Greedy America: Hollywood Is Paying an ‘Abominable’ Price for China Access

A kid’s movie has turned into a geopolitical nightmare for DreamWorks.
BY BETHANY ALLEN-EBRAHIMIAN 

A scene from "Abominable" taken in a theater and shared by Vietnamese media. 

Hollywood’s China reckoning has come. 

But unlike the NBA’s recent China debacle, this time it’s not the United States but China’s nearest neighbors who’ve had enough.
Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia have all expressed outrage at a map of China that flickers across the screen in a new film released in late September. 

The animated film, Abominable, is a joint production of DreamWorks and Pearl Studios, which is based in Shanghai. 

The map includes China’s infamous “nine-dash line”—the vague, ambiguously marked demarcation line for its territorial claim over most of the Vietnam East Sea.
The dispute points to a new problem for Hollywood as studios move closer to Beijing’s positions. Silence on China is nothing new—but positively pushing the Chinese government’s view of the world is.
Hollywood’s traditional self-censorship on China has market roots. 

China’s burgeoning market of movie-goers is expected to soon surpass the United States as the largest in the world. 

China’s censors have wielded this power adroitly, mandating that production companies abide by the party’s bottom lines in order to earn one of the 34 coveted spots allotted to foreign films for distribution in China each year. 

That has resulted in a deafening silence from Hollywood on the realities of Chinese Communist Party rule.
In the 1990s, several Hollywood films depicted oppression in Tibet, such as Seven Years in Tibet and Red Corner, and the Tibetan cause was popular among celebrities, most notably Richard Gere. 

But there hasn’t been a major film sympathetic towards Tibet since Disney’s 1997 film Kundun, for which Disney CEO Michael Eisner flew to Beijing to apologize to the Chinese leadership. 

Gere claims he has been frozen out of major films for his Tibet activism. 

The 2013 zombie movie World War Z altered the location of the origin of the zombie outbreak from China to North Korea. 

The 2016 film Doctor Strange changed the “Ancient One,” a Tibetan character in the original comic book series, to a white character played by Tilda Swinton. 

In the past decade, no major film has portrayed China as a military foe of the United States.
Omitting offending plot lines and characters was once enough to satisfy Chinese censors. 

But pressure has grown to include proactively positive depictions, particularly of Chinese science and military capabilities.
O. In the 2014 film Transformers: Age of Extinction, the Chinese military swoops in to save the day. One film critic described Age of Extinction as “a very patriotic film. It’s just Chinese patriotism on the screen, not American.” 

The payoff was enormous; Age of Extinction became the highest-grossing film of all time in China, raking in more than $300 million. (It no longer holds that record.) 

China saved the day again in The Martian, the 2015 science fiction film starring Matt Damon. 

NASA launches a special rocket carrying food for an astronaut stranded alone on Mars, but it explodes and NASA is out of options—until China’s space agency jumps into the plot out of nowhere, announcing it also has a special rocket it is willing to lend the Americans. (In fairness, the subplot was present in the original novel, not just introduced by the studio.) 

The Martian brought in $95 million at the Chinese box office.
The growing phenomenon of U.S.-China joint movie productions has also resulted in a proliferation of mediocre films that cast China in a conspicuously positive light. 

The 2018 B-grade shark flick The Meg, co-starring Chinese actor Li Bingbing, was one such coproduction. 

It features an American billionaire who finances a futuristic ocean research station located, in a narrative non sequitur, off the coast of China, run by brilliant and heroic Chinese protagonists.
Abominable appears to be another. 

It features a young Chinese girl who discovers a yeti on her roof. 

She decides to help the yeti find his way back home to the snowy mountains in the west, and they set off on a trek across China. 

It has gotten middling reviews: One critic wrote that the film is “so distinctive pictorially, and so manifestly good-hearted, that it’s easy to forgive if not quite forget the ragged quality of its storyline.”
But the Chinese government’s heavy-handed film regulation department seems to have gone a bridge too far. 

One scene in the movie includes a map of China on the young female protagonist’s wall. 

Nine slim dashes trace a U-shape around the Vietnam East Sea, a resource-rich body of water with numerous land features also claimed by the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Brunei.
China is the only country that recognizes this fallacious map. 

The nine-dash line has no basis in international law, which does not recognize any country’s sovereignty over open waters. 

In 2016, an international tribunal in the Hague also rejected China’s assertions of sovereignty over the Vietnam East Sea. 

Beijing has never clarified the line’s legal definition or even its precise location, likely because to do so would open its vague claims up to further legal challenge.
These issues will come into sharper focus as Beijing begins to demand positive submission, not just omission. 

China’s domestic film market has already shifted from censorship to forced inclusion of propaganda. 

Last year, as part of a sweeping reorganization that saw many Chinese Communist Party bureaus absorb the purview of government departments, the party’s propaganda office took over regulation of the film industry. 

The result has been even more heavy-handed censorship and more overtly patriotic content in films. Over the summer, six anticipated blockbusters were axed entirely, and China’s box office slumped.

Cartographic aggression

Chinese Tourists Spark Anger in Vietnam over Map on Shirts
By Associated Press

HANOI, Vietnam — A group of Chinese tourists wearing T-shirts depicting the country’s territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea has sparked anger in Vietnam.
The tourists arrived at the Cam Ranh international airport on Sunday night and after going through the immigration, took off their coats to reveal T-shirts featuring the so-called “nine-dash line” demarcating Beijing claims to nearly the entire South China Sea. 

Vietnam is one of the rival claimants.
State-run Tuoi Tre newspaper reported that Vietnamese authorities confiscated the T-shirts.
Immigration officials at the airport declined to comment Wednesday.
Some readers commenting on the newspaper’s website have called for the deportation of the Chinese tourists.
“Deport them immediately, put them on the blacklist and ban them from entering in the future,” reader Huynh Tan Dat wrote.
More than 4 million Chinese arrived in Vietnam last year, accounting for about 30 percent of total foreign arrivals in the Southeast Asian country.
It was not the first time the Vietnamese were enraged over the controversial maps. 

In 2016, a border agent at the Saigon airport defaced a Chinese passport with the words “f— you” scribbled twice over maps of the contested South China Sea.
China issued new passports starting 2012 with revised maps to include the “nine-dash line.” 

Some Vietnamese border agents have begun to issue separate visas rather than stamp Chinese passports to demonstrate that they do not recognize the new map.
China and Vietnam have had long-running territorial disputes in the South China Sea. 

Other claimants include the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.

