Competing claims to sovereignty
In the South China Sea there are approximately 180 features above water at high tide.1 These rocks, shoals, sandbanks, reefs and cays, plus additional unnamed shoals and submerged features are distributed among four geographically different areas of that sea. These are claimed in whole or in part by China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei. China and Taiwan (the Republic of China) claim all of the land features in the South China Sea.
The problem of the nine-dash line (NDL)
This knotty sovereignty issue is greatly exacerbated by the “nine-dash line” that appears on all China’s maps of the South China Sea (SCS), and incorporates about 80 percent of the SCS. Over the past several years, Chinese actions have strongly suggested that the line is much more than a way to depict China’s claims to the land features—it is an attempt to claim China has “historic rights” to a significant portion of the resources that, under the Law of the Sea, legitimately belong to the coastal