Spratly Islands

The Spratly Islands (Chinese: 南沙群岛; pinyin: Nánshā Qúndǎo, Malay: Kepulauan Spratly, Tagalog: Kapuluan ng Kalayaan,Vietnamese: Quần đảo Trường Sa) are a disputed group of more than 750 reefs, islets, atolls, cays and islands in the South China Sea. The archipelago lies off the coasts of the Philippines, Malaysia, and southern Vietnam. Named after the 19th-century British whaling captain Richard Spratly who sighted Spratly Island in 1843, the islands contain approximately 4 km² (1.5 sq mi) of land area spread over a vast area of more than 425,000 km² (164,000 sq mi).

The Spratlys are one of the major archipelagos in the South China Sea that comprise more than 30,000 islands and reefs, and which complicate governance and economics in this part of Southeast Asia due to their location in strategic shipping lanes. The islands have no indigenous inhabitants, but offer rich fishing grounds and may contain significant oil and natural gas reserves. and as such are important to the claimants in their attempts to establish international boundaries.

South China

South China (simplified Chinese: 华南; traditional Chinese: 華南; pinyin: huá nán) is a geographical and cultural region that covers the southernmost part of China. Its precise meaning varies with context.

Definitions

In the broadest sense, Southern China can denote the entire portion of the country south of the line demarcated by the Qin Mountains and Huai River. Between 1945 and 1949, the Republic of China defined Guizhou, Yunnan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Fujian and Taiwan as the "Seven Provinces of South China" (simplified Chinese: 华南七省; traditional Chinese: 華南七省; pinyin: huá nán qī shěng). The term can also be used to denote the Lingnan region; but today, the phrase is generally used to refer only to Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Hong Kong and Macau (historically also known as Liangguang). Defined as such, South China is also contained within South Central China.

Administrative divisions

See also

China Seas

The China Seas consist of a series of marginal seas in the Western Pacific Ocean, around China. They are the major components signifying the transition from the continent of Asia to the Pacific Ocean. They have been described in terms of their collective vastness and complexity:

Seas included in the China Seas are:

References

South China Sea

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 sailing through its waters and that it is believed to hold huge oil and gas reserves beneath its seabed.

It is located

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.

Names

South China Sea is the dominant term used in English for the sea, and the name in most European languages is equivalent, but it is sometimes called by different names in China's neighboring countries, often reflecting historical claims to hegemony over the sea.

China

China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a sovereign state in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population of over 1.35 billion. The PRC is a one-party state governed by the Communist Party, with its seat of government in the capital city of Beijing. It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces; five autonomous regions; four direct-controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Chongqing); two mostly self-governing special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau); and claims sovereignty over Taiwan.

Covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometers, China is the world's second-largest country by land area, and either the third or fourth-largest by total area, depending on the method of measurement. China's landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes and the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts in the arid north to subtropical forests in the wetter south. The Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third- and sixth-longest in the world, run from the Tibetan Plateau to the densely populated eastern seaboard. China's coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometres (9,000 mi) long, and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East and South China Seas.