Trump has given Xi Jinping a pass on the South China Sea

By Steve Mollman

The South China Sea is, for many, a worrying geopolitical flashpoint. 

But for Xi Jinping, it’s a source of pride.
When Xi recently addressed the Communist Party congress, he boasted that “construction on islands and reefs in the South China Sea has seen steady progress.” 

In recent years, China has built military facilities on reefs and islands to bolster its claim to nearly the entire sea. 

An international tribunal invalidated that claim last year, but Beijing dismissed the ruling.
During Donald Trump’s time in office, China’s expansion activities in the waterway have continued, and there’s every indication it plans to further entrench itself in what analysts fear will become a “Chinese lake.” 

Trump didn’t publicly challenge his hosts about the South China Sea while in Beijing this week, and in a display of camaraderie said he felt a “great chemistry” with Xi. 

But he will have a chance to address the issue in the days ahead at regional summits in Vietnam and the Philippines as part of his lengthy Asia trip.
Those countries, along with Malaysia and Brunei, have their own claims in the sea that conflict with China’s. 

In many cases China’s sweeping claim—demarcated by its nine-dash line—intersects with other nations’ exclusive economic zones. 

The zone gives those nations sole rights to the natural resources in and below the water, as per the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. 

Despite this, China, in the waters it also claims, expects joint development of the resources, which include oil and natural gas.

A contested sea.
Trump offered tough talk on China’s island-building while he was running for president last year, but since assuming office he’s made it less of a priority than his campaign rhetoric suggested. 

North Korea is a big reason why. 

Trump believes China, as North Korea’s largest trading partner, could apply enough economic pressure to force Pyongyang to change its ways, so he’s essentially been wooing Xi. 

With North Korea and US-China trade his main concerns, the South China Sea has fallen by the wayside.
But not for Beijing. 

As recent developments suggest, it’s going full steam ahead in bolstering its position in the waterway.
For example, China has built a new drone to deliver supplies to islands lacking a proper runway. 

It also plans to use floating nuclear reactors to power its islands, with the first undergoing final tests now—up to 20 could eventually provide electricity to China’s outposts in the sea. 

And this month, China unveiled a large dredging ship dubbed the “magical island-maker” by its creators and capable of suctioning up mud, sand, and coral, and depositing the debris as new land more efficiently than its predecessors. 

The vessel can dig 6,000 cubic meters (21,189 cubic feet) an hour, the equivalent of three standard swimming pools, from 35 meters (115 feet) below the water’s surface. 

South China Sea watchers quickly saw its potential to create more islands.
Trump will get another chance to challenge China’s maritime moves when he attends an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Vietnam on Nov. 10-11. 

More opportunities will come in the Philippines when he attends events tied to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on Nov. 12-13, and then at the East Asia Summit before he returns to the US.
Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte said this week that at the APEC meeting he’ll seek clarification from Xi, who will also be present, on Beijing’s intentions in the sea. 

“You want to control the passage, or do we have free passage?” he said at a news briefing before leaving for Vietnam. 

But Duterte has hardly been a great challenger of China’s claims—he recently halted construction of bamboo huts on a sandbar after Beijing complained.
Trump can afford to be more assertive—whatever his chemistry with Xi.

Rogue Nation

Why China Never Draws A Boundary Line Around Its Claim To The South China Sea

By Ralph Jennings

A man scans the coastline Aug. 20, 2016 in Natuna, Ranai, Indonesia. Most Natuna locals work as fishermen. Amid escalated tensions at the South China Sea, Indonesia continues to maintain its sovereignty over the Natuna Islands through security patrols along Indonesia's Exclusive Economic Zone.

China has been said to claim 95% of the South China Sea, running from its southern coast to the island of Borneo. 

Reports say that around 90% of that South China Sea falls under Beijing’s purview, while others place the percentage closer to 80. 

So how much of the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea does China actually claim, earning the title as the most aggressive among six governments that vie for sovereignty over the same waters?
The short answer – no one knows because China has never announced a clear demarcation line and may actually want to keep it vague.
“All of this is intentional on China's part,” says Greg Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative under American think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies. 

“It isn't going to clarify the position of the line because it has no legal rationale yet for what it means.”
What’s clear is that China claims more than anyone else along the sea, which is known for its fisheries, natural gas and shipping lanes. 

Since 2010 it has irked others by building artificial islets for military use. 

The South China Sea dispute is expected to surface in mid-November when Chinese officials meet counterparts from 10 Southeast Asian countries including those with competing maritime claims.

The nine-dash line
China formally uses a nine-dash line, which originated with its former Nationalist government in 1947 and has been re-plotted over the years by numerous analysts trying to understand the lay of the sea better. (The American think tank offers this version.)
Even China reinterprets it periodically. 

In 2015, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that line should not be the “focus” of the South China Sea issue, rather who occupies which islets, Beijing’s official Xinhua News Agency reported then.
The dashes show Beijing taking in sea tracts extending down the coast of Vietnam over to Malaysian Borneo and neighboring Brunei, then up the Philippine west coasts toward Taiwan. 

The other parties mentioned here all claim parts of what China says belongs under its flag. 

But the dashes are 20-kilometers thick according to a Chinese map updated in 2009 for the U.N. Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, Poling says. 

Exactness is naturally difficult. 

There’s also no telling how the dashes are connected, analysts argue. 

The gaps between them are just blue waters on Chinese maps.

The Chinese nine-dash line in the South China Sea
“On the demarcation of nine-dash line, I am rather certain there is none,” says Yun Sun, East Asia Program senior associate at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington. 

“The line was drawn on the map artificially and randomly by the (Nationalist) government, with no clear mapping or demarcation done beforehand. The dash line, rather than a solid line, signifies the ambiguous and different status of the areas between the dashes and the line itself.”
Other countries base their claims on thinner, connected lines that delineate exclusive economic zones extending 370 kilometers offshore, or on continental shelves. 

Malaysia, for example, marks its claim in zigs and zags that encompass the islets it considers its own.

China's manned submersible Shenhai Yongshi (or Deep-sea Warrior), on board the exploration ship Tansuo-1, returns to port after completing the deep-sea testing on Oct. 3, 2017 in Sanya, Hainan Province of China. 

Vagueness as a bargaining tool?
The fuzziness of China’s line keeps other countries scratching their heads. 

It has vexed Indonesia, for example, as the giant archipelago’s government steps up enforcement of fisheries near its outlying Natuna Islands, says Collin Koh, maritime security research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. 

