Itbayat mayor ties China claim over Batanes to Taiwan IP voyage

ITBAYAT, Batanes —- “There’s no truth to that claim.

Itbayat Mayor Joseph Cultura, a retired Navy captain, said assertions by Chinese scholars that Batanes Province is part of China because it was supposedly an extension of Taiwan stem mainly from its expansionist policy and bully posturing, and not because it’s a historic fact.

“I saw the news yesterday. We should not even respond to the academic paper because we know this is plain propaganda,” Cultura said in an interview.

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READ: Chinese academics claim Batanes belongs to China through Taiwan

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He accused these unnamed academics of securing Chinese state funds to produce scholarly materials that perpetuate their claims to additional territory, which will find their way to their school curriculum for indoctrination.

Cultura said the theory being pushed by scholars there may have sprung from the historic reenactment of voyages made 300 years ago by 20 members of the indigenous Tao people of Lan Yu (Orchid Island) in southern Taiwan who paddled to the Batanes Islands in a wooden canoe on June 16 to follow the marine trade routes navigated by their ancestors.

READ: Tao boat from Taiwan reaches Batanes, revives ancient sea route

Coincidentally, Chinese Ambassador Jing Quan and Consul and Head of Post Li Xiaoyan of the Chinese Consulate in Laoag travelled to Batanes just as the Tao seafarers completed their traditional voyage across the Bashi Channel and docked in Batanes.

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The mayor said Mainland China authorities are reading too much into the cultural and historical voyage to revive centuries-old maritime links between the Tao people and the Ivatan people of Batanes, who share cultural, linguistic, and ancestral ties.

Cultura said if this was the crucial backdrop to the  Chinese claim, “they got it all backwards.”

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“True, we have Austronesian roots and ancestry …But it was the people of Batanes, particularly Itbayat, who left Batanes and settled in Lan Yu Island to escape the strict discipline and persecution from the Spanish friars and not vice versa,” the mayor said, to explain the similarities of Ivatan and Tao cultures./coa

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