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South China Sea
This Week in Asia

Explainer | Why are tensions running high in the South China Sea dispute?

  • The strategic waterway is at the centre of long-simmering territorial disputes involving China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei
  • The US has upped the stakes by accusing China of bullying, and both sides have stepped up military drills in the contested waters

Reading Time:6 minutes
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The American aircraft carriers USS Ronald Reagan and USS Nimitz with their carrier strike groups during a July 2020 drill in the South China Sea. Photo: EPA
SCMP Reporter

This explainer was updated in August 2020 to reflect latest developments in the territorial dispute involving China and several Asean states, and the United States’ rejection of most of China’s claims in the strategic waterway.

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The South China Sea, one of the world’s busiest waterways, is the site of long-simmering territorial disputes and increasingly frequent military drills by American and Chinese forces.

The overlapping claims of China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei have remained unresolved for decades. Amid these conflicts, and as tensions between Beijing and Washington rumble on, the Trump administration upped the ante in July by issuing a direct challenge to China’s claims in resource-rich waters, calling them “completely unlawful”.

Conflicting claims in the South China Sea

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) and several Southeast Asian nations have also used stronger language against China’s claims this year, and highlighted that the United Nations Convention for the Law of the Sea (Unclos) should be the basis for resolving the long-standing row.

What is the conflict about?

The Philippines, Vietnam, China, Brunei, Taiwan and Malaysia hold different, sometimes overlapping, territorial claims over land features in the sea, based on various historical and geographical accounts. The territorial dispute over the land features in turn has given rise to sharply different views among the countries about their maritime rights.

China claims more than 80 per cent of the waterway via its “nine-dash line”, which stretches as far as 2,000km from the mainland, reaching waters close to Indonesia and Malaysia.

Vietnam claims sovereignty over the Paracel Islands and the Spratly Islands, while the Philippines asserts ownership of the Spratly archipelago and the Scarborough Shoal. Brunei and Malaysia have claimed sovereignty over southern parts of the sea and some of Spratly Islands. Over the years, the claimants have seized control of a raft of sea features, including rocks, islands and low-tide elevations.

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Indonesia is not a claimant state but maintains an exclusive economic zone in the Natuna Islands on the edge of the South China Sea, and has challenged China’s efforts to fish in the region. Earlier this year, Jakarta protested the presence of a Chinese coastguard vessel escorting Chinese fishing boats in the area, and deployed fighter jets and warships to patrol the islands.
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