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Nine-dash line in the South China Sea

Tuesday, 5 August 2025 - 11:00 am (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination: Asia / Asien
Category/Kategorie: General Reading Time:  < 1 minute

🔊 Listen to this Post The nine-dash line or ten-dash line, also referred to as the eleven-dash line by Taiwan, is a set of line segments on various maps that accompanied the claims of the People’s Republic of China (PRC, “Mainland China“) and the Republic of China (ROC, “Taiwan”) in the South China Sea.

The contested area includes the Paracel Islands, the Spratly Islands, the Pratas Island and the Vereker Banks, the Macclesfield Bank, and the Scarborough Shoal. Certain places have undergone land reclamation by the PRC, ROC, and Vietnam. The People’s Daily of the PRC uses the term Duànxùxiàn (Tuan-hsü-hsien) or Nánh?i Duànxùxiàn (Nan-hai tuan-hsü-hsien; lit.?’South Sea intermittent line’), while the ROC government uses the term Shíy?duàn xiàn (Shih-i-tuan hsien; lit.?’eleven-segment line’).

A 1946 map showing a U-shaped eleven-dash line was first published by the Republic of China government on 1 December 1947. In 1952, Mao Zedong of the PRC decided to remove two of the dashes in the Gulf of Tonkin amid warming ties with North Vietnam. However, the ROC government still uses the eleven-dash line. In 2013, some were surprised by an additional dash to the east of Taiwan as part of a ten-dash line, but this had been shown in PRC maps since 1984. As of 2014, the PRC government had not clarified what it specifically claims within the line; in 2024 it said this is an ongoing process.

On 12 July 2016, an arbitral tribunal organized under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) rejected certain forms of Chinese claims within the nine-dash line. It did not rule on matters of territorial sovereignty. As of November 2023, 27 governments had called for the ruling to be respected. It was rejected by eight governments, including China (PRC) and Taiwan (ROC).

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