Why global tensions are rising in the South China Sea amid recent clashes

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• John Yang:

  Nearly a quarter of the world's maritime trade goes through the South China Sea, which sits between China and a number of Asian nations, including Vietnam, the Philippines, and Taiwan. In addition, experts say it has large reserves of oil and gas.

  In recent years, it's also been the site of clashes between Chinese Coast Guard ships and Philippine vessels as Beijing tries to exert its claim to virtually the entire sea in defiance of international law.

• John Yang:

  A confrontation this past week on the disputed South China Sea.

• Man:

  Your unsafe maneuvers are in clear violation of your obligations for safe conduct.

• John Yang:

  A Chinese coast guard ship sideswiped a Filipino government fishing vessel and fired its water cannons. Philippine officials said its vessel was on a routine research mission, collecting sand. But three small, uninhabited sandbars in the area are the reasons for heightened tensions. Both China and the Philippines claim sovereignty over them.

  What's at stake is less about the sandbars themselves than about the body of water surrounding them. The South China Sea.

  Since 1952, Beijing has claimed virtually the entire sea, everything inside what's referred to as the nine dash line. In 2023, China added a tenth dash off Taiwan. The Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam all reject China's claims.

  That was the backdrop earlier this month for the annual joint U.S,-Philippines military exercises known as Balikatan, Tagalog, for shoulder to shoulder. 9,000 U.S. troops joined 5,000 Filipino military personnel for live fire drills.

  John Lehane, 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment: This type of training is absolutely invaluable to us. To be able to get out here to operate with our treaty ally and to be able to set up a defense like this and integrate all of our systems is just remarkable, and we're really grateful for the opportunity.

• John Yang:

  Some of the drills could have been sending Beijing a message. For instance, the Philippine province of Zambales along the South China Sea coast was the site of an exercise using a U.S. missile defense system to target drones acting as hostile aircraft.

  A 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States and the Philippines commits each nation to defend the other in case of attack.

  Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said the U.S. commitment to the Philippines is ironclad. Andrew Chubb is a fellow at the Asia Society and a Senior Lecturer at Lancaster University in England.

  Mr. Chubb, help us put what we just saw in context. The clash we saw between the Chinese Coast Guard ship and the Philippine vessel that didn't just start this year.

• Andrew Chubb, Fellow, Asia Society:

  Yeah, that's right, John. Those particular reefs and sandbars that were referred to in the report have been the subject of sporadic incidents over the last six or seven years. But there's been a noticeable uptick in the activities and the confrontations.

  This year in particular, we saw last month China really going public with a sovereignty assertion with the unfurling of a flag and sort of high profile news reports laying claim to this particular sandbar Sandy Key. And the significance of that is that it lies just a couple of miles from the Philippines main military outpost in the area, which it's been doing some pretty significant upgrades at over the last few years.

  It's also very near to China as — one of China's major artificially built island outposts. So it's a sort of scene where there's a likelihood of further confrontations if this trend continues.

• John Yang:

  And why is the South China Sea so important to China?

• Andrew Chubb:

  Well, I think for from China's perspective, the dispute is multi-layered. It started as a dispute about islands, particularly the Spratly Islands and the Paracel Islands, but also Scarborough Shoal, which has been a particular flashpoint between the Philippines and China over the last decade or so through the 70s through to the 90s.

  You had the initiation of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea and it's coming into effect in 1994. And that set some very clear rules about. They were actually referred to by the Filipino captain just now in the clip. Some very clear rules about what you can and can't do in which waters with some very specific, you know, numbers put on the kind of distance that you can claim off of a particular type of feature, et cetera, et cetera.

  And China was there at the inception for that particular convention, which the U.S. has never signed, but which now China is kind of flagrantly struggling against those rules that was really demonstrated, came to a head in 2016 arbitration that the Philippines brought.

  And then layered on top of all of that, you've got now the U.S.-China geostrategic competition playing out also in the South China Sea and other maritime littoral areas in East Asia, such as the East China Sea.

• John Yang:

  A lot of Americans, when they think about this region, they think about China's designs on Taiwan. But could the South China Sea be just as volatile or even more volatile than that?

• Andrew Chubb:

  The short answer is yes, it could. The big difference with the South China Sea and Taiwan is the number of players in the area. So you've got the Philippines, Vietnam, you've also got Malaysia. Brunei makes a claim there. Taiwan occupies the biggest naturally formed island. So you've got many different players operating in the area. And that's before you bring in the sort of extra regional powers such as the United States.

  Also, the UK has been there recently. Australia, Japan, South Korea has done some patrols there and other European navies as well have been talking about, if not actually stepping up to fill some of the strategic gap.

• John Yang:

  Andrew Chubb, thank you very much.

• Andrew Chubb:

  My pleasure.