​Recently, the saga in the South China Sea (SCS) is gaining heat due to the following three continued developments:

1. The Philippines’ challenge on China's sovereignty claim, a U shaped ocean boundary in the SCS, including Spratly islands (On Oct. 29, 2015, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague claimed jurisdiction over the case). Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia all have disputes on islands near them. 
2. China's construction efforts on her islands in the SCS making some of them to be serviceable air and sea ports.
3. The U.S. gestures sending naval ships including a carrier to demand freedom of navigation as if the above two activities have restricted the maritime freedom in the SCS.

Tracing the origin of the SCS issue really leads to a legal interpretation of the U shaped boundary line China has claimed and published in 1947 after WW II. The officially published U shaped boundary line is based on historical Chinese presence and territorial claims in the SCS。 In Sino-French war (1884-85), France recognized China’s claim of the S.C.S. in exchange for China’s recognition of Vietnam as a French occupied colony. In 1933, France seized the Spratly and Paracel islands despite China’s protest. In 1938, Japan took the islands from France and kept them until the end of WW II. After Japan surrendered in 1945, according to the San Francisco Treaty and Potsdam Declaration, Japan had to renounce all the captured territories and returned them to their rightful owners. This includes Taiwan, Penghu, Spratly, Paracels, etc., acknowledged by both the ROC and PRC governments. At present, ROC is in control of Taipin Island - one of the largest island in Spratly, where a garrison, school, hospital and bank all exist; whereas PRC has total control of the Paracels where China has built airport and seaport on some of the islands.
 
Although there were squatting activities in the SCS mainly by fishermen, there was no impact to freedom of maritime. China has taken a very low key in dealing with any disputes in the SCS islands. However, in the recent 2-3 years, more disputes in SCS arose resulting in a confrontational situation as described by the three developments listed above. Many Chinese American organizations especially those familiar with the Chinese history felt necessary to diffuse the confrontation and mystery by revealing the facts. Hence, On March 4-7, 2016, a number of organizations sponsored a series of seminars on the hot topic, disputes in the SCS by inviting two experts on international law, Professor Fu Kuen Chen of Xiamen University and Prof. Yang Cui Bo of Sichuan University to offer a number of presentations on their research in Los Angeles, Flushing and Manhattan, NY and Wash. DC. On behalf of the organizers, I had the privilege to chair the seminar session on March 7th at NYU Kimmel Center. The room was fully packed and the presentations were very stimulating. The audience, including a number of well known professors such as Professor Jerome Cohen, Director of US-Asia Law Institute and his students, Professors James Chieh Hsiung, Huang Chi Chao and Hua Jun Xiong and many legal professionals including Douglas Burnett of Square, Patton Boggs, Issac B. Kardon, U.S. - Asia Institute, and Shen Jianmin, a practicing attorney with international law background, engaged in a very lively discussion.

Professor Fu first presented historical evidences to establish the de-facto presence of Chinese and their utilization of the SCS over two thousand years. Then he gave a detailed description on how the U shape line was drawn, published and recognized by the international community including Vietnam's official acknowledgment of China's definition of ocean boundary in the S.C.S., the U.S. navy’s request of permission to survey Spratly island in 1960, and the Filipino government’s return of the stolen ROC flag from Taipin Island by Filipino citizens and her apology. He then traced the proceedings of the UN arbitration court, from the Philippines' initiation of a false claim denying Spratly islands as real islands, to the problematic creation of the arbitration court when a judge is lacking real impartiality and to the interpretation of UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS) regarding island definition, jurisdiction, compulsory ruling and member's right to refuse acceptance of the ruling when sovereignty is in dispute. Professor Yang added more of his research in historical evidence of China's ocean boundary in the S.C.S. In summary, they concluded that from legal and historical inheritance point of view, China has ample proof for her claim in the S.C.S.

Professor Cohen made a comment during Q&A, “if the tribunal court ruled in favor of the Philippines, it would make China look very bad in the international community” and he asked “what will happen to China then?” This is a hypothetical question. The Q&A session did not arrive at an answer. As the chair monitoring the session, I could not engage freely in the discussion but Professor Cohen's question stayed with me. Here, I would like to offer my comment. Given the fact that the arbitration court's track record on impartiality and success rate in enforcing its decision are not good, I think in the case of SCS, the impact of the court ruling on China would be determined by the ability of the disputing parties to make a successful interpretation to the International community, a PR case I may say. 

Since China is armed with more historical facts, research work and archived documents, she should be able to present arguments against the ruling, if necessary, discrediting the impartiality and due diligence of the court. The United States has the richest communication media/industry in the world; hence generally she has a hold on the communication media and platform. However, in recent years since the opening of the Internet, China has established a sizable media and communication network of her own. Therefore, China would not be shy in publicizing her research and due diligence in defending her position regarding S.C.S. In this process, not only the litigants but even the bystanders will be dragged in. If China is able to present a fool-proof counter argument to support her case, every party including sideline cheer leaders will have to face the consequences. To avoid embarrassment, not only China needs to do a thorough research job to defend her position, all litigants must do the same. If the U.S. is to take side, then she must do her due diligence as well.