Enforcement against Chinese vessels increased after 2012 around the Natuna chain as it lies near the southern end of China’s nine dashes.
“What I understood, based on what Indonesian officials said publicly, is that they don’t recognize a dispute with China exists because there’s simply no geographical coordinates or datum that can accurately pinpoint those lines,” Koh says.
That's the whole idea, analysts believe. 

China has marked a line clearly enough that other maritime states must pay attention but vaguely enough that they can negotiate as needed over actual control.
"It leaves room for negotiation,” Sun says. 

“The question then will be, if the status is unsettled, how could China drill oil there? That is how the Chinese push the other claimants back to bilateral negotiations. You don’t want us to drill? Why don’t we sit down and talk about it. You don’t talk to us, we'll do whatever we want."

Course Correction: How to Stop China's Maritime Advance

Washington should make clear that it can live with an uneasy stalemate in Asia—but not with Chinese hegemony. 
By Ely Ratner

The South China Sea is fast becoming the world’s most important waterway. 

As the main corridor between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the sea carries one-third of global maritime trade, worth over $5 trillion, each year, $1.2 trillion of it going to or from the United States. 

The sea’s large oil and gas reserves and its vast fishing grounds, which produce 12 percent of the world’s annual catch, provide energy and food for Southeast Asia’s 620 million people.
But all is not well in the area. 

Six governments—in Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam—have overlapping claims to hundreds of rocks and reefs that scatter the sea. 

Sovereignty over these territories not only serves as a source of national pride; it also confers hugely valuable rights to drill for oil, catch fish, and sail warships in the surrounding waters. 

For decades, therefore, these countries have contested one another’s claims, occasionally even resorting to violence. 

No single government has managed to dominate the area, and the United States has opted to remain neutral on the sovereignty disputes. 

In recent years, however, China has begun to assert its claims more vigorously and is now poised to seize control of the sea. 

Should it succeed, it would deal a devastating blow to the United States’ influence in the region, tilting the balance of power across Asia in China’s favor.
Time is running out to stop China’s advance. 

With current U.S. policy faltering, the Trump administration needs to take a firmer line. 

It should supplement diplomacy with deterrence by warning China that if the aggression continues, the United States will abandon its neutrality and help countries in the region defend their claims. 

Washington should make clear that it can live with an uneasy stalemate in Asia—but not with Chinese hegemony.

ON THE MARCH
China has asserted “indisputable sovereignty” over all the land features in the South China Sea and claimed maritime rights over the waters within its “nine-dash line,” which snakes along the shores of the other claimants and engulfs almost the entire sea. 

Although China has long lacked the military power to enforce these claims, that is rapidly changing. After the 2008 financial crisis, moreover, the West’s economic woes convinced Beijing that the time was ripe for China to flex its muscles.
Since then, China has taken a series of actions to exert control over the South China Sea. 

In 2009, Chinese ships harassed the U.S. ocean surveillance ship Impeccable while it was conducting routine operations in the area. 

In 2011, Chinese patrol vessels cut the cables of a Vietnamese ship exploring for oil and gas. 

In 2012, the Chinese navy and coast guard seized and blockaded Scarborough Shoal, a contested reef in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. 

In 2013, China sent an armed coast guard ship into Indonesian waters to demand the return of a Chinese crew detained by the Indonesian authorities for illegally fishing around Indonesia’s Natuna Islands.
Then, in early 2014, China’s efforts to assert authority over the South China Sea went from a trot to a gallop. 

Chinese ships began massive dredging projects to reclaim land around seven reefs that China already controlled in the Spratly Islands, an archipelago in the sea’s southern half. 

In an 18-month period, China reclaimed nearly 3,000 acres of land. (By contrast, over the preceding several decades, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam had reclaimed a combined total of less than 150 acres.) 

Despite assurances by Xi Jinping in September 2015 that China had “no intention to militarize” the South China Sea, it has been rapidly transforming its artificial islands into advanced military bases, replete with airfields, runways, ports, and antiaircraft and antimissile systems. 

In short order, China has laid the foundation for control of the South China Sea.
Should China succeed in this endeavor, it will be poised to establish a vast zone of influence off its southern coast, leaving other countries in the region with little choice but to bend to its will. 

This would hobble U.S. alliances and partnerships, threaten U.S. access to the region’s markets and resources, and limit the United States’ ability to project military power and political influence in Asia.

Chinese soldiers on Woody Island in the Paracel Archipelago, January 2016.
MISSING: AMERICA
Despite the enormous stakes, the United States has failed to stop China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea. 

For the most part, Washington has believed that as China grew more powerful and engaged more with the world, it would naturally come to accept international rules and norms. 

For over a decade, the lodestar of U.S. policy has been to mold China into what U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick described in 2005 as “a responsible stakeholder”—which would uphold the international system or, at the least, cooperate with established powers to revise the global order. 

U.S. policymakers argued that they could better address most global challenges with Beijing on board.
The United States complemented its plan to integrate China into the prevailing system with efforts to reduce the odds of confrontation. 

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke of the need to “write a new answer to the question of what happens when an established power and a rising power meet.” 

She was referring to the danger of falling into “the Thucydides trap,” conflict between an existing power and an emerging one. 

As the Athenian historian wrote, “It was the rise of Athens, and the fear that this inspired in Sparta, that made war inevitable.” 

Wary of a similar outcome, U.S. policymakers looked for ways to reduce tensions and avoid conflict whenever possible.
This approach has had its successes. 

The Paris climate accord and the Iran nuclear deal were both the direct result of bilateral efforts to solve global problems together. 

Meanwhile, U.S. and Chinese officials interacted frequently, reducing misperceptions and perhaps even warding off major crises that could have led to outright conflict.
Applying this playbook to the South China Sea, the Obama administration put diplomatic pressure on all the claimants to resolve their disputes peacefully in accordance with international law. 

To deter China from using force, the United States augmented its military presence in the region while deepening its alliances and partnerships as part of a larger “rebalance” to Asia. 

And although Beijing rarely saw it this way, the United States took care not to pick sides in the sovereignty disputes, for example, sending its ships to conduct freedom-of-navigation operations in waters claimed by multiple countries, not just by China.
Although this strategy helped the United States avoid major crises, it did not arrest China’s march in the South China Sea. 

In 2015, repeating a view that U.S. officials have conveyed for well over a decade, Barack Obama said in a joint press conference with Xi, “The United States welcomes the rise of a China that is peaceful, stable, prosperous, and a responsible player in global affairs.” 

Yet Washington never made clear what it would do if Beijing failed to live up to that standard—as it often has in recent years. 

