some of the strategic problems with China, again, China's strong trade
relationship gives China a lot of leverage over these states.
So if you look here at Chinese imports of goods from
several key countries, US, EU, ASEAN and Japan.
You can see that, in fact, China imports more goods from the ten
countries of ASEAN than it does from any of the other countries.
So that's a very strong, that means those countries can export to China, so
that's a lot of money for them, and a lot of business that they can do.
As I said, it gives China a lot of leverage.
But the big problem and it's a territorial problem that's really
complicated and has the potential, people write about this,
a lot of people in the world pay a lot of attention to this.
It has the potential perhaps to trigger a war between the United States and
China, and this is the South China Sea.
All right, the key players in this are the Philippines, Vietnam, and China, right?
Now China claims this nine dotted line.
It's actually the Nationalist government, way back, maybe 1945,
put forward this view that everything within this
nine dotted line Is actually Chinese territory.
All right, now the reason everybody's so
worked up about this is because it's believed that there are oil and gas.
And Vietnam, over here, has been able to find some oil fields, and
some gas fields, and up here as well.
Now, so here where there really are the competing claims is the Philippines here.
China has come down and has built up islands in these areas here
that have landing strips that they have put soldiers on that can have naval bases.
And China says that the reason that they're doing it is to manage
the crisis if there's difficulties for their ships that go through there.
Another area is over here where
Vietnam claims that this is its territorial waters, or
at least its exclusive economic zone where it should have priority for development.
But China claims that these areas like the Crestone Exploration here is within
Chinese territory and therefore China should be able to develop those areas.
So what does ASEAN do?
Well, ASEAN decides to try and manage this crisis using international norms.
And the norm that they put forward was called the Code of Conduct, and
this they put forward in 1995.
And it was reinforced in 2002, and up until recently,
everybody seemed to abide by it.
Under that Code of Conduct, the Parties undertake to resolve territorial and
jurisdictional disputes peacefully, without the the threat or
use of force, through direct negotiations by the sovereign states.
And then quote,
in accordance with universally recognized principles of international law,
including the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which we call, UNCLOS.
And that they should use self restraint and avoid escalating disputes and
not inhabit uninhabited islands, reefs, shoals, cays,
whatever and other features there.
Now, that's just not happening anymore.
In about 2013, maybe, the Philippines ran a ship onto one of these areas,
onto one of these islands that was disputed, and put some soldiers on there.
Vietnam has also gone into areas, set up some, built up some islands.
But it's really China that, in response to Vietnam and
The Philippines has really come in massively.
And built up very, very large, well let's just say, large islands
in these areas where they can send in their own ships and airplanes.
Now, so the Philippines decided to use law.
Though they triggered the problem in some ways, and they went to the UNCLOS and
said hey, we've got a case against China.
And UNCLOS ruled that, in fact, first, what it's ruled so
far, is that they have they authority to judge the case, but
China has refused to recognize that authority.
Now according to UNCLOS, the islands that China has built,
according to the law, if you look at the law of this sea,
it is quite clear that the islands that China has built are not legal.
David ZweigChair Professor of the Division of Social Science and Director of Center on China’s Transnational Relations
