China has co-opted a cartographic mistake to bully its neighbours
spent longer patrolling key reefs along the line than ever before. China’s assertiveness in enforcing this claim is perhaps the biggest obstacle to calming tensions in the South China Sea. How did this line become so important?
The nine-dash line is partly the result of a cartographic mistake. Chinese officials had little interest in, or knowledge of, the South China Sea before the 20th century. But after a series of humiliations at the hands of imperialist powers, map-making became a way to reclaim national pride, at least on paper. In 1933 Chiang Kai-Shek’s nationalist government created a committee to give Chinese names to islands in the South China Sea.
When Bai Meichu, a private geographer and teacher inspired by the flurry of nationalistic cartography, drew a map with the first U-shaped line, he curved it around the James Shoal. Two of Bai’s students were later hired by the nationalist Kuomintang government and, in 1946, appear to have helped draw the first official map containing the line.
China is unlikely to change its stance. Xi Jinping, China’s president, has promised to recover lost territory and with it the country’s place in the world. In 2013 China added a tenth dash, to emphasise that Taiwan falls within the line. As long as China continues to flout international law, talks to resolve disputes in the South China Sea are unlikely to succeed, says Ian Storey of the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, a think-tank.
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