a senior Chinese military official was challenged publicly about the basis for the nine-dashed line. Jaws dropped when he justified this claim not with any reference to international law or modern conventions, or even to the sort of historical documentation of 18th- or 19th-century trading and settlement activity that is the standard fare in territorial disputes, but rather to the history of China’s Han dynasty, more than 2,000 years ago. It was as if a modern Italian were to lay claim to control of the Mediterranean based on the history of the Roman Empire.
