SOUTH CHINA SEA:The government wants to differentiate Taiwan’s claims from China’s to avoid the impression that the two have a unified stance, a source said
Taipei Times
Date: Jul 15, 2016
By: Chung Li-hua / Staff reporter
President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration has reached an internal resolution on Taiwan’s
A staffer browses a paper near a map of the South China Sea with “nine-dash line” claims under Chinese territory on display at a maritime defense educational facility in Nanjing, China, on Tuesday. Photo: Chinatopix via AP
territorial claims over the South China Sea, which stresses the nation’s sovereignty over islands in the area, but makes no mention of the so-called “U-shaped line” and “historical waters,” a Presidential Office source said yesterday.
The government wants to differentiate Taiwan’s claims from China’s and avoid the impression that Taipei and Beijing have a unified stance on the issue, said the source, who asked not to be identified.
The U-shaped line — also known as the “11-dash line” — was featured in the “Location Map of the South China Sea Islands” drawn up by the Republic of China (ROC) government in 1947. After the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lost the Chinese Civil War and fled to Taiwan, the Chinese Communist Party changed it to a “nine-dash line.”
After the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands, on Tuesday ruled that Beijing’s claims of historical rights over the area based on its nine-dash line were invalid, the Ministry of the Interior and the Mainland Affairs Council issued statements stressing the ROC’s sovereignty over the South China Sea islands. [FULL STORY]