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Several countries have overlapping territorial claims to portions of the South China Sea, which stretches from Singapore in the southwest to Taiwan in the northeast. The Spratly Islands and Paracel Islands are two of the most contested areas (see dark blue islands on map above). However, unlike other parts of the South China Sea, these areas have not been assessed to hold large (conventional) resources of oil and natural gas. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, ownership of habitable islands can extend the exclusive access of a country to surrounding energy resources. EIA's analysis shows...

Why American Involvement Will Mean More Friction -- Not Less When U.S. officials are asked to comment on disputes over contested islands in the western Pacific, they invariably affirm that the Obama administration has no position on issues of sovereignty but opposes any use of force to resolve the matter. "Whether with regard to disputes in the South China Sea or in the East China Sea," Deputy Secretary of State William Burns declared last October in Tokyo, the United States "does not take a position on the question of ultimate sovereignty." True to form, he continued, "What we do take...

China’s assertion that almost all of the South China Sea and adjacent waters are part of its territory seems to be growing more dangerous with each passing week.China and Japan are scrambling fighter jets in their faceoff over disputed islands. Last month, China “painted” a Japanese military helicopter and destroyer with weapons-lock radar — bringing harsh criticism from Japanese and American military officials.

Indian naval warship INS Ranjit (D53)India will deploy warships to the South China Sea if the country’s regional interests are compromised, the Indian Navy commander said. As China bolsters its military, the region has witnessed rising tensions over unresolved territorial disputes. India is not directly involved in any of the disputes, but its national interests are tied to the turbulent region, Admiral D K Joshi said on Monday, a day ahead of India’s Navy Day. Delhi may deploy its forces to the region if the situation deteriorates. “Are we preparing for it? Are we having exercises of that nature? The...

Tension between the United States and China spilled over into meetings of Asia-Pacific leaders on Friday as the two countries jostled over how to handle competing claims to the South China Sea. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said "outside forces" had no excuse to get involved in the complex maritime dispute, a veiled warning to the United States and other countries to keep out of the sensitive issue. "It ought to be resolved through friendly consultations and discussions by countries directly involved. Outside forces should not, under any pretext, get involved," Wen told a meeting with Southeast Asian leaders, several of...

Over the past 48 hours we have written much, describing the perfectly expected surge in nationalist fervor and anti-Japanese sentiment, as the Senkaku Islands Snafu hits its boiling point.... Instead we'll let the pictures do the talking.

<p>Two Chinese men have been detained over an attack last week on the Japanese ambassador's car in Beijing in which a flag was ripped off of the front of the vehicle, Chinese state media reported Tuesday.</p> <p>The men, aged 23 and 25, are being held for disturbing public order, and another man has been issued a warning, the official Xinhua News Agency said.</p>

James Webb, the outgoing Democratic Senator from Virginia, is sounding the alarm about the next big world crisis taking place in the South China Sea. Naturally, the Obama administration is doing nothing about it in hopes the crisis will go away. Beijing has, in effect, laid sovereign claim to much of the South China Sea, including the Paracel Islands. China is also clashing with the Philippines over the Spratley Islands and with Japan over the Senkaku Islands. China is prepared to back up these claims by establishing a small colony on Woody Island in the Paracels with a military garrison...

During his visit to Vietnam in early June, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta displayed eagerness to have the U.S. military return to the bases it once occupied at Cam Ranh Bay. The Pentagon lost its foothold there when South Vietnam fell to communist forces in the mid-1970s, and military officials have longed to regain access. Once Washington established diplomatic relations with Hanoi in 1995, that objective seemed to be an attainable goal rather than a hopeless wish. The Vietnamese government, worried about China’s growing power in the region, may now be receptive to a renewed U.S. military presence at...

HK, Taiwan, mainland activists plan to land on Diaoyu islands A Hong Kong activist group set sail on Sunday for the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, known as the Senkaku in Japan, in an attempt to join forces with counterparts from the mainland China and Taiwan to assert China's sovereignty over the islands. The official Global Times reported that the Action Committee for Defending the Diaoyu Islands set sail at noon from the Tsim Sha Tsui pier in Hong Kong with four crewmembers and 11 activists aboard, including one Macanese and one mainland Chinese. Chan Miu-tak, chairman of...