Based on what has been known so far, it appears that China has done more research than anyone else in defining the SCS case. The U. S. most likely has access to the same information. It is my opinion that the academicians and scholars in the U.S. should begin a due diligence to do research on the S.C.S. issue rather than accept blindly the media spin coming with any SCS news. The American citizens and policy makers should be well informed and educated on the SCS issue so that the U.S. will not take the wrong side of the justice. After all, there is no real advantage for the U.S. to take sides in the first place. The SCS presents no real security threats to the U.S. If the U.S. would casually or deliberately take the wrong side on the SCS issue, it would no doubt hurt the US-China relations, with both ROC and PRC governments. Therefore, it is wise for the U.S. to stay neutral and impartial to digest all the PR work presented by the disputing parties rather than choreograph any act to compound the SCS issue.
 

In this column, organic views are mostly presented with no authors’ names simply because the sources of organic views are either anonymous or wish to be unnamed. Naturally, it is wise to be cautious in reading Internet emails even online publications, never taking them for granted as truth. One must exercise judgment on the messages and facts cited therein. If the material is of significance or of great interest to you, then you should do a little research to verify the facts in the content. There are a number of websites available where many of the 'Internet information' have been verified either as truth or as bogus rumors; examples of such sites are factcheck.com, snopes.com and truthorfiction.com. Today's subject, US Democracy, is triggered by an email, which has been widely distributed from 2000, 2004, 2008-9, 2012, and again in 2015-16. This email basically puts democracy in question referring to the failure of the old Athenian Democracy and comparing it to the recent presidential election results in the U.S. to support an obituary statement: that the U.S. was born in 1776 and died in 2016. 

We focus on this email in this column despite of the fact that the email was bogus and some of its facts inaccurate. We will explain in the following why we will devote the space here to such emails, which obviously have been circulated in the organic medium until they are discredited. The reason is simple, even the authors of these emails used fake names and some of the facts cited were inaccurate, but the thrust of the messages in these emails was significant. In addition, these emails had surfaced several times over five US presidential election cycles and had circulated among so many people; simply suggests that there might be a true organic view many people had believed in and wanted to share with others.

The main thrust of the above-mentioned emails is as follows:

 Professor Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor of University of Edinburgh of the late nineteen century was quoted from his studies (1887) on Athenian Democracy: 1. "A democracy is always Temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent Form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous Gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority Always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally Collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a Dictatorship." 2. "The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the Beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 Years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith; 
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty; 
From liberty to abundance; 
From abundance to complacency; 
From complacency to apathy; 
From apathy to dependence; 
From dependence back into bondage."

Another Professor Joseph (or James) Olson, Hamline University School of Law, St Paul, Minnesota, was also quoted:

1. "The last Presidential election:
Number of States won by:        Obama: 19  Romney: 29 
Square miles of land won by:    Obama: 580,000  Romney: 2,427,000 
Population of counties won by: Obama: 127 million  Romney: 143 million 
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:  Obama: 13.2  Romney: 2.1

2. Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Romney won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country. Obama territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in low income tenements and living off various forms of government welfare..."

The email then added an editorial: “Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of Democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase."

Although the data cited above are inaccurate; they are closer for year 2000 and 2004 Bush/Gore elections than Obama's two elections (obviously the email might be reproduced from earlier versions) and Professor Olson has denied to be the author of the above cited quotes, but the significance of the message remains to be thought provoking, i.e. does a democratic system always go through a failure cycle as implied by the email. In addition, the email contains the following comments: "If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders (*more like 11 million and not all criminals for sure) called illegal’s  - and they vote - then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years." This comment certainly reminds us that the U.S. government seems to be unable to solve our immigrant problem or to manage a balanced budget. Furthermore, the obituary statement in the email, “United States, Born in 1776 and died in 2016” is intentionally provocative to scare and force people to think about the possibility that the American Democracy might fail like the Athenian Democracy. The persistency of this email to appear in 2016 again is simply to remind the American voters to take the 2016 presidential election seriously.

After examined this email and researched its origin and various comments made by others, including those fact-checking websites, I have come to the conclusion that emails like these with questionable authorship still could represent a valid organic view if the factual data could be corrected (or ignored) without impacting the message. In my opinion, as I have written before, democracy is merely a tool not an ideology. As a tool, it must be used skillfully according to circumstances with foresight to tailor the tool to prevent disastrous outcome. Ironically, in Greece today, its democracy seems to favor an over liberal labor majority to elect their government officials to protect a unsustainable welfare system ignoring the fact Greece is going to default on her largest sovereign debt and become bankrupt. Doesn't the above email with repeated circulation serve as a genuine warning to the American citizens? Isn't it possible this email reflects a view from a large enough population in expressing their concern about American presidential campaign, its election process and electoral vote counting method? I rather believe that the email was sent with a good intention rather than with the purpose of generating a rumor. The fact that it is circulating in every election year for the past five presidential elections must have reached a significant number of Americans across two generations.
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When comes to information, we know that, on the one hand, both the organic media and the mainstream media cannot be blindly trusted, on the other hand, we should not be shy to bring information from the organic media to the mainstream media. I hope the people who have received this email will bring its message – “Is the American democracy truly representing the majority?” and “Is the majority of voters voting the American system to bankruptcy?” - to the mainstream media, we should have a serious debate.