The United States’ desire to avoid conflict meant that nearly every time China acted assertively or defied international law in the South China Sea, Washington instinctively took steps to reduce tensions, thereby allowing China to make incremental gains.
This would be a sound strategy if avoiding war were the only challenge posed by China’s rise. 

But it is not. 

U.S. military power and alliances continue to deter China from initiating a major military confrontation with the United States, but they have not constrained China’s creeping sphere of influence. 

Instead, U.S. risk aversion has allowed China to reach the brink of total control over the South China Sea.
U.S. policymakers should recognize that China’s behavior in the sea is based on its perception of how the United States will respond. 

The lack of U.S. resistance has led Beijing to conclude that the United States will not compromise its relationship with China over the South China Sea. 

As a result, the biggest threat to the United States today in Asia is Chinese hegemony, not great-power war. 

U.S. regional leadership is much more likely to go out with a whimper than with a bang.

THE FINAL SPRINT
The good news is that although China has made huge strides toward full control of the South China Sea, it is not there yet. 

To complete its takeover, it will need to reclaim more land, particularly at Scarborough Shoal, in the eastern part of the sea, where it currently lacks a base of operations. 

Then, it will need to develop the ability to deny foreign militaries access to the sea and the airspace above it, by deploying a range of advanced military equipment to its bases—fighter aircraft, antiship cruise missiles, long-range air defenses, and more.
The United States has previously sought to prevent China from taking such steps. 

In recent years, Washington has encouraged Beijing and the other claimants to adopt a policy of “three halts”: no further land reclamation, no new infrastructure, and no militarization of existing facilities. 

But it never explained the consequences of defying these requests. 

On several occasions, the United States, along with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the G-7, and the EU, criticized China’s moves. 

But each time, Beijing largely ignored the condemnation, and other countries did not press the issue for long.
Consider Beijing’s reaction to the landmark decision handed down in July 2016 by an international tribunal constituted under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which ruled that most of China’s claims in the South China Sea were illegal under international law. 

The United States and other countries called on China to abide by the decision but took no steps to enforce it. 

So China simply shrugged it off and continued to militarize the islands and police the waters around them. 

Although the United States has continued to make significant shows of force in the region through military exercises and patrols, it has never made clear to China what these are meant to signal. 

U.S. officials have often considered them “demonstrations of resolve.” 

But they never explained what, exactly, the United States was resolved to do. 

With that question unanswered, the Chinese leadership has had little reason to reverse course.
For the same reason, Donald Trump’s idea of reviving President Ronald Reagan’s strategy of “peace through strength” by beefing up the U.S. military will not hold China back on its own. 

The problem has never been that China does not respect U.S. military might. 

On the contrary, it fears that it would suffer badly in a war with the United States. 

But China also believes that the United States will impose only small costs for misdeeds that stop short of outright aggression. 

No matter how many more warships, fighter jets, and nuclear weapons the United States builds, that calculus will not change.

Chinese structures in the Spratly Islands, April 2017.
DARE TO ACT
In order to alter China’s incentives, the United States should issue a clear warning: that if China continues to construct artificial islands or stations powerful military assets, such as long-range missiles or combat aircraft, on those it has already built, the United States will fundamentally change its policy toward the South China Sea. 

Shedding its position of neutrality, Washington would stop calling for restraint and instead increase its efforts to help the region’s countries defend themselves against Chinese coercion.
In this scenario, the United States would work with the other countries with claims in the sea to reclaim land around their occupied territories and to fortify their bases. 

It would also conduct joint exercises with their militaries and sell them the type of weapons that are known to military specialists as “counterintervention” capabilities, to give them affordable tools to deter Chinese military coercion in and around the area. 

These weapons should include surveillance drones, sea mines, land-based antiship missiles, fast-attack missile boats, and mobile air defenses.
A program like this would make China’s efforts to dominate the sea and the airspace above it considerably riskier for Beijing. 

The United States would not aim to amass enough collective firepower to defeat the People’s Liberation Army, or even to control large swaths of the sea; instead, the goal would be for partners in the region to have the ability to deny China access to important waterways, nearby coastlines, and maritime chokepoints.
Beijing will not compromise as long as it finds itself pushing on an open door.
The United States should turn to allies and partners that already have close security ties in Southeast Asia for help. 

Japan could prove especially valuable, since it already sees China as a threat, works closely with several countries around the South China Sea, and is currently developing its own defenses against Chinese encroachment on its outer islands in the East China Sea. 

Australia, meanwhile, enjoys closer relations with Indonesia and Malaysia than does the United States, as does India with Vietnam—ties that would allow Australia and India to give these countries significantly more military heft than Washington could provide on its own.
Should Beijing refuse to change course, Washington should also negotiate new agreements with countries in the region to allow U.S. and other friendly forces to visit or, in some cases, be permanently stationed on their bases in the South China Sea.

It should consider seeking access to Itu Aba Island (occupied by Taiwan), Thitu Island (occupied by the Philippines), and Spratly Island (occupied by Vietnam)—members of the Spratly Islands archipelago and the first-, second-, and fourth-largest naturally occurring islands in the sea, respectively. 

In addition to making it easier for the United States and its partners to train together, having forces on these islands would create new tripwires for China, increasing the risks associated with military coercion.
This new deterrent would present Beijing with a stark choice: on the one hand, it can further militarize the South China Sea and face off against countries with increasingly advanced bases and militaries, backed by U.S. power, or, on the other hand, it can stop militarizing the islands, abandon plans for further land reclamation, and start working seriously to find a diplomatic solution.

KEEPING THE PEACE
For this strategy to succeed, countries in the region will need to invest in stronger militaries and work more closely with the United States. 

Fortunately, this is already happening. 

Vietnam has purchased an expensive submarine fleet from Russia to deter China; Taiwan recently announced plans to build its own. 

Indonesia has stepped up military exercises near its resource-rich Natuna Islands. 

And despite Rodrigo Duterte’s hostile rhetoric, the Philippines has not canceled plans to eventually allow the United States to station more warships and planes at Philippine ports and airfields along the eastern edge of the South China Sea.
But significant barriers remain. 

Many countries in the region fear that China will retaliate with economic penalties if they partner with the United States. 

In the wake of Trump’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, Southeast Asian countries are increasingly convinced that it is inevitable that China will dominate the economic order in the region, even as many are concerned by that prospect. 

This growing perception will make countries in the region reluctant to enter into new military activities with the United States for fear of Chinese retribution. 

The only way for Washington to prevent this dangerous trend is to offer a viable alternative to economic dependence on China. 

That could mean reviving a version of the TPP or proposing a new and equally ambitious initiative on regional trade and investment. 

