I was listening to the BBC this afternoon on my public radio station. One of the subjects under discussion was the recent set-to between the Peoples’ Republic of China and Vietnam in the South China Sea which has included Chinese vessels ramming Vietnamese ones and a Chinese ship firing water cannon at a Vietnamese one.

What’s this all about? Disputed borders between the Vietnamese, the Chinese, the Filipinos and the Taiwanese in the South China Sea; they all want two sets of islands which may (may!) have oil underneath them. What struck me as interesting was the mention of something called the Nine-Dash Line. Originally an eleven-dash line put forth by Chiang Kai-Shek’s Kuomintang Party in 1947, after Mao Zde-Dong and his gang of Communists took over China it was revised downward to nine dashes.

See those green dashes? That’s what the Chinese claim to be theirs. You can see that it basically takes up about 90% of the South China Sea. It’s no wonder its neighbors who also have coastlines on that sea object.

Considering that Vietnam and China have fought about a hundred wars over the past two millenia, one as recently as 1979, this has the potential to get nasty.