Singapore: Through use of centuries-old maps, voyages, and vaguely defined historical presence, China seeks to portray contested waters as inherently Chinese, despite the prevailing modern international law and adverse legal rulings, a report said on Tuesday.
It added that this narrative strategy focuses less on persuading neutral arbiters and more on deligitimising the very idea of arbitration.
According to a report in ‘The Singapore Post’, if sovereignty is framed as historically predetermined, legal adjudication and multilateral negotiation are reduced to secondary- even illegitimate.
“China has increasingly treated history not as a field of inquiry but as an instrument of state power. Over the past decade, and with particular intensity since 2023, Beijing has accelerated a deliberate effort to reshape historical narratives in ways that align the past with present political and strategic objectives. This is not an abstract debate about memory or national pride. It is a systematic policy that retrofits selective history to legitimize territorial claims, suppress dissent, and narrow the scope of diplomatic compromise. In this framework, history becomes less a record of what happened and more a justification for what the state seeks to do next,” the report detailed.
“At the core of this approach lies the assertion that China’s contemporary borders and ambitions are the natural culmination of an unbroken civilizational continuum. Nowhere is this more evident than in the South China Sea, where Beijing presents its claims as the recovery of ancient rights rather than the expansion of modern power,” it added.
The report stressed that the same logic drives Beijing’s stance on Taiwan, with official narratives increasingly describing Taiwan not merely as a breakaway territory but as an inalienable part of the Chinese historical body polity, temporarily separated by foreign interference and civil war.
“By collapsing complex twentieth-century political realities into a simplified story of national humiliation and eventual restoration, the state presents unification as a historical obligation rather than a political choice. This framing serves a dual purpose: it mobilizes domestic nationalism while constraining leadership flexibility by turning compromise into historical betrayal,” it mentioned.
Beijing’s use of historical revisionism, the report said, as an instrument of state policy is not a “cultural curiosity but a strategic warning”.
“It signals a governing philosophy in which power is reinforced not only through economic or military means, but through the disciplined control of memory itself,” it noted.
(IANS)