The United States cannot beat something with nothing.
Washington should also do more to shape the domestic politics of countries with claims in the South China Sea by publicly disseminating more information about China’s activities in the sea. 

Journalists and defense specialists currently have to rely on sporadic and incomplete commercial satellite images to understand China’s actions. 

The U.S. government should supplement these with regular reports and images of China’s weapons deployments, as well as of Chinese navy and coast guard ships and Chinese state-backed fishing vessels illegally operating in other countries’ exclusive economic zones and territorial waters.
Countries in the region will also be more likely to cooperate with Washington if they can count on the United States to uphold international law. 

To that end, the U.S. Navy should conduct freedom-of-navigation patrols in the South China Sea regularly, not just when Washington wants to make a diplomatic point.
Critics of a more muscular deterrent argue that it would only encourage China to double down on militarization. 

But over the last few years, the United States has proved that by communicating credible consequences, it can change China’s behavior. 

In 2015, when the Obama administration threatened to impose sanctions in response to Chinese state-sponsored theft of U.S. commercial secrets, the Chinese government quickly curbed its illicit cyber-activities. 

And in the waning months of the Obama administration, Beijing finally began to crack down on Chinese firms illegally doing business with North Korea after Washington said that it would otherwise impose financial penalties on Chinese companies that were evading the sanctions against North Korea.
Moreover, greater pushback by the United States will not, as some have asserted, embolden the hawks in the Chinese leadership. 

In fact, those in Beijing advocating more militarization of the South China Sea have done so on the grounds that the United States is irresolute, not that it is belligerent. 

The only real chance for a peaceful solution to the disputes lies in stopping China’s momentum. 

Beijing will not compromise as long as it finds itself pushing on an open door. 

And in the event that China failed to back down from its revisionist path, the United States could live with a more militarized South China Sea, as long as the balance of power did not tilt excessively in China’s favor. 

This is why China would find a U.S. threat to ratchet up military support for other countries with claims in the sea credible. 

Ensuring that countries in the region can contribute to deterring Chinese aggression would provide more stability than relying solely on Chinese goodwill or the U.S. military to keep the peace. Admittedly, with so many armed forces operating in such a tense environment, the countries would need to develop new mechanisms to manage crises and avoid unintended escalation. 

But in recent years, ASEAN has made significant progress on this front by devising new measures to build confidence among the region’s militaries, efforts that the United States should support.
Finally, some critics of a more robust U.S. strategy claim that the South China Sea simply isn’t worth the trouble, since a Chinese sphere of influence would likely prove benign. 

But given Beijing’s increasing willingness to use economic and military pressure for political ends, this bet is growing riskier by the day. 

And even if Chinese control began peacefully, there would be no guarantee that it would stay peaceful. 

The best way to keep the sea conflict free is for the United States to do what has served it so well for over a century: prevent any other power from commanding it.

South China Sea: What's at stake

• China has been fortifying disputed islands in the South China Sea
• New US secretary of state has said China's island-building must stop

By Katie Hunt

Dotted with small islands, reefs and shoals, the South China Sea is a crucial shipping route and home a messy territorial dispute that pits multiple countries against one another.
Tensions in the contest waters have ratcheted up since 2014 as China has turned sandbars into islands, equipping them with airfields, ports and weapons systems and warned US warships and aircraft to stay away from them.
Adding fuel to this heady mix, the Trump administration looks set to take a much more confrontational stance toward Beijing than its predecessor -- setting the stage for a potential showdown.
Here's what's at stake:

Who claims what?
China bases its claims on the "nine-dash line" -- its claimed territorial waters that extend hundreds of miles to the south and east of its island province of Hainan, abut its neighbors' claims and, in some cases, encroach upon them.
The Paracel Islands have been controlled by China since 1974, but they are also claimed by Vietnam.
Tensions flared in 2014 when China installed exploratory oil rigs in the vicinity.
The situation is more complicated in the Spratlys.
The archipelago consists of 100 smalls islands and reefs of which 45 are occupied by China, Malaysia, Vietnam or the Philippines.
All of the islands are claimed by China and Vietnam, while some of them (or nearby waters) are claimed by the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.

What's China been building?
In early 2014, China quietly began massive dredging operations centering on the seven reefs it controls in the Spratly Islands -- Fiery Cross Reef, Subi Reef, Mischief Reef, Cuarteron Reef, Gaven Reef and Hughes Reef.
According to the US, China has reclaimed more than 3,000 acres since the beginning of 2014.
On his 2015 trip to Washington, Xi Jinping said China wouldn't militarize the islands, but a December report from the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) said China had installed comprehensive weapons systems on seven reefs that include anti-aircraft guns.
Some have called the islands China's "unsinkable aircraft carriers."
Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines have also reclaimed land in the South China Sea, but their land grab -- the US says approximately 100 acres over 45 years -- is dwarfed by China's massive, recent buildup.

What's the US view?
It could be changing.
The US has traditionally taken no position on the territorial disputes in the South China Sea but has repeatedly asserted its right to freedom of navigation in the disputed waters, with the US military flying and sailing its assets close to the islands China controls.
Tillerson and Trump have not minced their words on the issue, suggesting that the State Department could take a more muscular approach.
"Building islands and then putting military assets on those islands is akin to Russia's taking of Crimea. Its taking of territory that others lay claim to," Tillerson said in his confirmation hearing.
"We're going to have to send China a clear signal that first, the island-building stops, and second, your access to those islands also not going to be allowed."
Blocking Chinese naval vessels from accessing South China Sea reefs would almost certainly trigger a US-China clash, says Ashley Townshend, a research fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.

What could China do?
As China stretches its muscles as a growing superpower, the South China Sea, rich in oil and gas reserves, has become a testing ground for whether the country will rise as part of the existing international order or outside it.
China says both the Paracels and the Spratlys are an "integral part" of its territory, offering up maps that date back to the early 20th century.
It has repeatedly defended its right to build both civil and defensive facilities on the islands it controls.
In December, a Chinese warship unlawfully seized an underwater drone from a US oceanographic vessel.
One new strategy could be to declare an air defense zone in the South China Sea, which would require all aircraft to file flight plans even if they don't enter Chinese airspace.
Beijing has also ignored a landmark ruling last year by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which said there was no legal basis for China's maritime claims.
Even though they now have international law on their side, other claimants have done little to challenge Beijing.
The Philippines, which originally brought the case, has pivoted towards Beijing under Rodrigo Duterte.
Beijing's response to Tillerson and Trump's comments to date has been fairly muted, but some analysts think Beijing could soon test the new US commander in chief.

