evidence: For decades, Chinese schoolchildren have been taught that their homeland’s furthest southern reach was the underwater James Shoal (known in Chinese as Zengmu, a transliteration of "James"), which is located around 50 miles off the coast of Malaysia. Waters around the shoal are home to Malaysian oil and gas platforms. This geography lesson notwithstanding, Chinese maps gave scant attention to the South China Sea. That began to change after 2009, when a map with the nine-dash line was attached in a submission to the U.N. during a dispute with Vietnam. Today, Chinese passports are emblazoned with a map with nine dashes through the South China Sea—plus a 10th that ensures Taiwan, to which the Nationalists retreated in 1949, is counted as Chinese territory.