Letter: Taiwan may hold key to U-turn on China dispute

It is a pity your leading article (“A deepening stand-off in the South China Sea”, FT View, June 26) did not take cognisance of Taiwan’s centrality to resolving the South China Sea dispute.

The South China Sea dispute was born in 1947, when the nationalist government based in Taiwan decided to draw up the U-shaped line, claiming as much as 90 per cent of the South China Sea. Mao’s China of 1953 merely adopted the maps and the line drawn up by Taiwan-based nationalists.

Since the archives of the nationalist government that drew up the U-shaped line are stored in Taiwan, and since Taiwan is also the place where a freer debate on Chinese history is more common than in mainland China, perhaps it is time Taiwan reopened and re-examined the haphazard process that led to the drawing up of the U-shaped line? It might unearth a clue to resolving the imbroglio.

Randhir Singh Bains
Essex, UK