Asian Territorial Disputes

after doing this for europe and america asia there are a lot and i mean a lot of territorial disputes between asian countries i couldn't fit them all here without making an absurdly long video so if you think a part 2 is justified let me know there are specifically three of them that are incredibly interesting and well known deserving of their own in-depth videos however they are also related to very serious and tragic ongoing conflicts and are therefore a little too sensitive to be talking about on this video at least for now specifically the ones here here and here i might start doing videos on these more sensitive topics on my patreon which you can by the way support through the link in the description to have access to extra content so in this video i'm going to steer clear of those three specific ongoing conflicts and focus on other perhaps lesser known territorial disputes in asia which are still very interesting first a dispute between australia and indonesia over the ashmore and cartier islands the territory is an uninhabited external territory of australia consisting of four tropical islands 320 kilometers off the north of australia and 144 kilometers south of indonesia this might be one of the reasons they claim it because they are closer to it ashmore reef is called pulau passier by indonesians and nuza solokayek in the local indigenous rotanese language and both names mean sand island since 1931 the british who controlled it stated that it belonged to australia and in 1983 australia declared it a natural reserve however a lot of indonesian fishermen have regularly visited the island for many centuries and so australia and indonesia set out an arrangement so that these fishers can access resources in the territorial sea of the region it's because of these fishermen that indonesia claims the islands they argue that they were first discovered and inhabited by those fishermen from the lesser sunda islands which were at the time part of the dutch east indies if the dutch east indies stopped existing as a dutch domain and became indonesia then they claim those islands should join them as well a big issue in asia that has to do with territorial disputes although sea territory and not land is the south china sea and an example of that is the one over the spratly islands they are a disputed archipelago in the south china sea and as we can see in this map here they're a mess and as a consequence the south china sea is a mess as well they are heavily disputed due to their location in strategic shipping lanes the islands have no indigenous inhabitants but offer rich fishing grounds and many contain significant oil and natural gas reserves so which country wouldn't want them they are claimed and occupied usually by military forces of vietnam china taiwan the philippines malaysia and brunei in this other map we can see the areas that each country seeks to control in the area and how most of them overlap creating a big issue which a lot of people determine is the most problematic situation in asia today moving north we have china versus bhutan with the bhutanese tibet enclaves india is apparently in the mix here as well but it's mostly between china and bhutan being related to the chinese control of tibet i think india just steps in to help bhutan and fend off chinese interests that they see as a possible threat in the region a couple of areas here with the dotted line borders are claimed by both bhutan and china there have been several rounds of negotiations but no agreement was possible yet the issue has to do with the existence of the historical kingdom of sikhim which was partly located there but which was then annexed by india as a state during the 18th century sikkim faced repeated raids from bhutan and these areas often changed hands and in tibet it seems that a similar situation happened after a bhutanese attack in 1780 a settlement was reached which resulted in the transfer of doklam to bhutan it is said that the chinese site maps from before 1912 to stake their claim over doklam due to other conflicts in which they helped tibet fight against nepal it seems a really confusing issue to be honest but it boils down to bhutan and china claim these they can't agree on who should get it or how to divide it one big dispute that temporarily flares up is an issue between pakistan and india in the region of kashmir the kashmir conflict is over the kashmir region primarily between india and pakistan with china playing a third party role the conflict started after the partition of india in 1947 as both india and pakistan claimed the entirety of the former princely state of jammu and kashmir from what i could find out pakistan recognizes china's claim but india does not india controls about 55 percent of the land area and 70 of its population pakistan controls about 30 percent of the land while china controls the remaining 50 percent which are mostly uninhabited as far as i know the only agreement that has been made is who effectively controls each part of the territory but both countries continue to claim the others side and from time to time tension increases with a few wars having already taken place to no change in the status of the region there are also other small territorial details which technically are not agreed upon by both india and pakistan along their border moving to central asia kyrgyzstan tajikistan and uzbekistan argue over sovereignty of the fergana valley essentially the fergana valley includes territory of these three countries and within that area each of them have several exclaves and enclaves of land inside the other two countries the area is populated by uzbek tajik and kyrgyz people often intermixed and not paying much attention to the official and technical borders it seems like the area is just a mess when it comes to ownership and no actual definitive borders have been defined and agreed upon back to an issue involving india there are disputes with nepal over the kalapani region kalapani is ruled by india but claimed by nepal since 1997. according to nepal it lies in the nepalese daruchula district i can't understand what the argument is but i think it has to do with a local river nepal claims all of the river should be part of the border india claims the headwater of the river isn't included and so they argue over that piece of land nepal and india also have other small land disputes most of which seem to be over technical border lines more towards the middle east we have omen versus yemen in the korea muria islands a group of five islands in the arabian sea which we can see on this map in antiquity the islands were called the zenobio islands mentioned by several early writers like ptolemy in 1854 the sultan of muscat later muscat and omen and now oman presented the islands to queen victoria of great britain as a gift in 1967 the british gave the islands back to oma but yemen objected claiming them