Spratly Islands dispute
[8] In 2012–2013, the United States Energy Information Administration estimates very little oil and natural gas in contested areas such as the Paracels and the Spratly Islands.
Most of the proved or probable 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the South China Sea exist near undisputed shorelines.
[9][10] In 2010, the Western Central Pacific (excluding the northernmost reaches of the South China Sea closest to the PRC coast) accounted for 14% of the total world catch at 11.7 million tonnes.
Chinese (Qin dynasty) fishermen may have fished around the islands since 200 BC,[18] although activity dates to before recorded history, thousands of years ago along with neighboring Nusantaria (present-day Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Taiwan, and East Timor).
[36][37][38] China and Taiwan rejected a 2016 UNCLOS arbitration that found no support for their historical titles to the maritime areas and resources within the nine-dash line, without making determinations regarding the sovereignty of the terrestrial islands there.
The American advisors, however, discouraged them due to the fact that the Spanish-American Treaty of 1898 clearly stipulated that the western limit of the Philippine islands did not include the Spratlys.
In 1956, a private Filipino citizen, Tomás Cloma, unilaterally declared a state on 53 features in the South China Sea, calling it "Freedomland".
Upon ratification it declared: The National Assembly reiterates Viet Nam's sovereignty over the Hoang Sa and Truong Sa archipelagoes and its position to settle those disputes relating to territorial claims as well as other disputes in the Eastern Sea through peaceful negotiations in the spirit of equality, mutual respect and understanding, and with due respect of international law, particularly the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and of the sovereign rights and jurisdiction of the coastal States over their respective continental shelves and exclusive economic zones[48]Vietnam's response to China's claim is that Chinese records on Qianli Changsha and Wanli Shitang are records about non-Chinese territories.
In Đại Nam nhất thống toàn đồ (大南ー統全圖), an atlas of Vietnam completed in 1838, Trường Sa was shown as Vietnamese territory.
[citation needed] At the San Francisco Conference on the peace treaty with Japan, the Soviet Union proposed that the Paracels and Spratlys be recognised as belonging to China.
On 7 July 1951, Tran Van Huu, head of the Bảo Đại Government's (State of Vietnam) delegation to the conference declared that the Paracels and Spratlys were part of Vietnamese territory.
[59] At the 12th National Assembly (2007–2011) Election held early in Trường Sa, the people and soldiers also voted for their local district government for the first time.
[citation needed] In July 2012 the National Assembly of Vietnam passed a law demarcating Vietnamese sea borders to include the Spratly and Paracel Islands.
[62] The Vietnamese government fears that using the evidence of Champa's historical connection to the disputed islands in the South China Sea would expose the human rights violations and killings of ethnic minorities in Vietnam such as in the 2001 and 2004 uprisings, and lead to the issue of Cham autonomy being brought to attention.
[64] The Vietnamese newspaper Thanh Niên News claims China has intentionally misrepresented the letter, which contains no direct reference to either island chain.
On 4 September 1958, with the seventh fleet of the US Navy patrolling the Taiwan Strait, China announced its decision to extend the breadth of its territorial waters to 12 nautical miles.
Though the UN conference was considered a success, it left the exact breadth of each nation's territorial waters somewhat unresolved; the US, for instance, said it should extend just three nautical miles.
Chính phủ nước Việt Nam Dân chủ Cộng hòa ghi nhận và tán thành bản tuyên bố, ngày 4 tháng 9 năm 1958, của Chính phủ nước Cộng hoà Nhân dân Trung Hoa, quyết định về hải phận của Trung Quốc.
Chúng tôi xin kính gửi Đồng chí Tổng lý lời chào rất trân trọng.
It was ruled by the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ) that the Norwegian proclamation on July 10, 1931, annexing Eastern Greenland was the "critical date" in that specific case.
Its obvious purpose is to prevent the independence and stability of new States being endangered by fratricidal struggles provoked by the challenging of frontiers following the withdrawal of the administering power…Its purpose, at the time of the achievement of independence by the former Spanish colonies of America, was to scotch any designs which non-American colonizing powers might have on regions which had been assigned by the former metropolitan State to one division or another, but which were still uninhabited or unexplored.
[74][76] On 23 May 2011, Former Philippine President Benigno Aquino III warned the visiting Chinese defense minister Liang Guanglie of a possible arms race in the region if tensions worsened over disputes in the South China Sea.
The parties explicitly undertook in this declaration, "to resolve their territorial and jurisdictional disputes by peaceful means, without resorting to the threat or use of force, through friendly consultations and negotiations by sovereign states directly concerned".
[99][100] In 1734, the Carta Hydrographica y Chorographica de las Islas Filipinas (commonly referred as the Velarde map) was published by the Spanish colonial government.
[104][105][106] In the 19th century, Europeans found that Chinese fishermen from Hainan annually sojourned on the Spratly islands for part of the year specifically for trade, which was also common for other ethnic groups in the area such as the Cham of Vietnam and the people of Palawan, Sulu, and Luzon in the Philippines.
In 1877, the British laid a claim to two Spratly islands and dispatched an expedition group there after learning of the presence of guano from locals in British-colonized Borneo.
The treaty lines drawn were inaccurate, leading to the Spanish to retain sovereign control over the Spratly Islands, Scarborough Shoal, and parts of Tawi-Tawi.
[failed verification][108][109] According to the South China Sea Arbitration award, as of 1875 and until [early] 1933, no other state had claimed the Spratlys aside from the territory of the Philippines.
[110][failed verification] In 1930 a French vessel formally laid claims to an area of the Spratlys without naming any specific island in order to avoid any overlap with the Philippine territory as defined in 1898.
[135] Malaysian authorities displayed no concern over China conducting a military exercise at James Shoal in March 2013,[136][137] However, until present Malaysia still maintained a balance relations with the countries involved in this dispute.
