VietNamNet Bridge – It is not new that Chinese scholars have sought to plant false information in their scientific studies, but this has become more and more blatant.

Not only for the islands in the East Sea (internationally known as the South China Sea), Chinese scholars have recently shown disturbing information on the southwestern islands of Vietnam.

From the article "The annotation of Chinese scholars of the 1841 maritime atlas of Yale University," researcher Pham Hoang Quan received the offer of the Culture and Literature Publishing House to translate and annotate the atlas in Vietnamese to serve the research and protection of sea and island sovereignty of Vietnam. The work has been completed.  Quan talked about it in an interview with Tuoi Tre Newspaper.

Researcher Pham Hoang Quan.

- It is reported that you have just completed the annotation of the 1841 maritime atlas at Yale University and the book will be published in Vietnam in the near future. Could you give the brief introduction of this book?

- This book has over 200 pages. The original atlas at Yale University includes 122 maps, divided into two parts of north-south. The northern part with nearly 80 pages describes the waters to the east of China, which is not related to Vietnam, so in this book I just translated and annotated the southern parts, ie from southern Guangdong to Bangkok, with 44 pages.

The book has many maps about the East Sea of Vietnam, with many ports and many large and small islands, which are near or far the shore, specifically the waters from Da Nang to Tho Chu Island.

- Could you clarify the importance of the original atlas in the system of materials on the history of sovereignty over the sea and islands in the East Sea and the influence of the false annotations by Chinese scholars about the atlas on the awareness of the public and the research community?

- Actually, this atlas is only a small part of numerous Chinese historical documents related to the geographic history of Vietnam’s East Sea. It is simply a guideline document of navigation.

The maps described the seaports, islands and noted the necessary information for the use of ship drivers.

Generally, the atlas is purely a document about the ancient maritime science and it does not directly reflect the maritime sovereignty of nations. However this kind of material provides a lot of information for the research of maritime history and maritime trade relations between China and Southeast Asia, which is indirectly related to the study of maritime sovereignty.

Chinese scholars took advantage of the research of this atlas to add false annotations, for example, Vietnam’s Tho Chu Island belonging to Cambodia or they did not follow the conventions in ancient documents to not that the sea of Jiaozhi and Annam as the East Sea; instead they annotated the sea of Jiaozhi and Annam as the Gulf of Tonkin waters.

The translation and annotation I did this time is to help readers have the right view of the ancient documents.

For the academic community, although this is the atlas in Chinese, it has become popular and has been researched and analyzed in English and Chinese.

Because of the lack of translation in other languages, most Western scholars did not have references when they researched this atlas. They only referred to the studies and annotation made by Chinese scholars. If we do not have a translation with specific annotations in Vietnamese, foreign and Vietnamese researchers can be affected by China's interpretation and once the false information is spread, the correction will be more complicated.

- Your translation and annotation of the 1841 atlas at Yale University can be viewed as the "response" to Chinese scholars?

- We should pass the target of response or confrontation. The community of Chinese scholars is big and they always release wrong information so we don’t have time to response to their false information.

So I think we should try to handle their ancient documents correctly to avoid their extremist attitude.

Binzhou large mountain is Tan Chau, Quy Nhon or Thi Nai port in Binh Dinh Province, Vietnam. The map is from the atlas at the Yale University.

In the commentary for the translation and annotations of the atlas, I noted: "Although the atlas was drawn by the Chinese, but with its features, the content of maritime document is largely associated with the region and international relations.”

Chinese scholars today are often subjective and extreme in processing this kind of material because they thought that the documents are in their native language and on the other hand they are not aware of or ignore local records.

So the record of Chinese people about Vietnam or Southeast Asia needs to be translated and annotated thoroughly. This work is not to compare the understanding of China with that of Vietnam or of Southeast Asia about the document but aims to come to the "correct understanding" that is close to the true meaning of the source material.

Due to historical circumstances, many national, regional or maritime maps drawn by Chinese people have drifted to many places.

- What is your advantage in translating and annotating this atlas?

- I performed this task with the advantage of being able to refer to the studies of Chinese and foreign scholars in recent years. In the annotation, I tracked the origin of the way the ancient Chinese noting geographic names in their earliest documents. I also cited and compared many documents on geographic names from Western ancient maps and researched many ways of noting geographic names on ancient maps and documents from the Han - Nom documents and the folk names to see the similarities as well as the differences of many historic sites.

- In parallel with the notes, did you update the situation in which Chinese scholars keep quoting and making false annotations on this atlas? As a researcher of Vietnam’s maritime sovereignty from the Chinese and foreign material systems, do you think of popularizing your translation and annotation of this atlas to the public and scholars at home and abroad?

- Last August, at an international seminar on the theme “Beyond the silk road: Asian maritime history and culture” held by the Chinese Maritime Museum in Shanghai, the author who once made the false annotation that Vietnam’s Tho Chu Island belonging to Cambodia kept using that false information in his new studies, which was introduced at the seminar. His presentation was entitled "A brief explanation of maps as maritime materials of China-Thailand in the early Qing period".

The documents presented at that seminar were published as a book in December 2015 by a Chinese publishing house. This situation shows that we need to quickly inform international researchers to be careful when they refer to China's research studies.

Translated Tran Cham