The nine-dash line (Chinese: 九段线; pinyin: jiǔduàn xiàn; literally: "nine-segment line"), and at various times also referred to as the "10-dash line" and the "11-dash line", refers to the demarcation line used initially by the government of the Republic of China (ROC / Taiwan) and subsequently also by the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC), for their claims of the major part of the South China Sea. The contested area in the South China Sea includes the Paracel Islands, the Spratly Islands, and various other areas including the Pratas Islands, the Macclesfield Bank and the Scarborough Shoal. The claim encompasses the area of Chinese land reclamation known as the "great wall of sand". An early map showing a U-shaped eleven-dash line was published in the then Republic of China on 1 December 1947. Two of the dashes in the Gulf of Tonkin were later removed at the behest of Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, reducing the total to nine. Subsequent editions added a dash to the other end of the line, extending it into the East China Sea. Despite having made the vague claim public in 1947, China has not (as of 2016) filed a formal and specifically defined claim to the area within the dashes. China added a tenth-dash line to the east of Taiwan island in 2013 as a part of its official sovereignty claim to the disputed territories in the South China Sea. On 12 July 2016, an arbitral tribunal in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague ruled that China has no legal basis to claim "historic rights" within its nine-dash line in a case brought by the Philippines. The tribunal judged that there was no evidence that China had historically exercised exclusive control over the waters or resources within the nine-dash line. The ruling was rejected by the Chinese government.

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