China recently declared that most of the 3.5 million square kilometers South China Sea had become Sansha, the latest Chinese city. The area China claims is within the city limits comprises over two million square kilometers of largely open ocean and a few hundred tiny islands and reefs, many of which are only above water during low tide. Sansha is administered from one of the Paracel islands (Woody Island). The U.S. government responded by asking that China obey international law. China currently claims South China Sea areas close to neighboring nations, except for areas about 22 kilometers from the coast....

The Chinese Foreign Ministry's over the weekend condemned a U.S. State Department statement that said Washington was closely monitoring territorial disputes in the South China Sea, and that China's establishment of a military garrison for the area risks "further escalating tensions in the region". The mosaic of rival territorial claims in the South China Sea has become Asia's worst potential military flashpoint. Beijing has said its disputes with Vietnam, the Philippines and other southeast Asian claimants should be settled one-on-one, and it has bristled at U.S. backing for a multilateral approach to solving the overlapping claims. "We are entirely entitled...

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — The Obama administration pressed Beijing on Thursday to accept a code of conduct for resolving territorial disputes in the resource-rich South China Sea, a difficult U.S. mediation effort that has faced resistance from the communist government. It has endeared the U.S., however, to once-hostile countries in Southeast Asia. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' annual conference. Sitting across from each other at a long table in a grand hall with chandeliers, Clinton stressed the different ways Washington...

Last week during an East Asia Summit meeting in Phnom Penh, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to stand fast and use diplomacy to resolve claims over territorial waters in the South China Sea. China has insisted that it had “’indisputable sovereignty’ over Islands that are claimed by Vietnam to the Scarborough Shoal near the Philippines. They include Islands near Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. Secretary Clinton urged the nations to collectively negotiate with the Chinese regarding territorial waters. China wanted bilateral talks with each country where they felt they can intimate the nations into surrounding territorial claims without much...

China's state-run media ramped up condemnation of the United States on Monday over tensions in the South China Sea, with the Communist Party's top newspaper telling Washington to "Shut up" and charging it with "fanning flames" of division in the region. The Chinese Foreign Ministry's over the weekend condemned a U.S. State Department statement that said Washington was closely monitoring territorial disputes in the South China Sea, and that China's establishment of a military garrison for the area risks "further escalating tensions in the region". The mosaic of rival territorial claims in the South China Sea has become Asia's worst...

........This week, Beijing set up a new provincial-level city government to administer all its island claims in the South China Sea, as well as administer all the waters in the Sea, and “elected” a mayor for its insta-city of Sansha. The new governing council will represent approximately 1,100 Chinese residents of three island groups, all of which are claimed by multiple countries, including Taiwan, the Philippines, and Vietnam, in addition to China. The real news, however, is that Beijing is also setting up a military garrison on Yongxing Island, which is also claimed by Vietnam. The garrison will serve “self-defense”...

Just when external affairs minister S. M. Krishna was affirming in India’s right to ‘freedom of navigation’ in Washington, news reports from Shanghai say China is testing Delhi’s political will to exercise this right in the South China Sea. Krishna’s affirmation was part of the India-U.S. Strategic dialogue this week in Washington. Meanwhile, an Indian naval contingent, on an extended operational deployment in the South China Sea during the last two months, has called in at the Shanghai port on its way home. According to reports from Shanghai, when the Indian naval squadron led by INS Shivalik was on its...

In 1823, U.S. President James Monroe and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams used the president’s annual message to Congress to codify a new foreign policy doctrine. The United States, they announced, was entitled to “indisputable sovereignty” over the islands and waters within a line on the map that enclosed the vast majority of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. Monroe and Adams proclaimed that these claims constituted a “core interest” of the United States – an interest for which the republic was prepared to fight. It went without saying that they would brook no opposition from weak...

Since mid April Chinese naval vessels have been circling a pile of rocks situated 124 miles off the coast of the Philippines that barely qualifies as an “island”. The rocks are called the Scarborough Shoal and save for there position, and rumors of oil and gas under them, they have no value to anyone. Nevertheless it is precisely because they are so far from their own shore that the Chinese are trying to pressure the Filipinos into relinquishing their long held claim (since 1734) to Panatag as they call them. Moreover since the Scarborough Shoal at just 124 miles off...

MANILA (AFP) - China told its citizens Thursday they were not safe in the Philippines and its state media warned of war, as a month-long row over rival claims in the South China Sea threatened to spill out of control. Chinese travel agencies announced they had suspended tours to the Philippines, under government orders, and the embassy in Manila advised its nationals already in the country to stay indoors ahead of planned protests. http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/-/world/13654401/china-warns-citizens-as-row-with-philippines-escalates/