China Dominates the Scramble for the South China Sea

March 19, 2015 Topic: Security Region: Asia Tags: South China SeaChinaPLANVietnamPhilippines

China Dominates the Scramble for the South China Sea

Though Vietnam has occupied the greatest number of contested features in the Spratlys, China is clearly winning.

Richard Javad Heydarian is a lecturer in international affairs and political science at Ateneo De Manila University, and a policy advisor at the Philippine House of Representatives. As a specialist on Asian geopolitics and economic affairs, he has written for or interviewed by Al Jazeera, Asia Times, BBC, Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, The Diplomat, The National Interest, and USA TODAY, among other leading international publications.  He is the author of How Capitalism Failed the Arab World: The Economic Roots and Precarious Future of the Middle East Uprisings (Zed, London), and the forthcoming book The Philippines: The US, China, and the Struggle for Asia’s Pivot State (Zed, 2015).

Image: Wikimedia/Russavia