so, according to two people on board the archaeologists'
ship and accounts in Chinese state media.
A
Philippines coast guard ship was sent to the area but kept its
distance. A tense standoff ensued as Chinese and Filipino officials
accused one another of violating territorial boundaries.
Eventually,
on April 18, the archaeologists' ship was forced to leave, prompting a
formal protest from the Philippines' government. China has had effective
control of the area since then.
The team abandoned its project. Mr. Goddio declined to comment.
Neither
he nor the National Museum of the Philippines has a track record of
using finds to justify territorial or ownership claims. "We don't really
care who owns the ship," says Sheldon Clyde B. Jago-on, the head of
underwater archaeology at the National Museum of the Philippines. "It's
our shared heritage. It should be about collaboration. We care about the
trade patterns, the trade routes, the cargo, the boat building."
Some
experts say the overlap between politics and archaeology is neither
surprising nor unique to China. Vietnam is expanding investment in its
state-run archaeological program, and this year its Institute of
Archaeology opened an underwater-archaeology department.
One
of Vietnam's first projects has obvious political resonance—excavation
of the site of a naval battle in which Vietnamese forces defeated a
Chinese army in 938 A.D., bringing an end to centuries of Chinese rule
over Vietnam. That site is on a river inside Vietnam.
The
Scarborough Shoal incident, by contrast, marked the first time a
country in the region used force to stop another nation's underwater
archaeological project, experts say.
"China
has the largest navy and the ability to chase people off, and then
follow up with archaeological work," says
Mark Staniforth,
a marine archaeologist at Australia's Monash University who is
working with Vietnam's Institute of Archaeology. "There's no sense they
want to cooperate or collaborate with anyone."
Write to Jeremy Page at jeremy.page@wsj.com
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