The missing piece of the South China Sea puzzle

July 19, 2024

MANILA – The geopolitics in the South China Sea (SCS) has been front and center of discussions over the contested region. There is nothing wrong with that, except that the fisheries perspective is largely absent from conversations over the West Philippine Sea (WPS), which is the portion of SCS that is well within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

What’s behind the aggression of China in the SCS? It’s clear that the territorial disputes have a security dimension because of the geopolitical implications of allowing China to dominate the vast SCS, which includes territorial waters belonging to the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

The territorial disputes also have a trade dimension, as $3.37 trillion in global trade passes through the SCS annually. Therefore, China’s complete control of the region could compromise a third of global maritime trade. The third dimension is the potential for drilling oil—SCS has 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 11 billion barrels of oil reserves, according to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative.

Many Western think tanks have cited these three factors to explain what is at stake in the SCS, with the risk of a shooting war between China and other claimant countries like the Philippines not improbable if the disputes are not settled peacefully.

For sure, the news media has also been covering the perspective of fishermen as part of efforts to provide a human face to these escalating territorial disputes which have already resulted in stronger military alliances between our country and the United States, Japan, Australia, and even France. But so far, the news coverage has focused on the livelihood of Filipino fishermen who are now