ABSTRACT
Claiming waters enclosed by the dotted line as “historic waters” triggered debate in academia. Some scholars argue that there was no authoritative definition of “historic waters” in any convention. In terms of definitions of “historic water” given earlier, some doubt that whether waters enclosed by the dotted line are “internal waters.” They argue that, under the legal regime of “internal waters,” a coastal state exercises full sovereignty over those waters which lie on the landward side of the baseline from which the breadth of its territorial sea is measured. While Taiwan had dropped its claim that waters enclosed by the dotted line are “historic waters,” some scholars from China’s mainland and abroad put forward the notion of “historic rights.” Most scholars tend to regard the dotted line as “island ownership line,” that is, the South China Sea islands in the line belong to Chinese territory.
