During his visit to the Museum of Da Nang, the Chairman of the Institute for Vietnamese Culture and Education in the USA, Mr Tran Thang, who donated 150 maps proving Viet Nam’s sovereignty over the Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelagos, had a short interview with a Da Nang Newspaper reporter.

Q: Why did you collect the maps and documents which prove Viet Nam’s sovereignty over the 2 archipelagos, and then donate them to Da Nang?

Mr Thang (left) explaining the origin of the maps

A: In July 2012, I knew that the Director of the Viet Nam Family Annals Scientific Application and Research Centre, Dr Mai Ngoc Hong, had donated to the Viet Nam National Museum of History an administrative boundary map of Chinese provinces published in 1904 during China’s Qing Dynasty.   I decided to purchase 40 maps, which are as important as Dr Hong’s, on the Internet and bought others which were published by many foreign countries at different times.  I had already purchased 3 Chinese atlases, which were issued in 1908, 1919 and 1933, and these show that the 2 archipelagos do not belong to China.

Q: What did you hope for when you donated the maps?

A:  I hoped that my valuable map donations would provide historical evidence in support of our country’s righteous struggle for its legal claim over the archipelagos.  I suggested that the city should promote the evidence from the donated maps by displaying them in localities nationwide, as well as publish books containing my maps in different foreign languages and distribute them at home and abroad.  On my recent return to Viet Nam, I brought with me 50 scanned maps which were issued by Western countries between 1640 and 1880 and I will be donating 32 of them to Da Nang.

Today, 19 June, Mr Thang received a Certificate of Merit from the municipal People’s Committee in recognition of his donation of the maps in support of Viet Nam’s struggle for its sovereignty over the archipelagos.