Chinese State Hooliganism

Maritime Law Violator China Wants Other Countries To Sail Above Sea In Its Waters
By Terrell Jermaine Starr
In this Aug. 28, 2014 photo, fishermen look at a Chinese nuclear submarine sails past Yalong Bay in Sanya, south China’s Hainan Province. Several Asian nations are arming up, their wary eyes fixed squarely on one country: a resurgent China that’s boldly asserting its territorial claims all along the East Asian coast. The scramble to spend more defense dollars comes amid spats with China over contested reefs and waters. Other Asian countries such as India and South Korea are quickly modernizing their forces, although their disputes with China have stayed largely at the diplomatic level.

China is mulling a new law that would require submersive naval vehicles to travel above surface and report its movements to authorities and report their movements to government authorities. 

In other words, it’s asking submarines not to act like submarines, which is hilarious coming from a habitual maritime law violator like China.
Here’s an excerpt from the draft of the proposed rule changes, via Reuters: Foreign submersibles, passing though (sic) territorial waters of the People’s Republic of China, should travel on the surface, raise their national flag, and report to Chinese maritime management administrations,” the news service cited the draft revision as saying, without giving details.
The draft makes no mention of the South China Sea, but that it is almost certainly the reason why Beijing is seeking these changes. 

Washington and Beijing spared briefly in December when the Chinese Navy seized a U.S. Navy drone that was actually nothing more than an ocean glider, as Foxtrot Alpha reported at the time; China eventually gave it back.
The comical part about this rule revision is that China is hardly a nation that respects maritime law. We have reported extensively on China’s artificial island buildup in the disputed territory that the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, and Japan have also laid claim to. 

These smaller nations have also complained for decades that China has used its military might to bully its influence over the sea.
Last summer, an international tribunal at the Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines’ territory dispute against China and rejected Beijing’s claim of "historical" rights to the sea, ruling its actions have caused environmental damage, and endangered the Philippine’s ships and fishing and oil exploration.
Here is a breakdown of that ruling, per the New York Times:
The main issue before the panel was the legality of China’s claim to waters within a “nine-dash line” that appears on official Chinese maps and encircles as much as 90 percent of the South China Sea, an area the size of Mexico. 

The Philippines had asked the tribunal to find the claim to be in violation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which both China and the Philippines have ratified.
In its decision, the tribunal said any historic rights to the sea that China had previously enjoyed “were extinguished” by the treaty, which lays out rules for drawing zones of control over the world’s oceans based on distances to coastlines. 

The panel added that while China had used islands in the sea in the past, it had never exercised exclusive authority over the waters.
The panel also concluded that several disputed rocks and reefs in the South China Sea were too small for China to claim control of economic activities in the waters around them. 

As a result, it found, China was engaged in unlawful behavior in Philippine waters, including activities that had aggravated the dispute.
The tribunal cited China’s construction of a large artificial island on an atoll known as Mischief Reef. China has built a military airstrip, naval berths and sports fields on the island, but the tribunal ruled that it was in Philippine waters.
China vowed to ignore it and they clearly have been.
Of course, it is one thing if China is making its maritime revisions to counter the America’s naval influence in the area, which is totally reasonable. 

China is the world power in that area; they’re within their rights to not have the U.S. encroach on their territory. 

But when it comes to smaller nations like the Philippines, or Vietnam? 

Come on.
You would think Beijing would at least honor its neighbors’ maritime borders by not building islands inside of them before hypocritically asking that other nations respect its boundaries. 

But that seems like it may be asking the Chinese a tad bit too much.

Chinese Aggressions

What Makes China's Fake Islands so Dangerous

By Kyle Mizokami

In recent years the People’s Republic of China has laid claim to ninety percent of the South China Sea, buttressing this claim by creating artificial islands with dredging equipment. 

These claims run roughshod over Beijing’s neighbors, which have competing claims. 

The discovery in 2016 that China had militarized these artificial islands was not exactly surprising, but just how useful are these islands in defense of China’s strategic goals?
China’s campaign to militarize the South China Sea began in 2009, when it submitted a new map to the United Nations showing the now-infamous “Nine-Dash Line”—a series of boundary dashes over the South China Sea that it claimed demarcated Chinese territory. 

Since then, China has expanded at least seven reefs and islets in the sea with sand dredged from the ocean floor, including Subi Reef, Mischief Reef, Johnson Reef, Hughes Reef, Gaven Reef, Fiery Cross Reef and Cuarteron Reef.
According to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative [3], Beijing has created more 3,200 acres of new land. 

China initially claimed its “territory” was being developed for peaceful purposes, from aid to mariners to scientific research, yet many of the islands now feature military-length airfields, antiaircraft and antimissile guns [4], and naval guns. 

Cuarteron Reef now has a new High Frequency early-warning radar facility [5] for detecting incoming aircraft, a development difficult to square with a peaceful mission. 

Farther north, but still in disputed territory, China has installed HQ-9 long-range surface-to-air missiles on Woody Island.
On the face of it, China’s territorial grab and apparent turn away from former leader Hu Jintao’s concept of “peaceful rise” is hard to understand. 

It has alienated China’s neighbors and drawn in other powers, including the United States, India and Japan. 

One theory is that the country’s leadership may have calculated that securing a bastion for China’s sea-based nuclear deterrent may be worth the diplomatic fallout it created.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s ballistic-missile submarines operated from two protective “bastions,” on the Atlantic side in the Barents Sea, and on the Pacific side in the Sea of Okhotsk. There, Soviet missile submarines could be covered by land-based air and naval forces to them from enemy aircraft, ships and attack submarines.
China’s nuclear “dyad” of land- and sea-based missiles relies in part on four Jin-class ballistic-missile submarines. 

China believes American ballistic-missile defenses threaten to undermine the credibility of its modest nuclear deterrent. 

In the Chinese view, this makes a protective bastion even more important.
The country’s geography leaves it with basically one ocean, the Pacific, for its own bastion. 

The Northern Pacific, with the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet and the nearly fifty destroyers of the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force, is a no-go. 

The South China Sea, on the other hand, is bordered by a number of relatively weak states that could not pose a threat to China’s nuclear-missile submarines.
Sailing ships and flying aircraft through the South China Sea is one thing, but a permanent presence on the ground solidifies China’s hold on the region. 

