Not only is the South China Sea of strategic importance; it is also rich in oil and other natural resources. As such, it is the subject of overlapping territorial disputes between several East and Southeast Asian countries as well as the scene of military tensions and potentially dangerous conflicts. But disputes over the South China Sea are much more complex than simply issues of military security. Environmental values, economic security and political developments are also involved. Spanning the full complexity of the situation, this volume: * covers its historical and legal background * analyses its environmental, economic, military and political dimensions * assesses the potential for containing and resolving disputes as well as transforming the structures of conflict in the region.

The South China Sea is one of the most economically valuable regions of the world. The region holds the potential for tremendous oil and natural gas development. The waters provide a major source of food for the peoples of several neighboring countries. A major portion of the world's seaborne commerce utilizes the sea lanes which connect East Asia with the Middle East, Africa, South Asia and Europe cross through the South China Sea. Economic competition is only part of the conflict equation. The Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Communist China all have conflicting claims to a number of the various geographical features in the South China Sea. Possession of these features (reefs, rocks and small islands) have major economic, military and political ramifications. In the last three decades, Communist China has been aggressively asserting its maritime claims to many of these features, actively building artificial land features and militarizing them as well. The United States has been at the forefront of international efforts to counter Communist China's assertions and in particular, the U.S. Navy has been very active in the South China Sea since the Obama Administration. Confrontation is nothing new to the South China Sea, especially since the end of the 19th Century. The fleets of various world and regional powers have operated in these waters. Confrontation evolved into armed conflict during World War Two and again during the Vietnam War. This book offers a chronological summary of military, naval, and political events occurring in this contested region since the mid-19th Century, with a particular focus on the last twenty years.

A review of the issues concerning the South China Sea

Today's hearing will cover China's maritime disputes in the East and South China Seas. We'll examine the security, political, legal, and economic drivers of these disputes in our three panels today. The first panel will begin by discussing the broad security situation on the high seas. As China's maritime forces have become more capable over the past decade, Beijing has become more confident in its ability to assert its claims in the disputed areas. Beyond China's "hard" security concerns, however, other domestic, political, and legal elements shape China's policy in the East and South China Seas. Our second panel will consider popular nationalism as one of these elements. It has become a key driver of Chinese foreign policy as personality politics in Beijing has given way to a collective leadership seeking Party legitimacy. We'll conclude with a panel on how resources and economic drivers shape China's maritime disputes. Security of China's near seas is critical to the unimpeded flow of trade and imported energy resources. Though the natural resources in the East and South China Sea undoubtedly shape the security landscape, there appears to be a debate on the centrality of oil and gas resources to the dispute.

This book examines the South China Sea territorial disputes from the perspective of international order. The authors argue that both China and the US are attempting to impose their respective preferred orders to the region and that the observed disputes are due to the clash of two competing order-building projects. Ordering the maritime space is essential for these two countries to validate their national identities and to achieve ontological security. Because both are ontological security-seeking states, this imperative gives them little room for striking a grand bargain between them. The book focuses on how China and the US engage in practices and discourses that build, contest, and legitimise the two major ordering projects they promote in the region. It concludes that China must act in its legitimation strategy in accordance with contemporary publicly accepted norms and rules to create a legitimate maritime order, while the US should support ASEAN in devising a multilateral resolution of the disputes.

Heightened tensions in the South China Sea have raised serious concerns about the dangers of conflict in this region as a result of unresolved, complex territorial disputes. This volume offers detailed insights into a range of country-perspectives, addressing the historical, legal, structural, regional and multilateral dimensions of these disputes

The South China Sea has long been a source of conflict and represents a core contemporary security issue in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. This book offers an empirical analysis of the global ocean's most contested maritime territory, the South China Sea and its agents of contest.