China, too, appears to be scoping out the hydrocarbons hidden beneath the South China Sea. The South China Sea comprises a stretch of roughly 1.4 million square miles in the Pacific Ocean that encompasses an area from the Singapore and Malacca Straits to the Strait of Taiwan, spanning west of the Philippines, north of Indonesia, and east of Vietnam. In the most recent clash, the Philippines naval forces intercepted eight Chinese fishing vessels in the Scarborough Shoal in April 2012, finding what they viewed as illegally fished marine life on board. by Lindsay Maizland The South China Sea is a core interest of both Vietnam and China. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. China's . It is south of China, east & south of Vietnam, west of the Philippines and north of the island of Borneo. For an ASP Fact Sheet on the South China Sea, click here. The U.S. Energy Information Agency estimates that the South China Sea holds about 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 11 billion barrels of oil in proved and probable reserves, most of which lie along the margins of the South China Sea rather than under disputed islets and reefs. January 31, 2022, How Tobacco Laws Could Help Close the Racial Gap on Cancer, Interactive As Tommy Koh, a senior Singaporean diplomat who led negotiations to create the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, told me, "the South China Sea is about law, power, and resources . This is a very important issue, and has become the main concern of Japan, the United States and even right now the European Union, says Dr. Yann-Huei Song, a fellow at Academia Sinica in Taiwan. The South China Sea and the East China Sea together form the China Sea. The South China Sea disputes continue to confuse and confound policymakers. ", "China will never allow any country to violate its terrestrial waters or airspace. The Obama administration has not only worked to strengthen ties with ASEAN, but has also forged tighter relations with individual countries like Myanmar, where it has developed a new focus and strategy of engagement. The South China Sea is filled with fishing vessels; China alone sent 23,000 fishing boats in August of this year after the annual ban was lifted. It said America "exaggerates the situation in the region and attempts to sow discord between China and other littoral countries. In 2019 a specialist ship, Hai Yang Di Zhi Ba Hao, surveyed the Vietnamese EEZ. ..Find out more, Innovating Out of the Climate Crisis: Carbon Emissions, As the private sector, federal regulators, and climate activists alike search for more tools to keep carbon out of the atmosphere, active carbon management approaches like carbon capture, utilization, and storage once seen as too costly, too risky, or both are gaining renewed attention. But the South China Sea has been dangerously overfished. More recently, on December 4, 2012, Vietnam accused a Chinese fishing boat of cutting a seismic cable attached to a Vietnamese vessel exploring for oil and gas near the Gulf of Tonkin, an act seemingly designed to prevent Hanoi from pursuing energy deposits. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. The United States will continue to stand with our allies and partners to uphold the order that we helped build, Pencesaid. Mr Pompeo denounced China's claims on the disputed Spratly Islands. A 2012 Johns Hopkins paper notes that Southeast Asia has transformed in the last two decades to an area where Chinese power and strategic ambition confront an established U.S. military presence, and where a Chinese perception of the status of the South China Sea is fundamentally at odds with a long-settled consensus among major maritime states. It is hypothetically possible therefore, that total gas resources (as opposed to proved reserves) in the South China Sea would be almost 900 trillion cubic feet (Tcf). The inner zone of mud is characteristic of the continental shelf near the Mekong and Red river deltas, while the sediment of the deeper parts of the South China Sea is mainly composed of clay. Its actual behavior says what it wants. The resources of the South China Sea, living and non-living, are rapidly being exploited by the people of the region, who are heavily concentrated along the coastline. While Vietnam is in the early stages of developing its energy trading market, the country could stand to gain a lot from claiming more reserves from the South China Sea than it currently has access to. Consequently, joint management of resources has been widely proposed by experts as the best way to ease current tensions, according to the ICG. "No approaching any more or you will pay full responsibility," a voice from a Chinese air force ground station told a U.S. Navy P-8 flying outside of . Sent Ukraine? The South China Sea disputes continue to confuse and confound policymakers. The South China Sea is a strategically important sea. China has previously accused the US Navy of provocation and interference in regional matters. Natural gas might be the most abundant and sought-after hydrocarbon resource in the South China Sea. This shelf includes the Gulf of Tonkin and the Taiwan Strait and the large islands of Hainan and Taiwan. The South China Sea is poorly understood in terms of its marine biota, ecology and the human impacts upon it. This makes it incredibly difficult to properly police the rate of resource extraction. Weather in the sea is tropical and largely controlled by monsoons. "Joint development" arrangements, whereby claimants agree to set aside territorial claims "without prejudice" for future resolution and jointly develop energy resources . It is also studded with numerous islets, atolls and reefs many of which are just awash at low tide. As a result, upwelling areas having colder surface temperatures and higher nutrient content are found off central Vietnam. Beijing claims an area known as the "nine-dash line" and has backed its claim with island-building and patrols, expanding its military presence there, although it insists its intentions are peaceful. 