The Spratly Islands dispute is an ongoing territorial dispute between China, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Brunei, concerning "ownership" of the Spratly Islands, a group of islands and associated "maritime features" (reefs, banks, and cays etc.) located in the South China Sea.
Claimant states are interested in retaining or acquiring the rights to fishing stocks, the exploration and potential exploitation of crude oil and natural gas in the seabed of various parts of the South China Sea, and the strategic control of important shipping lanes.
China's sweeping claims of sovereignty over the sea—and the sea's estimated 11 billion barrels of untapped oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas—have antagonized competing claimants Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam.
Source: CRS graphic. EEZs that five Southeast Asian nations—Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam—could claim from their mainland coasts under the 1994 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Indonesia disputes China's assertions of maritime rights near its coast.
Since 2014, the PRC has continued to assert claims to a wide swath of the South China Sea, including a right to draw baselines and closing in internal waters within four geographically dispersed groups of islands and other maritime features.
Territorially, there are seven claimants to the South China Sea: China, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.
China and Japan both claim 200 nautical miles (370 km; 230 mi) of EEZ rights, but the East China Sea width is only 360 nautical miles (670 km; 410 mi). China claims an EEZ extending to the eastern end of the Chinese continental shelf (based on UNCLOS III) which goes deep into the Japanese's claimed EEZ.
Philippines-China relations have lately been dominated by the territorial disputes in the West Philippine Sea, which has escalated since the naval standoff over the Scarborough Shoal in April 2012 and aggravated by issues of Chinese illegal occupation, unlawful establishment of infrastructures, and incidents of ...
China claims all the islands, reefs, and shoals within a U-shaped line in the South China Sea drawn in 1947 as its territory. Scarborough Shoal lies within this area. China further asserted its claim shortly after the departure of the US Navy force from Subic, Zambales, Philippines.
The Philippines claims the northeastern section of the Spratly Islands as the Kalayaan Island Group, in addition to the Scarborough Shoal, which it calls the Bajo de Masinloc. Malaysia claims part of the Kalayaan Island, while China and Taiwan claim the entirety of the island group.
The prosperity of all depends on continued free access to the waters there. Roughly a third of liquid natural gas and a quarter of all global trade flows through the South China Sea, Aquilino said. Bordering nations also rely on the sea for resources as well, such as fishing.
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. It is located at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast, and the Philippines to the south.
The Senkaku Islands dispute, or Diaoyu Islands dispute, is a territorial dispute over a group of uninhabited islands known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan, the Diaoyu Islands in the People's Republic of China (PRC), and Tiaoyutai Islands in the Republic of China (ROC or Taiwan).
Solomon Islands: China deal in Pacific stokes Australian fears - BBC News.
Taiwan has been governed independently of China since 1949, but Beijing views the island as part of its territory. Beijing has vowed to eventually “unify” Taiwan with the mainland, using force if necessary.
West Philippine Sea (Filipino: Karagatang Kanlurang Pilipinas; abbreviated as WPS) is the official designation by the government of the Philippines to the parts of the South China Sea that are included in the country's exclusive economic zone.
On July 12, 2016, the Philippines won the arbitration case it lodged against China after the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands invalidated Beijing's nine-dash line claim over the South China Sea. China refused to acknowledge the arbitral ruling.
The Philippines was under the colonial rule of the United States from 1898 to 1946. The people of the islands now known as the Philippines were “connected” with China many centuries before they were colonized by the Spaniards in 1565.
China Sea, part of the western Pacific Ocean bordering the Asian mainland on the east-southeast.
China has gained direct access to the Sea of Japan for the first time in 100 years through a North Korean port, leaving Japan and South Korea deeply concerned.
The sea is called the East Sea in Chinese (東海; Dōng Hǎi), and is one of the Four Seas of Chinese literature. There are three other seas, one for each of the four cardinal directions. Until World War II, the sea was referred to as 東支那海 (Higashi Shina Kai; "East Shina Sea") in Japanese.
Japan is not a direct party to any of the disputes in the South China Sea. It does not have territorial claims in the area. Nor does it have any claim to an exclusive economic zone. Nonetheless, Japan does have vital interests in the area.
The South China Sea Islands are part of the territory of the Republic of China. That the ROC is entitled to all rights over the South China Sea Islands and their relevant waters in accordance with international law and the law of the sea is beyond dispute.
Hong Kong (US: /ˈhɒŋkɒŋ/ or UK: /hɒŋˈkɒŋ/; Chinese: 香港, Cantonese: [hœ́ːŋ.kɔ̌ːŋ] ( listen)), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and a special administrative region in China.