The Chinese government released a map, based on one first drawn up by the Nationalist Chinese government in 1947 with the help of the US Navy, that showed nine dashes around the totality of the one-million-square-mile South China Sea. The map stretched as far south as the southern tip of Vietnam and the coast of Borneo. One dash was just 50 miles from the Vietnamese coast; another was 24 miles from Malaysia; a third was 35 miles from the Philippines. All were well within the two hundred mile exclusive economic zone of other countries.
