Event: The Modern Origins of China’s South China Sea Claim with Bill Hayton

On September 22, AMTI and the CSIS Southeast Asia Program hosted Bill Hayton, associate fellow at Chatham House, for a discussion of the muddled origins of China’s claims to the South China Sea in the early twentieth century. He showed evidence that China’s claim to islands first emerged in 1909 and was further developed after 1933. He explained how Chinese academics and officials came to draw the “U-shaped line” by copying Western maps—and in the process incorporated mistakes and misunderstandings with consequences that still trouble the region decades later.