Vietnam banned the ‘Barbie’ movie over a map depicting China’s illegal maritime claims in the South China Sea. Warner Bros. just entered a major geopolitical dispute.
Maritime disputes are no child’s play. That’s why Vietnam has banned the new Barbie movie over a map. The Nine-Dash Line, which has adorned Chinese Communist Party maps since approximately 1947, encompasses 80 percent of the South China Sea. China claims all maritime and territorial areas in the South China Sea that fall within what is known in Vietnam as the “Cow’s Tongue Line.” However, China’s maritime claims within the Nine-Dash Line are illegal—a fact recognized by the United States and most of the international community. Warner Brothers has waded into a high-stakes geopolitical dispute—and Barbie’s world just got very real.
The Nine-Dash Line contradicts the maritime boundaries established by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). UNCLOS, which reflects customary international law established by states over centuries, has been signed by 168 of the world’s 193 countries, including China. The United States is not a signatory, but follows UNCLOS as a matter of customary international law. China claims the area within the Nine-Dash Line as a matter of “historic rights,” and has built artificial islands in an attempt to cement its position. The Nine-Dash Line overlaps with Vietnam’s UNCLOS claims, as well as those of the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei. The map of the Nine-Dash Line itself is an illegal image in Vietnam. In 2016, an international tribunal invalidated the Nine-Dash Line, found China’s artificial island-building program to be illegal, and held that China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea could not exceed those established by UNCLOS.
