Waves of anger spread across the South China Sea and India this week, following China’s publication of a new official map renewing its illegal claims to most of the sea and adding new claims along the Indian border.
China’s latest hegemonic behavior appears in the form of what it calls the “new standard” map, published by China’s Ministry of Natural Resources on August 28. The new map repeats the 9 Dash Line claims made by China and rejected by the United Nations’ Law of the Sea tribunal, while also claiming new territory around Taiwan and to Inda’s north. This comes days after President Xi Jinping declared at the latest BRIC summit that “hegemonism is not in China’s DNA.”
The biggest furor arose, unsurprisingly, with India, where China has unilaterally claimed two new areas, angering both India and Nepal. But India is not alone.
“Most of the contention seems to be that it claims Indian territory – Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin – as Chinese territory, but it also claims some territory of Russia [Bolshoy Ussuriysky Island], as well as the entirety of the South China Sea and Taiwan,” Malcolm Davis, an Indo-Pacific expert at The Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra.
American Buddhist Net 