evidence: The Paracel Islands belong to Vietnam. Not to China. [...] One of the country’s preeminent South China Sea experts, he helped curate the materials at the museum, including what he says is the earliest evidence of Vietnamese sovereignty over the Paracels: a map from 1686, which shows the islands as belonging tothe Nguyen Dynasty, which ruled much of what is now modern Vietnam. [...] And legally, says Hoskin, Vietnam may have given up any claim to the Paracels in 1958, when the then-Prime Minister of North Vietnam wrote a letter to the Chinese government saying that Hanoi "recognizes and approves" Beijing’s claims of sovereignty over the South China Sea and its territories.