As a US battle group heads to area, the next war in Asia may be much closer than we care to imagine. With China’s claim to a few barren shoals and tiny islands representing the flint, the iron resolve of neighbouring nations to resist being reduced to vassal states may well see the region set ablaze.
The South China Sea is a key militarily strategic and economic waterway for the nations bordering it. The area’s economic importance is clear: roughly one-third of the world’s shipping sails through its waters and huge oil and gas reserves are believed to be found beneath its seabed. As there are few resources on the various sets of islands dotting its surface, many not much more than tidal shoals, and because there is almost no fresh water on any of them, they have remained uninhabited, except for seasonal visits by fishermen or, more recently, sporadic occupation by military forces.
For all nations, except China, the South China Sea has long been regarded as a local ‘lake’ available to all for fishing, transit and, more recently, for the possible economic exploitation of the gas and oil deposits that have been detected. Although they have not been accurately quantified, about 7.7Bn barrels of recoverable oil has been identified with a potential for 28Bn barrels in total. This treasure trove is augmented by 266 trillion cubic feet of Natural Gas reserves. In 2014, China began to drill for oil in waters near the Paracel Islands that are disputed with Vietnam. This immense potential wealth has greatly raised the stakes for all claimants to the archipelagos and the surrounding seas.
As China has grown in economic and military power, the South China Sea has become both Beijing’s front line for naval defence and a limitation to its global projection of its power, as the island states to its east limit its access to the open waters of the Pacific Ocean. To be recognized as a world naval power the Chinese Navy (PLAN) must control both the South China Sea and the egress from it. This is the real basis for the aggressive Chinese claim to almost the whole of the sea, in some parts nearly to the shorelines of the littoral nations. Gaining control of these blue-water exits is also one reason for the Chinese government’s recent, more accommodating political relationship with Taiwan. This improved relationship has seen the unhindered transit of Chinese warships through the northern Taiwan Straits exit into the Pacific Ocean.