It also allows, as the case of the HF radar on Cuarteron Reef demonstrates, the installation of a permanent sensor network.
The ports and airfields under construction will almost certainly grow to defend the region, with help from the mainland, from a complex antisubmarine warfare campaign designed to go after China’s seagoing nuclear weapons.
More surface-to-air missile batteries such as the HQ-9 and land-based antiship missiles are likely, if only to protect other military installations such as airfields and radar systems. 

Recent freedom-of-navigation operations by the United States and its allies will be used as a justification for heavier defenses. 

To paraphrase an old saying about bureaucracy, the military presence is growing to meet the needs of the growing military presence.
This points to the Achilles’ heel of China’s island garrisons: in the long run, they are impossible to defend. 

Unlike ships, the islands are fixed in place and will never move. 

Small islands cannot stockpile enough troops, surface-to-air missiles, food, water and electrical capacity to remain viable defensive outposts. 

As Iwo Jima and Okinawa demonstrated, there is no viable defense in depth for islands even miles across.
In any military confrontation with the United States, China’s at-sea outposts would almost certainly be quickly rolled back by waves of airstrikes and cruise missile attacks, devastating People’s Liberation Army facilities and stranding the personnel manning them. 

How China would respond to such an attack on its nuclear bastion is an open question that should be given serious consideration, as victory in the South China Sea may not herald the end of a campaign but a dangerous new turn in the war itself.
China’s military outposts in the South China Sea are a breach of Beijing’s agreement to not militarize the sea. 

Although the region itself has great strategic value, they are a poor defensive solution, prone to rapid destruction in wartime. 

China would be wise to consider the islands only as a temporary solution, until the People’s Liberation Army Navy has enough hulls to maintain a permanent presence in the region.

Chinese aggressions in South China Sea: What's at stake

• China has been fortifying disputed islands in the South China Sea
• Secretary of state Rex Tillerson has said China's island-building must stop

By Katie Hunt

Secretary of state Rex Tillerson: "China's island-building must stop"

Rex Tillerson, who was sworn in as US Secretary of State Wednesday, takes responsibility for US policy in one of the world's biggest flashpoints: the South China Sea.
President Donald Trump says the former Exxon CEO will bring "a clear-eyed focus to foreign affairs."
He'll need it.
The contested waters are a crucial shipping route and home a messy territorial dispute that pits multiple countries against each other.
Tensions have ratcheted up since 2014 as China has turned sandbars into islands, equipping them with airfields, ports and weapons systems and warned US warships and aircraft to stay away from them.
The Trump administration looks set to take a much more confrontational stance toward China than its predecessor.
During his confirmation hearing, Tillerson said China should be blocked from accessing the artificial islands it's built, setting the stage for a potential showdown.
Here's what's at stake:

Who claims what?

China bases its claims on the fictitious "nine-dash line" -- its claimed territorial waters that extend hundreds of miles to the south and east of its island province of Hainan, abut its neighbors' claims and, in some cases, encroach upon them.
The Paracel Islands (Hoàng Sa) have been controlled by China since 1974, but they are also claimed by Vietnam.

Tensions flared in 2014 when China installed exploratory oil rigs in the vicinity.

The situation is more complicated in the Spratlys (Truong Sa).
The archipelago consists of 100 smalls islands and reefs of which 45 are occupied by China, Malaysia, Vietnam or the Philippines.
All of the islands are claimed by China and Vietnam, while some of them (or nearby waters) are claimed by the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.

What's China been building?
In early 2014, China quietly began massive dredging operations centering on the six reefs it controls in the Spratly Islands -- Fiery Cross Reef, Subi Reef, Mischief Reef, Cuarteron Reef, Gaven Reef and Hughes Reef.
According to the US, China has reclaimed more than 3,000 acres since the beginning of 2014.
On his 2015 trip to Washington, Xi Jinping said China wouldn't militarize the islands, but a December report from the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) said China had installed comprehensive weapons systems on seven reefs that include anti-aircraft guns.
Some have called the islands China's "unsinkable aircraft carriers."
Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines have also reclaimed land in the South China Sea, but their land grab -- the US says approximately 100 acres over 45 years -- is dwarfed by China's massive, recent buildup.

This composite image shows Chinese weapon installation on Gaven reef.
What's the US view?
It could be changing.
The US has traditionally taken no position on the territorial disputes in the South China Sea but has repeatedly asserted its right to freedom of navigation in the disputed waters, with the US military flying and sailing its assets close to the islands China controls.
Tillerson and Trump have not minced their words on the issue, suggesting that the State Department could take a more muscular approach.
"Building islands and then putting military assets on those islands is akin to Russia's taking of Crimea. Its taking of territory that others lay claim to," Tillerson said in his confirmation hearing.
"We're going to have to send China a clear signal that first, the island-building stops, and second, your access to those islands also not going to be allowed."
Blocking Chinese naval vessels from accessing South China Sea reefs would almost certainly trigger a US-China clash, says Ashley Townshend, a research fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.

What could China do?
As China stretches its muscles as a growing superpower, the South China Sea, rich in oil and gas reserves, has become a testing ground for whether the country will rise as part of the existing international order or outside it.
China says both the Paracels and the Spratlys are an "integral part" of its territory, offering up maps that date back to 1947.
It has repeatedly defended its right to build both civil and defensive facilities on the islands it controls. 

In December, a Chinese warship unlawfully seized an underwater drone from a US oceanographic vessel.
One new strategy could be to declare an air defense zone in the South China Sea, which would require all aircraft to file flight plans even if they don't enter Chinese airspace.
Beijing has also ignored a landmark ruling last year by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which said there was no legal basis for China's maritime claims.
Even though they now have international law on their side, other claimants have done little to challenge Beijing. 

The Philippines, which originally brought the case, has pivoted towards Beijing under President Rodrigo Duterte.
Beijing's response to Tillerson and Trump's comments to date has been fairly muted, but some analysts think Beijing could soon test the new US commander in chief.

US on edge over new powder keg in the South China Sea

By Clay Dillow

A China-Russia naval joint drill off south China's Guangdong Province

 
China and the Philippines could begin exploiting long-untapped energy reserves in the South China Sea, according to reports coming out of this week's meeting between Rodrigo Duterte and high-ranking Chinese officials — including a Thursday sit-down with Xi Jinping — in Beijing. 

How soon that may happen remains unclear, however, as Duterte cautioned reporters that he has not been empowered by his Congress to finalize any energy exploration deal with his Chinese counterparts.
Earlier reports by Philippine newspaper the "Inquirer" suggested that Beijing and Duterte were set to enter into an agreement to explore for energy sources in a part of the South China Sea close to the Philippine coastline. 

China has long sought to exploit what it believes could be more than 100 billion barrels of oil and hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of natural gas lurking beneath the South China Sea. 

