The South China Sea is a marginal sea that is part of the Pacific Ocean, encompassing an area from the Singapore and Malacca Straits to the Strait of Taiwan of around 3,500,000 square kilometres (1,400,000 sq mi). The area's importance largely results from one-third of the world's shipping transiting through its waters, and that it is believed to hold huge oil and gas reserves beneath its seabed.
It is located
- south of mainland China and the island of Taiwan,
- west of the Philippines,
- north west of Sabah (Malaysia), Sarawak (Malaysia) and Brunei,
- north of Indonesia,
- north east of the Malay peninsula (Malaysia) and Singapore, and
- east of Vietnam.
The minute South China Sea Islands, collectively an archipelago, number in the hundreds. The sea and its mostly uninhabited islands are subject to competing claims of sovereignty by several countries. These claims are also reflected in the variety of names used for the islands and the sea.
Read more about South China Sea: Names, Geography, Extent, Geology, Islands and Seamounts, Resources, Territorial Claims
Famous quotes containing the words south, china and/or sea:
“These South savannahs may yet prove battle-fields.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Riot in Algeria, in Cyprus, in Alabama;
Aged in wrong, the empires are declining,
And China gathers, soundlessly, like evidence.
What shall I say to the young on such a morning?—
Mind is the one salvation?—also grammar?—
No; my little ones lean not toward revolt.”
—William Dewitt Snodgrass (b. 1926)
“Through the hollow globe, a ring
of frayed rusty scrapiron,
is it the sea that shines?
Is it a road at the world’s edge?”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)