Is China’s ‘New’ Map Aims to Extend South China Sea?

The alleged political national map, reportedly first published in April 1951 but only “discovered” through a recent national archival investigation, could give new clarity to the precise extent of China’s official claims in the disputed waters.

If Beijing moves to back the academics’ assertions, it could inflame already boiling tensions with smaller Southeast Asian claimants, which have opposed China’s expanding military footprint and extensive reclamation activities.

Instead of dotted lines, as reflected in China’s U-shaped Nine-Dash Line claim to nearly all of the South China Sea, the newly discovered map provides a solid “continuous national boundary line and administrative region line.”

The Chinese researchers claim that through analysis of historical maps, the 1951 solid-line map “proves” beyond dispute that the “U-boundary line is the border of China’s territorial sea” in the South China Sea.

They also claim that the solid administrative line overlaying the U-boundary “definitely indicated that the sovereignty of the sea” enclosed within the U-boundary “belonged to China.”

The study, edited by the Guanghua and Geosciences Club and published by SDX Joint Publishing Company, has not been formally endorsed by the Chinese government.

While supposedly found and analyzed by reputable independent scholars, there are questions on whether the “discovery” was influenced by the government considering how tightly the state controls the academy under President Xi Jinping.

Indeed, many experts believe that it’s Beijing’s latest effort to recover from a humiliating legal defeat in 2016, when an arbitration body at The Hague constituted under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) struck down much of China’s claims in adjacent waters in a ruling that favored the Philippines.

Beijing rejected the verdict as “a piece of scrap paper” and “null and void” in its view. Officially, the government adopted a “three no’s” policy of non-participation (in the arbitration proceedings), non-recognition (of the legitimacy of the court), and non-compliance (with the verdict).

Yet China has since quietly readjusted the premise of its claims by providing alternative legal doctrines to the overruled Nine-Dash Line map. Last year, China began to introduce a new quasi-legal doctrine in the South China Sea.

According to the new “Four Sha” doctrine, China lays sovereign claims over the Pratas, Paracels and Spratly group of islands, as well as the Macclesfield Bank area (known in Chinese as Dongsha, Xisha, Nansha, and Zhongsha respectively).

Instead of treating them as a collection of disputed land features, each group of islands or land features is treated as an integrated archipelagic body with its own maritime boundaries, sovereign land with a corresponding title to claim an exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

The new doctrine was advanced by Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials during a closed-door meeting with US State Department officials in Washington last August, according to news reports and Pentagon sources.