(BGF) – This Washington Post article reports on a map released by Chinese authorities showing all of China’s territorial claims. Author Ishaan Tharoor argues that the map may flare tensions in Asia, with China’s increasing assertiveness posing a growing threat to its neighbors, which is resulting in an arms race in Asia. Click here to read the full article on The Washington Post.
Could this map of China start a war?
By Ishaan Tharoor
Chinese authorities unveiled this week a new map showing the totality of Beijing’s territorial claims. It supplants an earlier map, which had a cutaway box displaying China’s declared claims over the South China Sea. Now, Chinese citizens can “fully, directly know the full map of China,” wrote the People’s Daily, a state paper. “Readers won’t ever think again that China’s territory has primary and secondary claims,” said the editor of the map press that published it.
On the face of it, the map shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to China’s neighbors. It counts Taiwan, which Beijing considers a renegade province, as part of China. It shows China’s longstanding belief in its suzerainty over the Spratlys and Paracels, the two main archipelagos of the South China Sea, which are contested to varying degrees by Vietnam, the Philippines and a number of other Southeast Asian nations. A 10-dash line (as opposed to China’s earlier nine-dash line) encircles most of the South China Sea, a body of water which sees some $5.3 trillion worth of trade pass through it every year.
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