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China’s fluctuating South China Sea dash lines
The international community is surely expecting China to lead by example and start implementing such a commitment by drawing a fixed and consistent map according to the international law.
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Naval brothers: Indonesian Military (TNI) commander Adm. Yudo Margono (front row, fifth right) and Indonesian Navy Chief of Staff Adm. Muhammad Ali (front row, fifth left), along with delegates from foreign navies taking part in the 2023 Multilateral Naval Exercise Komodo (MNEK), take a group photo on June 5 at Soekarno Hatta Pier in Makassar, South Sulawesi. Both China and the United States sent their warships to the military exercise, despite the ongoing rivalry between the two superpowers. (AFP/Indra Abriyanto)
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n 1948, the Boundary Department of the Ministry of Interior of the Republic of China issued a map that showed an 11-dash line in the South China Sea. The good relationship between China and Vietnam in the 1950s resulted in the deletion of two of the dashes in the Gulf of Tonkin by Mao Zedong and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai.
An island called Bach Long Vi (now Haiphong City, Vietnam) was handed over from China to Vietnam in 1957. The number of dashes was, thus, reduced to nine. This nine-dash line map was later attached to the letter from China’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations dated May 7, 2009 responding to the submission by Vietnam to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf concerning Vietnam’s continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles.
Subsequently, in June 2014, the Hunan Map Publishing House published a new map known as “the vertical map of China” where the number of the dashes in the line increased to 10. Compared with the nine-dash line map, the 10-dash line map shows an extra line on the east side of Taiwan.
Interestingly, the Arbitral Tribunal of the South China Sea Arbitration throughout three years of proceedings never mentioned this 10-dash line map. The tribunal, rather, discussed the nine-dash line map extensively and decided in 2016 that the nine-dash line unilaterally claimed by China based on historic rights is “contrary to the UNCLOS [UN Convention on the Law of the Sea] and without lawful effect”.
Just recently, on Aug. 28, China’s Ministry of Natural Resources posted a map with a 10-dash line in the South China Sea.
So here we have, in historical order, 11- to nine- to 10- to nine- to 10-dash line maps.
Other than the inconsistent number of the dashes in the lines, there are three other inconsistencies. First, the length of each line; second, the location of the line and; third, the distance of the lines to the coast of adjacent countries.
