Before they can consider this question, however, the tribunal judges must first consider whether they have the necessary jurisdiction. Chinese officials have argued that the question of the “U-shaped line” is fundamentally a question of territory, about which the Permanent Court of Arbitration has no right to rule. However, new research tells us that the judges should ignore such arguments. Documents in China’s own archives prove that when Chinese officials approved the U-shaped line they never intended it to be a territorial boundary. Other evidence suggests that it only became one because of the intervention of an American oilman in the 1990s. Tiếp tục đọc “China’s ‘Historic Rights’ in the South China Sea: Made in America?” →