Hello and welcome to another episode of five questions for the CEL.

I'm here today with Rem Kortewak as Senior Research Fellow here at the Center for European Reform,

and we're going to discuss the South China Sea.

Let's delve right in with the first question.

Could you give us a little bit of background on the region, Rem?

Why is the South China Sea so contentious?

So the South China Sea is a maritime choke point.

Approximately one-third of all global trade as measured by volume passes through the South

China Sea.

If you look at the map, Chinese factories but also Japanese manufacturing hubs and Korean

factories that produce all of the goods that we consume here

in the West have to transit through the South China Sea. Also, a large part of Chinese, Korean,

Japanese oil consumption has to transit through the South China Sea coming from the Middle East.

So it's a very strategic waterway. At the same

time, there are very rich fishing grounds, and there is the expectation that a lot of oil and

gas deposits can be found at the bottom of the sea in Wells. And besides that, the South China Sea is

now increasingly politically or geopolitically relevant

because there are various competing claims over the reefs, islands or rocks, the territorial

features that are scattered around the South China Sea.

So we talk about various island groups, the Strattley Islands, the Paracel Islands,

and the littoral states bordering the South China Sea all have competing claims over this.

And one of the most expansive claims is the Chinese claim, the so-called 9-Lyme.

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