I was trying to make a similar point last year in a thread about micronations. Prominent mappers were adamant that the “local claims” as to admin_level were ridiculous and had to be treated as vandalism, and I tried unsuccessfully to argue that it was not so different from the divergence between us French and some international bodies about the administrative level of some islands, e.g Réunion. In my view these all are cases of juxtaposed points of views (or juxtaposed reference systems) from various authorities.
I must say that I am (kind of perversely) glad that the same kind of topic is now raised not by a few marginals on a disused oil platform but by a somewhat influential world leader 
More seriously I believe that the solution proposed above by Minh has the potential to solve many of those cases of conflicting authorities.