The reappearance of the tenth dash has raised eyebrows in Japan because it\u2019s drawn very close to Yonaguni, Japan\u2019s westernmost island in the Ryukyu chain, only 70 miles from Taiwan. Yonaguni isn\u2019t claimed by China \u2013 (unlike the Senkaku\/Diaoyu islets lying to the north) but is practically obscured by the shading that emanates from China\u2019s tenth dash. Beijing has previously asserted its South China Sea claims with reference to a nine-dash line \u2018inset\u2019 map, which for example was appended to China\u2019s May 2009 official protest against Vietnam and Malaysia\u2019s joint submission to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf<\/a>.<\/p>\n So while the tenth dash isn\u2019t new, its re-unification with the other nine dashes in the latest map is politically significant. First, in a cross-strait context, it symbolically subsumes Taiwan\u2019s territorial claims in the South China Sea, derived in parallel from the original Kuomintang claim. Moreover, Taipei still occupies the largest island in the Spratlys, Itu Aba or Taiping Island<\/a>. Despite the improvement in cross-straits ties in recent years, Taiwan\u2019s political leadership is wary of accepting overt support from China for its maritime claims, which also extend to the Senkaku\/Diaoyu in the East China Sea. Beijing sees these maritime territorial claims as mirroring its own. For Beijing, they\u2019re a means to narrow the cross-strait gap further by aligning Taipei and Beijing along a common nationalist axis, capitalising upon Taipei\u2019s own recent tensions with the Philippines and Japan<\/a>. Beijing\u2019s overtures may in future extend to Taiwan\u2019s scholarly community, with the aim of buttressing the evidential base for China\u2019s historical claims.<\/p>\n The symmetry is even closer in China\u2019s ongoing confrontation with Japan over the Senkaku, since China\u2019s claim to the islands runs through Taiwan. The tenth line on the map therefore hints at a broader linkage in Chinese minds to the East China Sea, where Beijing\u2019s political and strategic priorities are currently centred. It\u2019s also read as such by Japanese analysts.<\/p>\n Legend of China\u2019s new map.\u00a0Courtesy of SinoMaps Press.<\/em><\/p>\n The new map has attracted attention further south, given that the legend denotes the dash line as a \u2018national boundary\u2019 (\u56fd\u754c), using identical shading to China\u2019s land borders, radiating out from the nine dashed lines within the South China Sea. The shading has the visual effect of projecting China\u2019s claims, however defined, closer to the coastlines of the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam. However, close inspection, reveals that the nine-dashes are all in unchanged locations from previous Chinese maps. China probably wishes to maintain some ambiguity about the status of the dash line, as further suggested in the map legend, where the space in between the dashes is marked (in diminutive characters) as \u2018boundary not defined\u2019 (\u672a\u5b9a).<\/p>\n Southeast Asian reactions to date have been subdued, at least publicly\u2014although the Philippines\u2019 Department of Foreign Affairs apparently sent a confidential note verbale to the Chinese Embassy<\/a>, protesting against \u2018the reference to those dash lines as China’s national boundaries\u2019. Indonesia\u2019s semi-dormant sensitivities in the South China Sea may be pricked by the fact that China\u2019s westernmost dash line clearly bisects Indonesia\u2019s gas-rich Exclusive Economic Zone off Natuna, potentially reviving concerns that Jakarta believed it had put to bed with bilateral reassurances received in the early 1990s. Thus far Indonesia hasn\u2019t offered any official objection to the new map, perhaps preferring to dwell on the positive fact that China\u2019s mapmakers have acknowledged the outer limit of Indonesia\u2019s archipelagic waters to the north of Natuna. Yet China shouldn’t take Indonesia\u2019s neutrality in the South China Sea disputes for granted. In reality, Indonesia\u2019s maritime resource equities are potentially on the line, despite not being a claimant to the Spratlys. Jakarta previously queried the legal basis for China\u2019s nine-dash claim in 2009 through the UN, while Chinese and Indonesian patrol boats faced off in an incident near Natuna in June 2010<\/a> (PDF). Equally, the PLA Navy\u2019s late-March 2013 excursion to James Shoal, traditionally regarded as China\u2019s southernmost claimed feature in the South China Sea (even though it is submerged), ruffled feathers in Kuala Lumpur which has traditionally felt less threatened by China\u2019s claims (PDF).<\/p>\n Since maps don\u2019t carry independent legal weight under UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), China\u2019s overriding challenge remains the need to bring its South China Sea claims into conformity with international law. Privately, some Chinese interlocutors are conscious of the incompatibility between China\u2019s UNCLOS obligations and a maximalist interpretation of the nine-dash line as a territorial enclosure. They seek to reassure foreigners that China\u2019s claims extend to islands and other land features within the lines, as well as vaguely defined \u2018historical rights\u2019. A recent article for the American Journal of<\/i> International<\/em> Law<\/i><\/a> co-authored by Judge Gao Zhiguo, China\u2019s appointee to the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea, opined that the nine-dash line has three meanings:<\/p>\n In such an ambiguous context, official assertions of the dash line will only continue to stoke unease among other South China Sea littoral states and China watchers further afield.<\/p>\n China\u2019s recent announcement that it\u2019s prepared to discuss a Code of Conduct on the South China Sea is welcomed by ASEAN members. But it appears aimed primarily at repairing bridges with the grouping following last year\u2019s divisive denouement at the ASEAN Regional Forum, without committing to hard timetables. Meanwhile, the red-carpet treatment accorded to Vietnam\u2019s President Truong, when he visited Beijing in June, suggests that Beijing is also intent on mending bilateral fences with Hanoi, as the most potentially problematic of China\u2019s rival claimants in the South China Sea. It\u2019s tempting to read into this an ulterior motive of further isolating the Philippines, currently the target of Beijing\u2019s ire for unilaterally launching arbitral proceedings, formally under way as of 16 July, that have quizzed the legal basis for China\u2019s territorial claim<\/a> (PDF).<\/p>\n Although the disputed islands and rocks in the South China Sea are now receiving unparalleled international judicial scrutiny, China\u2019s mapmakers can probably put away their dividers, safe in the knowledge that Beijing\u2019s new leadership will preserve the ambiguity about the full extent of their South China Sea claims which the dashed line affords.<\/p>\n![\"combined](\"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/combined-map-10-dash-1024x685.jpg\")
<\/a>Close-ups of the front and back of the new SinoMaps Press map showing China\u2019s ten-dash line in the South China Sea.\u00a0Courtesy of SinoMaps Press.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/Picture-13.png\")
<\/a>China\u2019s South China Sea \u2018inset\u2019 map showing the previous nine-dash line.\u00a0Courtesy of SinoMaps Press.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/NewMapKey.jpg\")
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