for themselves the boundary between the two countries was actually not formally settled until 1992 when it was agreed that the islands were to stay on omen's side of the line another set of islands that is the cause of dispute in this case between russia and japan are the south koreal islands the cordial islands are a chain of islands that stretch between the japanese island of hokkaido and the southern end of the russian kamchatka peninsula the issue is that the latest treaty on it is the san francisco peace treaty signed between the allies and japan in 1951 which states that japan must give up all rights claim entitled to the cordial islands but it also does not recognize the soviet unions and now russia's sovereignty over them japan says the islands that they claim aren't part of the cordial archipelago and russia claims that their sovereignty is in fact recognized by post-war treaties negotiations between japan and russia are still happening until today to resolve the issue russia also has another dispute roughly in the same area but with south korea over noctundu in 1990 the former soviet union and the democratic people's republic of korea signed a border treaty which made the border run through the center of the tulman river leaving noctundo in russia south korea refused to acknowledge the treaty and claims that russia shouldn't have ownership of the area singapore is a small city-state but that doesn't stop it from enforcing their territorial claims as well and they have at least a couple issues with their neighbor malaysia one of those was over pedro branca the pedra branca dispute was a territorial issue between singapore and malaysia over several islands at the eastern entrance to the singapore strait the dispute began in 1979 and was largely resolved by the international court of justice in 2008 which stated that pedro blanca belonged to singapore and the middle rocks belonged to malaysia malaysia's case was that the johort sultanate one of their predecessor states had original ownership of pedro branca middle rocks and south ledge johort had not ceded feather blanca to the united kingdom but had merely granted permission for a lighthouse to be built and maintained on it singapore claimed that the island was under no sovereignty being occupied by the british and then granted to them upon independence by the way pedro branca means white stone in portuguese a name given by the european explorers due to the marks of bird droppings on rocks found on the island malaysia on the other hand also argues with brunei over the lin bang district limbaugh district was part of brunei until it was forced to cede it the raj of sarawak in 1890 since then brunei is divided territorial into two limbach was once again claimed by brunei in 1967 in order to reconnect the country today sarawak is a part of malaysia which claims to have settled this issue in 2009 but brunei continues to dispute it and completing a third issue for malaysia is the one they have with the philippines over sabah saba or north borneo is still partially claimed by the philippines they claim that the territory is connected with the sultanate of sulu and was only leased to the north borneo chartered company in 1878 with the sultanate sovereignty never being relinquished malaysia however considers this dispute as a non-issue as it interprets the 1878 agreement as that of session and that it deems that the residents of sabah had exercised their right to self-determination when they joined to form the malaysian federation in 1963. this dispute technically still exists but the claim hasn't been pressed by the philippines for a long time back to the middle east is kuwait and saudi arabia with a dispute over the karu and um al-maradim there's not much to these ones both nations claim them because of the strategic location the islands hold and the resources found there karu has large amounts of petroleum sediments and um al-maradim which fun fact apparently means mother of boulders is surrounded by deep waters which enable ships to land directly at its shores an advantage which is not available on most kuwaiti islands thus justifying the desire for ownership from both sides next we have two issues that involve both china and taiwan and then a third party a lot of china's territorial claims are based on historical claim and because of this taiwan or the republic of china also states they have the right to them because from their perspective each of them is the legitimate heir of the chinese state china taiwan and india all claim arunachal pradesh this is basically between china and india it would make no sense for taiwan to claim this if they didn't first take back control of mainland china which is impossible at this point it is claimed by both the chinese as part of the region of south tibet the argument dates back to the mcmahon line that the british drew to define the border between british india and china which the chinese refused at the time in the time the china did not exercise power in tibet the line had no serious challenges but once they did the problem came back after india became independent in 1947 and the people's republic was established in china in 1949 eventually during the 1962 sino-indian war most of it was temporarily captured by the chinese people's liberation army as far as i know today it is once again ruled by india but the issue remains and finally japan china and taiwan also each claim the senkaku islands between the three claimants but closer to taiwan china and taiwan both claimed the discovery and ownership of the islands from the 14th century while japan maintained ownership of the islands from 1895 until its surrender at the end of world war ii the discovery of potential undersea oil reserves in 1968 in the area was a catalyst for further interests today japan administers and controls the islands as part of the city of ishigaki in the okinawa prefecture so those are a few of the territorial disputes that exist in asia like i mentioned there are a few more and this video was already long as it was so i decided not to include all that i could find if you want a part two just let me know and there are those pretty major ones that were left out because of being sensitive topics which i might start doing videos on on my patreon so that there aren't any issues here as for the other ones i think they're also extremely interesting and it's a good thing that the majority of them are nothing more than diplomatic disagreements that never escalate into anything more serious or that are able to be resolved peacefully as everything should preferably be thanks so much for watching this video subscribe if you want and i will see you next time for more general knowledge

Channel: General Knowledge

Views: 174,485

Keywords: generalknowledge, funwithflags, countriesthatdon'texist

Id: WPc0-Ctg6uE

Length: 14min 56sec (896 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 27 2020