Islands, South China Sea | featured news

China and its neighbors in Southeast Asia must move determinedly to draw up a code of conduct to help resolve disputes in the South China Sea, and should refrain from threats and coercion that have sent tension skyrocketing, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Monday.

Vast oil reserves, trillion-dollar trade routes, fervent nationalist sentiments, competing territorial claims and bitter histories – the waters off the east coast of China are a sea of money and a sea of trouble.

China recently established a larger army garrison and expanded the size of an ostensible legislature to govern a speck of land, known as Yongxing Island, more than 200 miles southeast of Hainan. The goal of that move, Mr. Wu said, is to allow Beijing to “exercise sovereignty over all land features inside the South China Sea,” including more than 40 islands “now occupied illegally” by Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia.