VietNamNet Bridge – The "cow tongue" or "nine dotted line" or “U-shaped line” is a product that has surprised the world, including some Chinese researchers, with some calling it "incomprehensible".

China's vertical map.

A Chinese scholar had to admit: "It's embarrassing when international colleagues ask me about the nine dotted line!”

In 2009, China officially announced the U-shaped line map. Immediately, a well-known commentator of the Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV station – Tiet Ly Thai - warned: "China is making a disaster for itself. The international community will never let that happen."

And many Chinese scholars in China have published articles about the origin of the "cow tongue" with advice to the Chinese government, "Do not make a fool of yourself."

According to two Chinese scholars Li  Jinming  and Li Dexia, in an attempt to define and declare “the extent of Chinese sovereignty around the Paracel and the Spratly Islands”,  in February 1948, the Geography Department in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of China published for the first time “the Location Map of the South China Sea  Islands”, in which an eleven-dotted line was drawn around the Pratas Islands, the Paracel Islands, the Macclesfield Bank, and the Spratly Islands in the East Sea. The southernmost line was about  4º northern latitude.

The map was made after the Republic of China organized a two-month-long illegal field trip on some islands of the Hoang Sa Archipelago of Vietnam (Paracels Islands).

The Hong Kong-based Phoenix Weekly met with a number of witnesses on the trip who currently live in Taiwan and said that the one who drew the map was the director of the Geography Department, based on the 11-dotted map submitted by members of the field trip to Hoang Sa Archipelago.

According to several newspapers in Hong Kong and China, the "process" to make the U-shaped line map is illegal because no state can arbitrarily draw its own map that covers the territory of other countries.

Li Linghua, a researcher of the China National Ocean Information Centre, and some other Chinese researchers objected to the map, saying that in 1946 Lin Zun led a naval fleet to recapture the islands following Japan’s defeat.

“Some of the islands were unknown to the world. Japan first occupied them and was forced to cede them to us after surrendering. We were happy to receive them (...). Accompanying the fleet was a man from the Ministry of Geology and Resources who demarcated an imaginary line shaped like a bull’s tongue. Upon his return, the line was printed on the national map and was publicized as a new boundary.....”

“There has been no unreal land or marine border demarcating line in the history of international cartography.  The nine-dotted line in the East Sea is unreal. Our predecessors invented the line without specific longitudes and latitudes, as well as without legal evidence,” Li Linghua stressed.

Professor Zhang Shuguang, Head of the Academic Committee under the Unirule Institute of Economics, stated: “The nine-dotted line is not legal, a view once shared by Chinese lawmakers and their colleagues from Taiwan. It was unilaterally claimed by China.”

According to a document entitled "The Legal Status of the South China Sea," published in Taiwan in October 1998 by Huang Yi and Wei Jingfen, one of the “inventors” of the "U-shaped line" who was still alive and lived in Taiwan, named Bai, was invited to Beijing in the summer of 1990 to explain the origin of the U-shaped line.

Bai, who was over 80 years old, could not remember all details but he remembered the most important thing is "to draw such a line to indicate that the islands belong to which country having this line".

Commenting on the origin of the U-shaped line, American Professor Mark J.Valencia said: "China's claim of sovereignty over the South China Sea (East Sea) is vague and absurd. The most absurd is the U-shaped line. When they were asked to explain the meaning of this line, as the boundary line or something else, they always had a vague answer that it may be or may not be a boundary line. The world does not have any dotted lines like that!"

In 1949, the Republic of China government was defeated, and had to flee to the island of Taiwan, so the 11 dotted line map fell into oblivion. The People's Republic of China was born and it did not pay attention to the 11 dotted line.

On 4/12/1950, representing the Chinese government, Minister of Foreign Affairs Zhou Enlai said he had approved the Cairo Declaration which was signed on 27/11/1943 by the UK, the US and the Republic of China.

The Cairo Declaration has a paragraph related to Chinese territory as follows: "The Three Great Allies are fighting this war to restrain and punish the aggression of Japan. They covet no gain for themselves and have no thought of territorial expansion. It is their purpose that Japan shall be stripped of all the islands in the Pacific which she has seized or occupied since the beginning of the first World War in 1914, and that all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa, and The Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of China.”

It should be noted that at the time of signing of the Declaration of Cairo in 1943, the Paracels and Spratly islands were being occupied by Japan. Thus, the Paracels and Spratly islands are unrelated to the Chinese territory occupied by the Japanese. And, the Chinese government’s representative, Minister Zhou Enlai fully endorsed this statement.

By 1953, however, the U-shaped line which was thought to be dead along with the Republic of China government suddenly appeared. In this year the government of the People's Republic of China reviewed and approved the U-shaped line, reducing it from 11 dots to nine dots. But the boundary of the nine-dotted line is greedier and it is closer to Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines. According to China's argument, with the new nine-dotted line, Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia "occupied" more China’s waters.

Like the Republic of China, the People's Republic of China announced the nine-dotted line map without explaining the legal, the geographical basis or making it public in the international arena. They only referred it as "historic waters", "historical territory".

More than 50 years later, China revealed its ambition with the U-shaped line to the world.

On May 6, 2009, Vietnam and Malaysia submitted to the UN Commission on the Limit of the Continental Shelf (CLSC) a common report on their expanded continental shelves, and at the same time, Vietnam also sent its own report to the CLCS.

On May 7, 2009, the Government of the People’s Republic of China sent a note opposing the common report on expanded continental shelves of Vietnam and Malaysia as well as Vietnam’s own report on its expanded continental shelf. The note included a map with the “U-shaped line.”

By now the whole world knew about China’s ambition to monopolize the East Sea of China.

In March 2010, China startled the world by declaring the East Sea as its "core interest". The declaration was criticized by even Chinese scholars. However, their warnings could not wake Chinese decision-makers up.

After pulling the oil rig 981 into Vietnam’s water, on June 25, 2014, Chinese newspapers published the “vertical map" with the 10-dash line.

These moves have not only been protested by the international community but also by many Chinese people.

On Weibo, the most popular social network in China, many netizens disagreed with the Chinese government’s vertical map, saying that the map is vague and contrary to international law. Some of them recalled their embarrassment when traveling abroad and hearing criticism of China by local residents.

To be continued…

Duy Chien