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This book discusses the South China Sea dispute from a Chinese perspective with regards to history, law, international politics, the economy, diplomacy and military affairs.Not only does it detail China's official position on the sovereignty and maritime disputes in the South China Sea, but also provides analyses of the related factors.

Marine Protected Areas Network in the South China Sea suggests legal and political measures to support the development of a network of marine protected areas in the South China Sea. They could not only help protect the marine environment but also promote peace and cooperation between regional States.

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) offers a legal framework for the sustainable development of the oceans and their natural resources. However, recently there have been calls to amend the Convention due to some ambiguous provisions which are unable to address a variety of contemporary maritime issues. This book evaluates the applicability and effectiveness of UNCLOS as a settlement mechanism for addressing ocean disputes. The book's central focus is on the South China Sea (SCS) dispute, one of the most complex and challenging ocean-related conflicts in the world. The book examines the ways in which an emphasis on sovereignty, threats to maritime security and overlapping maritime claims caused by the newly established maritime regimes authorized by UNCLOS are all contributing factors to the SCS dispute. The book considers the internal coherence of the Law of the Sea Convention regime and its dispute settlement procedures. It looks at participation in the UNCLOS negotiations, maritime legislation, and the dispute settlement practice of relevant States party to the SCS dispute. The author goes on to explore the relationship between UNCLOS and the regimes and institutions in the SCS, particularly in regard to issues of maritime security, marine environment protection, joint development of oil and gas and general political interaction. The author proposes practical mechanisms to resolve the dispute whilst also offering a final judgement on the effectiveness of UNCLOS for settling disputes. UNCLOS and Ocean Dispute Settlement will be of particular interest to academics, students and policy makers of international, shipping and maritime law as well as being of interest to academics and students in the field of international relations.

Major law and policy issues in the South China Sea are discussed mainly from the perspectives of leading American and European scholars in the study of the complex South China Sea disputes. The issues include regional maritime cooperation and regime building, Southeast Asian countries' responses to the Chinese assertiveness, China's historic claims, maritime boundary delimitation and excessive maritime claims, military activities and the law of the sea, freedom of navigation and its impact on the problem, the dispute between Vietnam and China, confidence-building measures and U.S.-Taiwan-China relations in the South China Sea, and Taiwan's role in the resolution to the South China Sea issues. Over the past three years, there have been several incidents in the South China Sea between the claimants, and also between the claimants and non-claimants over fisheries, collection of seismic data, exploration for oil and gas resources, and exercise of freedom of navigation. Third party concerns and involvement in the South China Sea disputes have been increasing as manifested in actions taken by the United States, India, and Japan. It is therefore important to examine South China Sea disputes from the legal and political perspective and from the view point of American and European experts who have been studying South China Sea issues for many years.

China’s Naval Operations in the South China Sea is highly topical; it examines the evolving perception of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) of the South China Sea (SCS), and Beijing’s accompanying maritime strategy to claim the islands and waters, particularly in the context of the strategies of the neighbouring stake-holding nations. In addition to long-standing territorial disputes over the islands and waters of the SCS, China and the other littoral states — Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Indonesia — have growing and often mutually exclusive interests in the offshore energy reserves and fishing grounds. Many other countries outside of the region worry about the protection of sea lines of communication for military and commercial traffic, oil tankers in particular. These differences have been expressed in the increasing frequency and intensity of maritime incidents, involving both naval and civilian vessels, sometimes working in coordination against naval or civilian targets. Each chapter on the littoral states closely examines that state’s territorial claims to the islands and waters of the SCS, its primary economic and military interests in these areas, its views on the sovereignty disputes over the entire SCS, its strategy to achieve its objectives, and its views on the U.S. involvement in any and all of these issues.

Over the past 10 to 15 years, the South China Sea (SCS) has emerged as an arena of U.S.-China strategic competition. China's actions in the SCS-including extensive island-building and base-construction activities at sites that it occupies in the Spratly Islands, as well as actions by its maritime forces to assert China's claims against competing claims by regional neighbors such as the Philippines and Vietnam-have heightened concerns among U.S. observers that China is gaining effective control of the SCS, an area of strategic, political, and economic importance to the United States and its allies and partners. Actions by China's maritime forces at the Japan-administered Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea (ECS) are another concern for U.S. observers. Chinese domination of China's near-seas region-meaning the SCS and ECS, along with the Yellow Sea-could substantially affect U.S. strategic, political, and economic interests in the Indo-Pacific region and elsewhere.

While there is abundant literature discussing non-traditional security issues, there is little mention of such issues existing in the South China Sea. This area is vulnerable to natural hazards and marine environmental degradation. The marine ecosystem is threatened by various adverse sources including land-based pollution, busy shipping lanes, and over-exploitation activities which threaten the security of the surrounding population. This area is also threatened by piracy and maritime crimes but law enforcement becomes difficult due to unclear maritime boundaries. This volume is designed to explore the security cooperation and regional approaches to these non-traditional security issues in the hope to build a peaceful environment and maintain international and regional security and order in the South China Sea region. Shicun Wu, PhD, is currently President of National Institute for South China Sea Studies. Visiting scholar to the School of Advanced International Studies(SAIS) of John Hopkins University in 1998, to the Seminar on the Dynamics of US Foreign Policy-Regional Security sponsored by U.S. Government in 1999, and senior research fellow with Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in 2001, and the Harvard Kennedy School in 2008. His research focuses on history and geography on the South China Sea, ocean delimitation, international relations and regional security strategy. His main publication includes Maritime Security in the South China Sea: Regional Implications and International Cooperation (2009)，Origin and Development of Spratly Disputes (2010), Collection of Literatures on the South China Sea Issues, A Bibliography of Research on the South China Sea, The Issue of the South China Sea Islands in the Time of the Republic of China (1911-1949), Contest on the South China Sea and Zheng He’s Voyages to the Indian Ocean, Historical background on the 1943 Sino-British New Treaty, On Relativity of Cognition of the History, The Foundation of Sino-ASEAN Free Trade Zone and Cross-Strait Commercial Relations, Imperative Task-the Exploitation of South China Sea Resources, etc. Keyuan Zou is Harris Professor of International Law at the Lancashire Law School of the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), United Kingdom. He specializes in international law, in particular law of the sea and international environmental law. Before joining UCLan, he worked in Dalhousie University (Canada), Peking University (China), University of Hannover (Germany) and National University of Singapore. He is Academic Advisor to the China National Institute for South China Sea Studies and the Centre for Ocean Law and Policy of the Shanghai Jiaotong University in China. He is member of the ESRC Peer Review College and the Commission on Environmental Law of IUCN. He has published over 60 refereed

In South China Sea: Energy and Security Conflicts, foreign policy analyst Christopher L. Daniels analyzes the core causes of the dispute over territorial claims in the South China Sea, which separates some of the world’s fastest-growing economies. Starting with the question of access to the billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas presently thought to lie beneath the region’s territorial waters and islands, Daniels considers the race for resources and military dominancy along with the rapidly increasing domestic demand for electricity and industrial output of the regional players. South China Sea: Energy and Security Conflicts takes on such troubling questions as the impact of this conflict on global oil and gas prices; China’s growth both economically and as a regional military hegemon; and the recent, often rocky, international efforts to mediate the conflict. In addition to policy recommendations for peaceful resolutions to this emerging international challenge, the book includes maps, graphs, primary sources, and overviews of key players—individual and institutional—in what may well be the next great conflict in East Asia. This work is ideal for scholars and students, researchers and diplomatic professionals, military officers and energy traders, and anyone interested in the energy and security politics of East Asia