The
nine-dash line, at various times also referred to as the ten-dash line and the eleven-dash
line (by the ROC), is a set of line segments on various maps that accompanied the claims of
the People's Republic of China (PRC, "mainland China") and the Republic of China (ROC, "Taiwan")
in the South China Sea.[1] The contested area in the South China Sea includes the Paracel Islands,
[a]
the Spratly Islands, of which Taiping Island, the largest of the islands, is controlled by the ROC,[b]
[2]
and various other areas including Pratas Island and the Vereker Banks, the Macclesfield Bank,
and the Scarborough Shoal. Certain places, known as the "Great Wall of Sand", have
undergone land reclamation efforts by various states that claim the area, including the PRC, ROC,
and Vietnam.[3][4][5]
An early map showing a U-shaped eleven-dash line was first published by the Republic of
China government on 1 December 1947.[6] Two of the dashes in the Gulf of Tonkin were later
removed at the behest of Premier Zhou Enlai of the PRC after a treaty with Vietnam, reducing the
total to nine.[7] However, the ROC government still uses the eleven-dash line.[8][9] A tenth dash to the
east of Taiwan was added in 2013 by the PRC, extending it into the East China Sea.[10][11][12]
On 12 July 2016, an arbitral tribunal constituted under the United Nations Convention on the Law of
the Sea (UNCLOS) concluded that China's historic-rights claim over the maritime areas (as opposed
to land territories and territorial waters) inside the nine-dash line has no lawful effect if it exceeds
what it is entitled to under the UNCLOS.[14][15] One of the arguments was that China had not exercised
exclusive control over these waters and resources. It also clarified that it would not "rule on any
question of sovereignty over land territory and would not delimit any maritime boundary between the
Parties".[16] The ruling was rejected by both the PRC and ROC governments.[17][18] Other claimants in
the South China Sea approved the ruling.[19][20]
After the Sino-French War in 1885, China signed the Treaty of Tientsin with France, and renounced
its suzerainty over Vietnam. On June 26, 1887, the Qing government signed the Convention
Relating to the Delimitation of the Frontier between China and Tonkin, which did not clarify the water
border between China and French Indo-China.[21][22]
Following the defeat of Japan at the end of World War II, the Republic of China (ROC) claimed the
entirety of the Paracels, Pratas and Spratly Islands after accepting the Japanese surrender of the
islands based on the Cairo and Potsdam Declarations.[23] However, under the 1943 Cairo Declaration
and 1945 Potsdam Proclamation, ROC sovereignty over the archipelagos and waters of South
China Sea was not stated.[24]
In November 1946, the ROC sent naval ships to take control of these islands after the surrender of
Japan. When the Peace Treaty with Japan was being signed at the San Francisco Conference, on 7
September 1951, both China and Vietnam asserted their rights to the islands. Later the Philippine
government also laid claim to some islands of the archipelagos.[25]
In December 1947, the Ministry of Interior of the Nationalist government released "Location Map of
South Sea Islands" (南海諸島位置圖) showing an eleven-dash line.[9][26] Scholarly accounts place its
publication from 1946 to 1948 and indicate that it originated from an earlier one titled "Map of
Chinese Islands in the South China Sea" (中国南海岛屿图) published by the ROC Land and Water
Maps Inspection Committee in 1935.[11] Beginning in 1952, the People's Republic of China (PRC)
used a revised map with nine dashes, removing the two dashes in the Gulf of Tonkin. The change
was interpreted as a concession to the newly independent North Vietnam; the maritime border
between PRC and Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin was eventually formalized by treaty in 2000.[27][28]
After evacuating to Taiwan, whom the ROC government took over the island from Japan in 1945,
they continued to claim the eleven-dash line and it remains as the rationale for the Chinese
Republic's claims to the Spratly and Paracel Islands. Under President Lee Teng-hui, the ROC stated
that "legally, historically, geographically, or in reality", all of the South China Sea and Spratly islands
were ROC territory and under ROC sovereignty, and denounced actions undertaken there by
Malaysia and the Philippines, in a statement on 13 July 1999 released by the foreign ministry of
Taiwan.[29] Taiwan and China's claims mirror each other.[30] During international talks involving the
Spratly islands, the PRC and the ROC have cooperated with each other since both have the same
claims.[30][31]
