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
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... The South China Sea shipwrecks are two shipwrecks discovered in the South China Sea ... archaeological evidence about the marine Silk Road trade route linking ancient China with the Western world ... South China Sea-I was discovered in 1987 and is the marine Silk Road area ...
... Several countries have made competing territorial claims over the South China Sea ... Both People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC) claim almost the entire body as their own, demarcating their claims within what is known as the nine-dott ... Competing claims include Indonesia, China, and Taiwan over waters NE of the Natuna Islands The Philippines, China, and Taiwan over Scarborough Shoal ...
Famous quotes containing the words sea, south and/or china:
“The sea has neither meaning nor pity.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“If you are one of the hewers of wood and drawers of small weekly paychecks, your letters will have to contain some few items of news or they will be accounted dry stuff.... But if you happen to be of a literary turn of mind, or are, in any way, likely to become famous, you may settle down to an afternoon of letter-writing on nothing more sprightly in the way of news than the shifting of the wind from south to south-east.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“Anyone who tries to keep track of what is happening in China is going to end up by wearing all the skin of his left ear from twirling around on it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)