In the South China Sea, two superpowers flex their muscles
MARK MACKINNON
BEIJING— From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Last updated Monday, May. 28, 2012 10:33PM EDT
The Scarborough Shoal, a triangle of rocks and reefs in the South China Sea, is so small that much of it disappears underwater at high tide. And yet for the past seven weeks it has been the epicentre of a growing naval crisis, with China and the Philippines each dispatching ships and warning the other that it won’t back away from the minuscule atoll.
Some say the South China Sea is a maritime version of Central Asia during the “Great Game,” the 19th-century era in which empires jousted using proxy armies without ever coming into direct conflict. In Central Asia, it was Russia and Britain who duelled from the shadows. In today’s South China Sea, it’s the world’s latest superpowers, China and the U.S., competing over waters that produce a tenth of the world’s fish, transit a third of the world’s shipping and – if higher-end estimates are accurate – might hold up to 100 billion barrels of oil and six trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
At immediate issue is whose boats should be allowed to fish the lagoon, which is rich in sharks, giant clams and other species. But behind that argument lies a complex web of competing interests, one that sees a rising China trying to enforce an ancient claim to the entire 3.5-million square kilometres of the South China Sea and leaving smaller rivals to ask the United States for support and protection.
The map of the South China Sea is a jumble of overlapping claims; six countries in all claim a part of it.
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