1994 The Convention on the Law of the Sea goes into effect. Get the AMTI Brief, our monthly feature on political, military, and environmental developments in the South and East China Seas and the claimants bordering them. -. . ASEAN countries have contested this boundary, but China has insisted on the historical legitimacy of the line based on survey expeditions, fishing activities, and naval patrols dating as far back as the fifteenth century, putting it at odds with the boundaries UNCLOS has enforced for the region since 1994. Due to China's expansion of power in the South China Sea, relations with neighboring countries in the South China Sea have become increasingly tense; Philippine officials recently revealed that the US military may return to Subic Bay. China claims all the natural resources within its nine-dash line, constituting 85.7% of the South China Sea. with Ivan Kanapathy, Bonny Lin and Stephen S. Roach C.V. Starr & Co. Quoted from the Asia Maritime Transparency Maritime Initiative, the US Energy Information Agency has estimated that the South China Sea . As China builds islands in the middle of the South China Sea, once underwater reefs have become sandy islands with airfields, roads, buildings, and bases for missile systems. Some of the tensions between the countries may cease if the consensus comes to accept that they do not stand to gain much in terms of energy from ownership of the Spratlys, but this argument has become a global issue about international law, not just oil and gas ownership. China and the US are locked in a seminal long-term struggle for dominance in Asia and the South China Sea. Activities in the South China Sea In Hayton's book he describes how seismic surveys are looking for three things: 'source rock for hydrocarbons, a reservoir where they can accumulate, and a seal to make sure they don't disappear'. However, Yann-Huei says China is unlikely to instigate an interruption in traffic because its business, exploration, and importation rely entirely on freedom of navigation as well. According to the U.S. State Department, it has been estimated that China is effectively blocking the development of $2.5 trillion worth of oil and gas resources in the South China Sea. The region also is the subject of more than a dozen overlapping and interconnected disputes over who is in charge of the various islands, rocks, shoals and reefs scattered throughout the South China Sea waters. But it is the . Beijings estimates for hydrocarbon resources under the sea are considerably higher but still modest in relation to Chinas overall demandthe countrys oil consumption in 2018 is expected to top 12.8 million barrels per day. 2021.04.29. Mr Pompeo said the US stood "with our South-East Asian allies and partners in protecting their sovereign rights to offshore resources," adding that this position was "consistent with their rights and obligations under international law". The Indo-West Pacific biogeographic province, at the centre of which the South China Sea lies, is probably the world's most diverse shallow-water marine area. The varied estimates demonstrate that no consensus has been formed on the numbers. United States, 12201 Sunrise Valley Drive Reston, VA 20192, Region 2: South Atlantic-Gulf (Includes Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands), Region 12: Pacific Islands (American Samoa, Hawaii, Guam, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands), St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center. According to some estimates however, 40% of the stocks are collapsed or overexploited and 70% of the coral reefs are heavily depleted. China claims the largest portion of territory, saying its rights go back centuries. January 3, 2023 An online resource for students, scholars and policy-makers interested in South China Sea regional development, environment, and security issues. Annual rainfall varies from about 80 inches (2,000 mm) to more than 120 inches (3,000 mm) around the southern basin. And the South China Sea has become the hub of that.. South China Sea - An Overview. It is a commercial waterway that connects Asia with Europe and Africa. by Richard Haass Before now, the US had not taken sides on territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Beijing warned that it would firmly oppose any breach of sovereignty by the US Navy and that it would be a "grave mistake for the United States to use military means to challenge China". Even if there were vast extractable oil and gas reserves, there would still be the problem of obstructive disagreements over ownership. July 13, 2020. Bordering states & territories (clockwise from north): the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan), the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia . As with oil, estimates of the regions natural gas resources vary widely. In summer, monsoonal winds blow predominantly from the southwest; in winter, winds blow from the northeast. Innovating Out of the Climate Crisis: Agricultural Technology, By: "These experts are convinced that the disputed areas of the South China Sea actually contain relatively little oil and gas.". by Anshu Siripurapu and Noah Berman He said the US, which has previously said it does not take sides in territorial disputes, rejected Beijing's claims to waters off Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia. Chinas militarization and territorial expansion in the South China Sea is illegal and dangerous, Vice President Pence said at the East Asia Summit last year. The immediate source of conflict in the region is competition over resources, saysDavid Rosenberg, professor of political science at Middlebury College. A lock () or https:// means youve safely connected to the .gov website. It is largely confined within the Tropic of Cancer and, therefore, experiences a monsoonal climate being influenced by the Southwest Monsoon in summer and the Northeast Monsoon in winter. An EEZ spans outward 200 nautical miles from the coast of the each states territorial sea, and may include the continental shelf beyond the 200-mile limit. In winter the general surface temperature is