Nine-Dash Line

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Nine-Dash Line

The Nine-Dash Line (highlighted in green)

Traditional Chinese 九段線

Simplified Chinese 九段线

Literal meaning Nine-Segment Line

showTranscriptions

The Nine-Dash Line—at various times also referred to as the "10-dash line" and the "11-dash
line"—refers to the undefined,[1] vaguely located, demarcation line used initially by the Republic of
China (1912–1949) and subsequently the governments of the Republic of China (ROC / Taiwan) and
the People's Republic of China (PRC), for their claims of the major part of the South China
Sea.[2][3] The contested area in the South China Sea includes the Paracel Islands,[a] the Spratly
Islands,[b][4] and various other areas including the Pratas Islands, the Macclesfield Bank and
the Scarborough Shoal. The claim encompasses the area of Chinese land reclamationknown as the
"Great Wall of Sand".[5][6][7][8]
An early map showing a U-shaped eleven-dash line was published in the then-Republic of China on
1 December 1947.[9] Two of the dashes in the Gulf of Tonkin were later removed at the behest
of Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, reducing the total to nine.[10]Subsequent editions added a dash to the
other end of the line, extending it into the East China Sea.[11]
Despite having made the vague claim public in 1947, China has not (as of 2018) filed a formal and
specifically defined claim to the area within the dashes.[12] China added a tenth-dash line to the east
of Taiwan island in 2013 as a part of its official sovereignty claim to the disputed territories in the
South China Sea.[11][13][14]
On 12 July 2016, an arbitral tribunal constituted under Annex VII to the 1982 United Nations
Convention on the Law of the Sea ruled that China has no legal basis to claim "historic rights" within
its nine-dash line in a case brought by the Philippines. The tribunal judged that there was no
evidence that China had historically exercised exclusive control over the waters or resources within
the Nine-Dash Line. The ruling was rejected by both Taiwan and China.[15][16]