Nine-Dash Line

[Markus Wilding]

Though the islands themselves were sparse, spread out over a vast distance in the South China Sea, little changed for the various governments - or lack of governments - present in the area. For most, the objective was simply to survive each day.

[Cataphrak]

The Republic of China had not come in with warships and armies, as the Japanese did a generation ago, or as the French had done a generation before that. No, by the standards of most of the Spratlys and the Paracels, the arrival of the newly restored Republic was a soft, pleasant affair: a single administrator and a handful of guards aboard a chartered passenger ship or seaplane from Hainan, landing at the local docks with a proclamation of sovereignty, a request for permission to build a permanent presence on the island, and a few crates of gifts from the Benevolent Order of the White Sun.

Only on the larger islands did a more substantial force land. Itu Aba, Triton Island, Woody Island, and a handful of others received companies of NRA combat engineers, not to conquer, but to build new airfieds, radar stations, and defensive emplacements, the future homes of the garrisons which would serve as China's first line of defence in the south.