cooler, ranging from about 70 F (21 C) in the north to 81 F (27 C) in the south. Four years after an international tribunal in The Hague ruled that China's claims in the region had no legal basis, the US has for the first time officially made its stance clear. The resource is highly fragile and can quickly melt into water and methane gas. What data are available, however, and if Hong Kong is used , as it is herein, as an indicator of what the perturbations of other regional cities upon the South China Sea are like, then it is impacted grossly and an ecological disaster has probably already, but unknowingly, happened. But it was China's land reclamation projects in the South China Sea that prompted the rest of the world to reassess Beijing's international ambitions. In this International Institutions and Global Governance program Working Paper, Joshua Kurlantzick analyzes the major obstacles facing ASEAN today and prescribes recommendations for the both the United States and ASEAN that will enable ASEAN to firmly establish itself as the essential regional organization in Asia. The sea's major feature is a deep rhombus-shaped basin in the eastern part, with reef-studded shoals rising up steeply within the basin to the south (Reed and Tizard banks and the Nanshan Island area) and northwest (Paracel Islands and Macclesfield banks). On maps, China depicts its claims with a "nine-dash line" (see Figure All the countries bordering directly on this sea - China, Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei - have claimed some or all of the tiny, but strategically located, Spratly Islets and some or all of the maritime space and its resources. In December 2012, Chinas National Energy Administration named the disputed waters as the main offshore site for natural gas production, and a major Chinese energy company has already begun drilling in deep water off the southern coast. ; and the Mekong River, near Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Viet. Hostilities resurfaced in May 2014, when Chinese vessels fired water cannons at a Vietnamese flotilla that allegedly approached a large Chinese drilling rig near the Paracel Islands. By Zachary Haver. Persistent building has caught the attention of the US. The South China Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean.It is bounded in the north by the shores of South China (hence the name), in the west by the Indochinese Peninsula, in the east by the islands of Taiwan and northwestern Philippines (mainly Luzon, Mindoro and Palawan), and in the south by Borneo, eastern Sumatra and the Bangka Belitung Islands, encompassing an area of around . Many fishermen are forced to resort to more efficient and aggressive techniques . The South China Sea first becomes a factor in Chinese policy when a cartographer working for the Republic of China (ROC) government created a map with a broken line encompassing almost the entire South China Sea. One is over sovereignty. According to the World Bank, the South China Sea holds proven oil reserves of at least seven billion barrels and an estimated 900 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, which offer tremendous economic opportunity for smaller nations like Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, and energy security for Chinas large, growing economy. The disputes arent limited to land, however; each country has an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), prescribed by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), over which it has special rights to marine resources and energy exploration and production. It is overfishing which ultimately causes fisheries to dwindle in numbers. As defined by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, rare earth metals are a set of seventeen chemical elements in the periodic table, specifically the fifteen lanthanides plus scandium and yttrium. Of the three major nearshore habitat types, i.e., coral reefs, mangroves and seagrasses, 45 mangrove species out of a global of 51, most of the currently recognised 70 coral genera and 20 of 50 known seagrass species have been recorded from the South China Sea. The Chinese side is firmly opposed to it.". The deep portion, called the China Sea Basin, has a maximum depth of 16,457 feet (5,016 metres) and an abyssal plain with a mean depth of . There are roughly half a billion people who live within 100 miles of the South China Sea coastline, and the volume of shipping through its waters has skyrocketed as China and ASEAN nations increase international trade and oil imports. Half of this amount continued on to Japan, with the rest of it going to South Korea, China, Taiwan, and other regional countries. China, too, considers control of these waters to be of high strategic importance. The sea is heavily fished, however, and is the main source of animal protein for the densely populated Southeast Asian area. An official website of the United States government. He condemned Beijing's "campaign of bullying to control . In 2013 the US Energy Information Administration estimated that the South China Sea contained resources equating to 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of gas. The US has long opposed China's actions but not called them illegal until now. ", "Experts are convinced that the disputed areas of the South China Sea actually contain relatively little oil and gas. TheSouth China Seais one of the most important economic and environmental regions in the world. Academic and Higher Education Webinars, C.V. Starr & Co. The major rivers draining into the South China Sea are the tributaries of the Pearl (Zhu) River Delta south of Guangzhou (Canton), China, including the Xi River; the Red River at Haiphong, Viet. In August 2018, a BBC team flew over the disputed South China Sea islands in a US military plane. China's pursuit of offshore resources in parts of the South China Sea is "completely unlawful", US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said. One Chinese estimate for the entire SCS estimates natural gas reserves to be 2 quadrillion cubic feet. Deteriorating numbers. