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:
“In the far South the sun of autumn is passing
Like Walt Whitman walking along a ruddy shore.
He is singing and chanting the things that are part of him,
The worlds that were and will be, death and day.
Nothing is final, he chants. No man shall see the end.
His beard is of fire and his staff is a leaping flame.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Whether the nymph shall break Diana’s law,
Or some frail china jarreceive a flaw,
Or stain her honour, or her new brocade,”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“The sea called
you faced the estuary,
you were drowned as the tide passed.
I am glad of this
at least you have escaped.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)