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1 1 (February 2, 2021)

handle is hein.crs/govebny0001 and id is 1 raw text is: C o -n g e s o a R e e a c S r v c 0 Updated February 2, 2021 South China Sea Disputes: Background and U.S. Policy Overview Multiple Asian governments assert sovereignty over rocks, reefs, and other geographic features in the heavily trafficked South China Sea (SCS), with the People's Republic of China (PRC or China) arguably making the most assertive claims. The United States makes no territorial claim in the SCS and takes no position on sovereignty over any of the geographic features in the SCS, but has urged that disputes be settled without coercion and on the basis of international law. Separate from the sovereignty disputes, the United States and China disagree over what rights international law grants foreign militaries to fly, sail, and operate in a country's territorial sea or Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Since 2013, the sovereignty disputes and the U.S.-China dispute over freedom of the seas for military ships and aircraft have converged in the controversy over military outposts China has built on disputed features in the SCS. U.S. officials saw the outposts as part of a possible Chinese effort to dominate the SCS, with the goal of making China a regional hegemon that can set the rules by which other regional actors must operate. A longstanding goal of U.S. strategy has been to prevent the emergence of such a regional hegemon. At his January 2021 confirmation hearing, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin asserted that China is already a regional hegemon and seeks to become a dominant world power. Observers have been alert to other actions China might take to dominate the SCS, including initiating reclamation on another SCS geographic feature, such as Scarborough Shoal, or declaring an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over parts of the SCS. Figure I. The South China Sea - China's 'Nine-Dash Line land and shoal representations have been enlarged for u ppes:of visibiity. Source: CRS graphic. Key Facts The SCS is one of the world's most heavily trafficked waterways. An estimated $3.4 trillion in ship-borne commerce transits the sea each year, including energy supplies to U.S. treaty allies Japan and South Korea. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the SCS contains about 11 billion barrels of oil rated as proved or probable reserves-a level similar to the amount of proved oil reserves in Mexico-and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The SCS also contains significant fish stocks, coral, and other undersea resources. The Sovereignty Disputes China asserts indisputable sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea and the adjacent waters without defining the scope of its adjacent waters claim. On maps, China depicts its claims with a nine-dash line that, if connected, would enclose an area covering approximately 62% of the sea, according to the U.S. Department of State. (The estimate is based on a definition of the SCS's geographic limits that includes the Taiwan Strait, the Gulf of Tonkin, and the Natuna Sea.) China has never explained definitively what the dashed line signifies. In the northern part of the sea, China, Taiwan, and Vietnam contest sovereignty of the Paracel Islands; China has occupied them since 1974. In the southern part of the sea, China, Taiwan, and Vietnam claim all of the approximately 200 Spratly Islands, while Brunei, Malaysia, and the Philippines, a U.S. treaty ally, claim some of them. Vietnam controls the greatest number. In the eastern part of the sea, China, Taiwan, and the Philippines all claim Scarborough Shoal; China has controlled it since 2012. China's nine-dash line and Taiwan's similar eleven-dash line overlap with the theoretical 200-nautical-mile (nm) EEZs that five Southeast Asian nations-Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam-could claim from their mainland coasts under the 1994 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Indonesia also disputes China's assertions of maritime rights near its coast. Dispute over Freedom of the Seas A dispute over how to interpret UNCLOS lies at the heart of tensions between China and the United States over the activities of U.S. military vessels and planes in and over the South China Sea and other waters off China's coast. The United States and most other countries interpret UNCLOS as giving coastal states the right to regulate economic activities within their EEZs, but not the right to regulate navigation and overflight through the EEZ, including by military ships and aircraft. China and some fellow SCS claimants hold that UNCLOS allows them to regulate both economic activity and foreign militaries' navigation and overflight through their EEZs. https://crsreports.congress.gc

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