For more than half a century, Beijing has maintained an air of mystery over the so-called nine-dash line, leaving others to guess at the precise meaning of the cartographic marker of its sovereignty claims over the South China Sea.
These decades of strategic ambiguity could be numbered, however, with many Western legal scholars expecting an upcoming Hague tribunal ruling to invalidate any legal import the line may have had. Yet China appears unmoved, and no closer to clarifying what the line precisely represents.
A senior Chinese military academic, asked at a weekend security conference if ambiguity over the line remains useful for Beijing, insisted in the affirmative.
“I still think that ambiguity might be a good thing for China and for other claimants” in the South China Sea, where territorial tensions have escalated in recent years, said Maj. Gen. Yao Yunzhu, a senior fellow at the People’s Liberation Army’s Academy of Military Science.
It allows “China and other claimants to have more room to maneuver and to have more room to compromise,” she said at a Saturday seminar held as part of the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual gathering of top Asian and Western defense officials in Singapore.
Her comments dovetailed with a broader Chinese effort to discredit the Hague arbitration tribunal and its upcoming ruling on a legal challenge filed by the Philippines against Beijing’s maritime claims. Set up under the auspices of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, or Unclos, the tribunal is expected to issue its judgment within weeks.
China has dismissed the tribunal as illegitimate and boycotted its proceedings. Several Western and Asian defense officials—including U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter—used speeches at the Shangri-La Dialogue to urge Beijing to accept the ruling, irking Chinese officials who consider the arbitration as part of a coordinated effort to isolate Beijing diplomatically.
As part of its case, Manila argues Beijing’s claims to territorial rights within the South China Sea—as signified by the nine-dash line—exceed what is allowed under Unclos and should be deemed invalid. The Philippines hasn’t sought a ruling on issues related to sovereignty over land features within the line, as these matters fall beyond the tribunal’s jurisdiction.
China, for its part, argues that the tribunal has acted beyond its authority by accepting the case. Beijing’s assertions of sovereignty over the entire South China Sea overlaps with claims from Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan. Chinese officials favor bilateral talks with rival claimants, all of which are dwarfed by China militarily and economically.
The nine-dash line lacks any geographical coordinates, and Beijing has never fully explained what it represents. For instance, it isn’t clear whether the line indicates that China claims sovereignty over all the sea’s waters and resources or merely its land features.
The line was first published with 11 dashes by the former Kuomintang regime in 1947, during the chaotic final years of the Chinese civil war before the KMT fled to Taiwan. Two dashes were scrubbed out in 1953 after the Chinese Communist Party adopted the line.
Beijing has since maintained a strategic ambiguity over the line’s precise meaning, a posture that Western observers say helps Chinese officials cloak the weakness of their claims of historic rights over the South China Sea, and avoid fractious domestic debates over a sensitive political issue.
“It’s not just domestic politics,” Maj. Gen. Yao said in Saturday’s seminar when asked about the status of domestic policy discussions over what the nine-dash line means. “It is an ongoing debate.”
Even so, she showed little hesitation when asked specific territorial claims that fall within the line. “Not everything about the nine-dash line is ambiguous,” Maj. Gen. Yao told reporters after the seminar. “For a start, the islands and reefs within the nine-dash line belong to China.”
“The maritime rights that these islands and reefs are entitled to under Unclos, such as territorial seas and exclusive economic zones, are rights that China claims,” she said. “Besides this, China also has historical rights.”
Whatever the result of China’s internal deliberations, many in the international community believe the Hague tribunal will settle the issue in its verdict, which is expected in the coming weeks, even though China has said it will ignore the ruling and reject any attempt by rival claimants to use it as a basis for negotiation.
The ruling “would take care of the nine-dash line,” Robert Beckman, director of the National University of Singapore’s Centre for International Law, said at the Saturday seminar.
“I don’t think deliberate ambiguity is any longer in [China’s] favor,” Mr. Beckman said. “And they won’t be so ambiguous once the decision is announced.”http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2016/06/05/nine-dash-lines-ambiguity-a-good-thing-argues-chinese-military-academic/
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