Letters to the Editor, January 28, 2013
Any fair-minded person viewing China's nine-dash line, that skirts the entire area of sea outside the 12-nautical-mile maritime territory of the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, and Malaysia, would come to the conclusion that it marks a bizarre and assertive attempt to grab territory.
I refer to the report ("Philippines to take maritime dispute with China to UN", January 23).
Any fair-minded person viewing China's nine-dash line, that skirts the entire area of sea outside the 12-nautical-mile maritime territory of the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, and Malaysia, would come to the conclusion that it marks a bizarre and assertive attempt to grab territory.
China claims it wishes friendly relations with all countries in Asia but its recent actions are those of a bully. China appears to be following Mao Zedong's creed of "might is right".
I think the Philippines is correct to take Beijing to an arbitrational tribunal, under the UN's Convention on the Law of the Sea, in order to protect an internationally recognised 200-mile-from-shore exclusive economic zone.
China's claim of sovereignty over the whole area, simply because it drew a red "nine-dash" line around the whole area in the late 1940s, is farcical and spurious.
Perhaps Italy will follow suit and claim the whole of the Mediterranean, or Ireland claim sovereignty over the whole north Atlantic up to the 12-mile limit of America.