Why do so many countries have claims to territory in the South China Sea?
Competing claims based on history, geography and law – but raw military power the trump card
All the territorial disputes between six Asian neighbours in the South China Sea are, in the end, related to three academic disciplines: history, geography and law.
Most of the islands, rocks, reefs and shoals claimed are uninhabited and some are even underwater at low tide. They cover just a few square kilometres in total but are spread over the 2 million square kilometres of sea encompassed by China’s “nine-dash line”, with mainland China, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and self-ruled Taiwan all claiming sovereignty over the whole or part of several island chains and nearby waters.
This situation appears to be producing something akin to a volatile compound in these waters, one that could only require the smallest of catalysts to ignite
That makes for a complicated context that even an impending Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling might not be able to settle.
The dispute is not just about maps and national pride, but also about a nation’s exclusive rights to natural resources in the surrounding seas and beneath the seabed, and about its sovereign right to manage the ships and aircraft of other nations passing through the area, which contains some of the world’s busiest and most important sea lanes.
Maochun Miles Yu, a professor of East Asian military and naval history at the United States Naval Academy, said all the claimants used some of or all the three academic disciplines to back their arguments, but the disputes all boiled down to one question: what qualifies one country as the rightful sovereign owner of certain islands in the South China Sea.
“For China, the justification is historical mentions by ancient texts; for the Philippines, Malaysia and others, it’s geographical proximity; for Vietnam, it’s active ruling and administration since the 17th century that should really give Hanoi the right to own these islands,” Yu said.