evidence: The so-called nine-, ten-, but also eleven-dash lines indicate the area that China considers it has sovereignty over. In 2009, the Chinese government circulated a nine-dash map through a set of notes verbales to the United Nations, taking inspiration from an eleven-dash line map published by the Nationalist Government of the Republic of China in 1947. This map, in turn, was seen to follow a map published by the Republic of China’s Land and Water Maps Inspection Committee in 1935. In these maps, the geographical extent of the area claimed by Beijing includes the islands, banks and shoals as well as the surrounding waters of the Paracels, the Spratlys, Scarborough Shoal and Macclesfield Bank, and the Pratas – known in China as the Xisha, Nansha, Zongsha and Dongsha archipelagos respectively – all the way down to James Shoal – also known as Zengmu Ansha reef – as its southernmost tip, 1,800 miles away from mainland China. [...] Macclesfield Bank is an elongated sunken atoll of underwater reefs and shoals. It lies east of the Paracel Islands, southwest of the Pratas Islands and north of the Spratly Islands. Its length exceeds 130 km southwest-northeast, with a maximal width of more than 70 km. With an ocean area of 6,448 km2 within the outer rim of the reef, although completely submerged without any emergent cays or islets, it is one of the largest atolls of the world. Macclesfield Bank is claimed, in whole or in part, by China and Taiwan.