However, a litany of overlapping territorial claims in the region by the more than half-dozen nations rimming the South China Sea has rendered broad energy development there a nonstarter.
The fact that potential joint development of offshore energy deposits in the region is even being discussed underscores the tectonic shift in regional foreign policy undertaken by Duterte since winning the Filipino presidency in May.
The Philippines, long a U.S. ally in the region, has moved away from its bilateral ties and military entanglements with the United States and instead embraced a budding new friendship with China, long a regional rival. 

A joint energy-exploration deal between China and the Philippines could serve as a way to dodge thorny questions of national sovereignty and begin extracting energy wealth from the South China Sea, potentially setting a precedent for future energy development deals.
The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the South China Sea region holds reserves of some 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. 

China National Offshore Oil — the state-owned energy company responsible for offshore energy exploitation — provides a much rosier estimate, predicting the region holds some 125 billion barrels of oil and 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
Neither estimate is insignificant for a region woefully dependent on imported oil and natural gas. China is the second-largest consumer of oil after the United States and critically dependent on imports to feed its energy demands. 

Japan and South Korea are likewise dependent on foreign oil to keep their economies humming. Booming growth in Southeast Asia has pushed the region to emerge as a net oil and gas importer as well.
The Philippines, too, faces a looming energy shortage. 

The nation's main island of Luzon depends heavily on the Malampaya gas field, an energy deposit estimated to hold perhaps another decade's worth of energy before running out. 

Given that it can take half a decade or longer to bring a major new energy project online, the clock is ticking for the Philippines, which could experience rolling brownouts on Luzon — home to the capital, Manila — if new energy sources are not tapped.
One potential source is the Reed Bank, an underwater mountain off the Philippine coast believed to hold significant oil and gas deposits. 

The Reed Bank falls exclusively in the Philippines' exclusive economic zone, which according to the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS), places it firmly in the Philippines' possession. China, however, doesn't see it that way.
Developing the South China Sea's energy reserves has proved problematic for decades, in part due to China's sweeping territorial claims. China's so-called "nine-dash line" encompasses much of the strategic waterway, conflicting with the various territorial claims of other Asian states, including the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei.

Reed Bank, like many other contested areas, falls within the nine-dash line. 

Under Duterte's predecessor, the Philippines challenged China's claim at the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague, which ruled in July under UNCLOS that China's claims are invalid. 

China has refused to accept the decision.
These types of conflicting claims and the political risk associated with them have made exploration and development of even nearby uncontested areas difficult, as energy companies and foreign investors seek to steer clear of international entanglements. 

"I have not seen anyone go into these developments in any meaningful, substantial way," said Clara Gillispie, senior director of trade, economic, and energy affairs at the National Bureau of Asian Research. 

"There's been a number of starts and stops. But in terms of breakthroughs in collaborative, joint efforts or in terms of pure Chinese development, I think we're still talking about what could happen rather than what is happening."

Territorial disputes
Joint development between the Philippines and China could reverse the trend toward disputes and conflict in at least one corner of the South China Sea, though it will likely take much more than a deal between the two states to open the wider South China Sea for exploitation.
"I think the biggest factor impacting exploration activities, or lack thereof, in the South China Sea are the low oil prices that we've seen for the past two years now — that's been big disincentive to do exploration activity there," said Erica Downs, a senior analyst at the Eurasia Group. 

"Plus, nobody knows exactly how much energy is there."
At press time, the Brent crude-oil price was $51.37 a barrel, way off its historic peak of $139.05 a barrel in June 2008.
To lure foreign energy companies and their deepwater drilling technology into the region, things will have to change economically, said Michal Meidan, a China analyst at the London offices of consultancy Energy Aspects. 

"If you had proven reserves and you knew this was a very attractive resource, the story might be different," she said. 

"But prices would need to go up considerably, which is not likely — we'd need to go back to at least a 100-dollar-a-barrel kind of world." 

Prices currently hover around half that.
Circumstances would have to adjust on the political stage as well. 

China has floated various other attempts at joint development deals previously, "but those kinds of agreements have been very tenuous in the past," Meidan said, adding that the region would require some kind of internationally agreed-upon code of conduct for joint exploration, something that seems unrealistic at the present time.

A satellite image of Subi Reef, an artificial island being developed by China in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, on September 4, 2016.

Disagreements over who owns what in the South China Sea have long stoked tensions there, exacerbated in recent years by China's building of artificial islands in areas like the contested Spratly Islands, a cluster of 14 islands and more than 100 submerged reefs (and claimed in part by Malaysia, China, the Philippines and Vietnam).
These islands, complete with military installations and runways that can accommodate combat aircraft, lie far from China's continental shores. 

Nonetheless, China has claimed in many cases that these manufactured islands confer rights to 12 nautical miles of territorial waters surrounding each island and in some cases exclusive economic zones extending up to 200 nautical miles away from these disputed island outposts.
If honored, these claims would give China de facto territorial control over much of the South China Sea. 

A warming relationship between China and the Philippines — and particularly a successful joint-development deal allowing both countries to begin extraction of the South China Seas energy wealth — could prove a first step in changing the entrenched political reality in the region. 

It might also help China validate its territorial claims elsewhere in the region.

$5 trillion in global trade
The territorial disputes over the South China Sea are about much more than energy resources buried in the seabed. 

More than $5 trillion in global trade passes through the strategic waterway annually, including the vast majority of the imported oil on which Japan, China and South Korea rely. 

China sees control of the waterway as a key security concern — not just in terms of national defense but also in terms of energy and economic security.
The linking of various nations' energy security with political tensions in the South China Sea has driven an uptick in military activity in the strategic waterway. 

Over the past several weeks, the United States (along with the Philippines), Indonesia and a consortium of nations, including Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand and the United Kingdom all conducted separate military exercises in or around the South China Sea. China and Russia also conducted joint naval drills in the region. 

The Indonesian Air Force's two-week exercise was that nation's largest to date in the South China Sea. 

Meanwhile, defense budgets have experienced a pronounced uptick across the region as nations bordering the sea look to bolster and modernize their armed forces with new patrol boats, submarines and aircraft.
The uptick in military spending doesn't necessarily spell looming confrontation or an outright arms race, analysts say. 

But the increased tempo of military activity by a growing number of actors heightens the risk of a mishap or misunderstanding between militaries that could quickly escalate.
"There's still a low likelihood of a conflict because that's bad for everyone," said Meidan, the China analyst. 

"But the chance of an accident are greater than they have been in the past."