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
Other articles related to "south china sea, china, sea":
... The South China Sea shipwrecks are two shipwrecks discovered in the South China Sea ... 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 ...
... The critical sea lines of communication that connect China to Middle Eastern oil-producing states transverse the South China Sea, making it a key strategic region, and potential trouble spot ... Chinese naval vessels heavily patrol South China Sea waters, and conflicting territorial claims in the region have periodically erupted in naval confrontations ... Chinese efforts to control the South China Sea have therefore figured significantly in speculations about the wider ambitions of the Chinese central government in the construction of a ...
... Gulf of Tonkin Southern China South China Sea Oceanic Islands. ...
... 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-dotted ... Competing claims include Indonesia, China, and Taiwan over waters NE of the Natuna Islands The Philippines, China, and Taiwan over Scarborough Shoal ...
... This system began its long life on August 16 in the South China Sea, having formed within the monsoon trough ... The typhoon came close but remained offshore of southeastern China, and after reaching maximum sustained winds of 75 knots (139 km/h) it hit western Taiwan on August 22 ... far enough away, Wayne drifted northeastward through the South China Sea, becoming a tropical storm again on August 27 ...
Famous quotes containing the words sea, south and/or china:
“For she has made me the laily worm
That lies at the fit o’ the tree,
An’ my sister Masery she’s made
The machrel of the sea.”
—Unknown. The Laily Worm and the Machrel of the Sea (l. 5–8)
“...I always said if I lived to get grown and had a chance, I was going to try to get something for my mother and I was going to do something for the black man of the South if it would cost my life; I was determined to see that things were changed.”
—Fannie Lou Hamer (1917–1977)
“In a country where misery and want were the foundation of the social structure, famine was periodic, death from starvation common, disease pervasive, thievery normal, and graft and corruption taken for granted, the elimination of these conditions in Communist China is so striking that negative aspects of the new rule fade in relative importance.”
—Barbara Tuchman (1912–1989)