South China Sea Energy Exploration and Development. [12] In 1947, the Ministry of Interior of China renamed 149 of the islands.

Great Wall of Sand Why the difference? Spratly Islands dispute Taiwan claims all the Spratly Islands, but occupies only one island and one shelf, including Taiping Island.

Some 1 million to 60 million years ago, it rifted and then collapsed as a result of seafloor spreading. Besides, international maritime convention, to which China is party, pays less heed to history when it comes to deciding claims to the sea by nonarchipelagic nations. The People's Republic of China has retained the Republican-era names for the island groups, supplementing them with a list of 287 names for islands, reefs, banks, and shoals in 1983. Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity. Member, Commission for Developing Countries, International Association for the Physical Sciences of the Ocean.

The Soviet Union did not give any substantial support to Vietnamese reunification, and neither South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem nor the U.S. government showed readiness to give consent to the holding of all-Vietnamese elections as stipulated by the Geneva Agreements. The South China Sea also produces about 10 percent of the world’s fish catch and about 40 percent of its tuna. Vietnam and Malaysia filed their joint protest a day after China submitted its map to the UN. [10] From 2011–2012, China's State Oceanic Administration named 1,660 nameless islands and islets under its claimed jurisdiction; in 2012, China announced plans to name a further 1,664 nameless features by August 2013. For example, the Sailing Directions include most of the NW area shown on Chart 93044 as outside of Dangerous ground, but exclude the Reed Bank, which is shown on Chart 93045 as inside Dangerous Ground. Near the mainland the general flow is northeasterly, passing out through the Taiwan and Luzon straits.

In early summer, wind from the southwest not only moves the surface water to the northeast but causes it to be displaced off the coast. First the dotted line on Chinese maps lost two of its hyphens in 1952, when, in a moment of socialist bonhomie with Vietnam, Chairman Mao Zedong abandoned Chinese claims to the Gulf of Tonkin. Before going further, let me acknowledge the breadth of Yergin’s reporting is impressive. Collectively, they have a total land surface area of less than 15 km2 at low tide.

Every year, some $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes through the South China Sea. From airbases on Woody Island and Mischief Reef, Chinese KJ-500 airborne early warning aircraft can spot high-flying aircraft all across Vietnam, and as far as Manila and Tarakan. That map, which is sometimes referred to as a “long cow tongue” includes a nine-dash line that extends south from the Chinese mainland, and extends along the coast of Vietnam, to Indonesia and Malaysia, and then back north along the coast of the Philippines, and to the east of Taiwan. In the 19th century, as a part of the occupation of Indochina, France claimed control of the Spratlys until the 1930s, exchanging a few with the British.

The South China Sea is a significant trade route for crude oil from the Persian Gulf and Africa through the Strait of Malacca to Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. Between May and August the southwest trade winds bring rainfall to the islands, with the maximum rainfall in June (226 mm). Either way, the fact that ambiguity remains at all proves the complicated legacy of the nine-dash line.

In 1988, the office was switched to the administration of the newly founded Hainan Province. While Chinese air and missile bases tend to receive the most attention, the CSIS map conveys a vital point: the South China Sea provides an indispensable platform for the radars needed to find targets for those warplanes and missiles. For the average Chinese, every drop of sea within the dashes is clearly China’s. Johnson South Reef skirmish (1988).

Annual rainfall varies from about 80 inches (2,000 mm) to more than 120 inches (3,000 mm) around the southern basin.

The Republic of China (ROC) named 132 of the South China Sea Islands in 1932 and 1935. “He never talked about the line he made in the South China Sea again,” says Wang of her academic guide’s latter years.

The Sunda Shelf is covered with littoral sediments contributed by submerged valleys.

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. Map of the South China Sea, with the Nine-Dash Line highlighted in green. Yergin does a better job of explaining the history and importance of the South China Sea than anything I’ve read and he does so by tracing it to a map drawn 84 years ago by a “cartographic combatant. The line, first inscribed on a Chinese map in 1947, had “no legal basis” for maritime claims, deemed the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague. All Rights Reserved, This is a BETA experience. Republic of Morac-Songhrati-Meads