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). This chapter explores the very latest developments in the South China Sea maritime dispute. From an environmental perspective, methane is also a potent greenhouse gas, 30 times more damaging in terms of climate change than CO2. Vietnam's crucial offshore energy industry is being squeezed as US-China tensions rise in the South China Sea. It may not be worth the money and effort on China's part to be concerned about the Spratly islands if there are not vast reserves to cover the country's massive energy demands for more than a few years. 1. by A handful of islands comprise the epicenter of the territorial dispute, making up an area known as the cows tongue that spans roughly the entire South China Sea. In such a complex environment, it is important to have well-established, recognizable rules of international law. According to studies made by the Filipino Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the South China Sea holds one third of the entire worlds marine biodiversity and provides about ten percent of the worlds catch. Jan 28, 2022 Kent Harrington. Along the eastern side of the basin, the continental shelf falls off sharply near the Philippine islands of Luzon and Palawan and forms the Palawan Trough near the latter island. 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More than half of the worlds fishing vessels are in the South China Sea, and millions of people depend on these waters for their food and livelihoods. Overfishing and destructive practices such as dynamite and cyanide fishing primarily contribute to this depletion. Beijing claims the Spratly Islands to be its 'indisputable sovereign territory'; something unsurprisingly disputed by the surrounding countries Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Taiwan. This is a huge sum, and if true, would be the equivalent of about 80 percent of the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. Six graphics illustrate the extraordinary level of support the United States has provided Ukraine this past year in its war against Russian invaders. In spite of the focus on hydrocarbon reserves, some scholars suggest that disputes over fishing rights have emerged as a larger driver of conflict. In the coming decades, climate change will make farmers jobs more difficult than ever, as rising temperatures, unpredictable rainfall, and spreading pests all take their toll on production. The South China Sea disputes continue to confuse and confound policymakers. February 23, 2023, By entering your email and clicking subscribe, you're agreeing to receive announcements from CFR about our products and services, as well as invitations to CFR events. Consequently, anthropogenic impacts, such as over-exploitation of resources and pollution, are anticipated to be huge although, in reality, relatively little is known about them. This was only the most recent incident highlighting . As much as 50 percent of global oil tanker shipments pass through the South China Sea, which sees three times more tanker traffic than the Suez Canal and more than five times that of the Panama Canal, making the waters one of the worlds busiest international sea lanes. Increasing popularity and high levels of market volatility have raised the stakes of the digital asset experiment. If you know of a source that can help fill in any missing information, please reach out to [email protected]. China also has repeatedly rejected the mechanisms for arbitration provided by the UN. Stay Connected! Corrections? The South China Sea has long been considered a flashpoint for regional tensions in East and Southeast Asia. https://www.britannica.com/place/South-China-Sea, The Sasakawa Peace Foundation - Review of Island Studies - The Problems in the South China Sea, Marcos: China laser not enough to activate US defense pact, US renews warning it'll defend Philippines after China spat, Philippines says China ship used laser against coast guard, US holds drills in South China Sea amid tensions with China, US, Philippines agree on larger American military presence. June 17, 2022. Territorial disputes, historical animosities, powerful militaries, and nuclear weapons make for high-stakes geopolitics in the region. It is a territorial dispute over a busy waterway. by Jonathan Masters, James McBride and Noah Berman Author of. Despite the formidable obstacles presented by the heated atmosphere in the South China Sea, there are practical options to enable development of oil and gas resources. It has an emerging renewable energy market as few fossil fuel resources are available, but backup resources of natural gas could also be of economic interest. February 8, 2023, Backgrounder Their militaries are engaging in nearly continuous and . -8248-1881-4. Monsoons control the sea-surface currents as well as the exchange of water between the South China Sea and adjacent bodies of water. Global Climate Agreements: Successes and Failures, Backgrounder CNOOC's estimates are higher at 125 billion barrels of oil and 500 trillion cubic feet of gas. These estimates represent a sizeable proportion of international trade, constituting between 21 percent of global trade in 2016, but is nonetheless 36 percent smaller than the original $5.3 trillion. In his book The South China Sea & the Struggle for the Future of Asia he wrote about a group of expert geological and geophysical consultants who convene at the Penny Black pub on the Singapore waterfront; a watering hole for everyone who has ever tried to find hydrocarbons in the South China Sea. China consumes about three billion barrels of oil and about five trillion cubic feet of natural gas each year, and only a fraction of any of these resources lies in disputed territory in the South China Sea. Incorporated into China's claim is the assertion that many of those subsequent events, including the French colonization of the habitable South China Sea in the Spratly and Paracel Islands, were illegitimate and do not negate China's historical claims (Catley, 1997). 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