Crossing the nine-dash line

Vietnam has banned the release of the Warner Bros feature film “Barbie” because its trailer includes a crude cartoon map that Vietnamese netizens believed depicted China’s “nine-dash line” territorial claims in the emotive South China Sea maritime territorial dispute. The decision mystified the studio, which said the map that prompted Hanoi to pull the movie was a “child-like crayon drawing” that traced Barbie’s travels and carried no political message.