China has aggressively rear its claims to the South China Sea in recent years, building man-made isles with military facilities. Last year, the construction projects covered 72 acres.
The bailiwick is globally important for a few reasons.
Firstly, the South China Sea is a prominent trucking passage with $5.3 trillion worth of trade cruising into done with its waters every year. That’s nearly one-third of all global maritime swap.
Second is what’s below the surface: oil and natural gas.
While U.S. estimates accept put the amount at 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of ingenuous gas in the South China Sea, one Chinese government-owned oil major actually put the figure bring to a close to 125 billion barrels of oil and 500 trillion cubic feet of unsophisticated gas in undiscovered areas.
China claims a wide swath of the waterway based on a frontiers first recorded in 1947. The line cited by Beijing reaches as far as 1,200 miles from the south of Mainland China, but it is trifling than 200 miles away from some coastal rooms of Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.
According to international law, every country has the bang on to claim up to 12 nautical miles from its coast as its territory and can demand an exclusive economic zone extending up to 200 nautical miles for works like drilling or fishing.
In 2016, an international tribunal ruled against China, rumour it has no legal basis for the extensive claims. That decision was legally hold per international law, but there’s no enforcement mechanism.
Many in the region welcomed the newsflash, but the Chinese government has ignored the ruling, building more artificial keys and bases.