![]() (Southeast Asian nations like Vietnam, which has a long continental shelf, would disagree.) “When we made the line, we stressed a humanitarian spirit,” Wang says. ![]() “As a scientist, I’d say it’s impossible to have a fixed border on the sea … the waves in the ocean move.” Wang also contends that the dotted line is a “very clear” divide between the deep ocean that is China’s domain and a Southeast Asia that doesn’t have much in the way of a continental shelf. “It’s not like a fixed borderline on land,” she explains. Wang says the line is broken up because it’s a maritime boundary. After the tribunal’s judgment was made, state media began a campaign to defend China’s maritime claims, encapsulated by the phrase “not one less.” Research by David Bandurski of the China Media Project in Hong Kong found that through July 12, the phrase was only used in six articles in the People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the ruling Chinese Communist Party. “I’m a scientist, not someone in politics.”Īlthough the phrase nine-dash line is used commonly outside of China - to the point where an international arbitration court was asked by the Philippines to adjudicate on its legality - the words rarely appear in official Chinese media. “All the lines have a scientific basis,” says Wang, who still teaches at Nanjing University in eastern China. “I totally agree with the response of our government.” The 81-year-old member of the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences is the disciple of Yang Huairen, a Chinese geographer who, in 1947, helped etch the U-shaped, 11-dash line on Chinese maps to demarcate roughly 90% of the contested South China Sea for his homeland. “They didn’t respect history,” she says, of the international court. Wang Ying, a Chinese marine geographer, also feels aggrieved by the tribunal’s award. Far from hewing to the international court’s July 12 judgement on the nine-dash line, and contested features within that boundary, Beijing has made clear it considers the award null and void. Analysts worry that China could next build on Scarborough Shoal, placing a militarized Chinese island off the Philippine coast. Also on Monday, the Chinese air force announced that it had sent bombers on “normal battle patrols” over Scarborough Shoal, a disputed reef that Beijing effectively seized from Manila in 2012. ![]() China “will never give up halfway” on its island-building efforts, said Wu, according to Chinese state media. chief of naval operations that Beijing would not halt its controversial campaign to turn the contested South China Sea reefs it controls into artificial islands complete with military-ready airstrips. On July 18, China’s naval chief Wu Shengli told the visiting U.S. ![]()
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