ABSTRACT

Nowadays, the conflict of territory solving in the world causes many complicated problems among countries, as well as tensions in foreign policies. One of these conflicts is the dispute in South China Sea between China and six neighbor ASEAN countries. With the intervention of the United States, the issue turns to be more serious as it attracts a lot of concerns from international community. This research tries to find a clear way of understanding the South China Sea conflict, specifically about the effort of China and Vietnam to gain the control over the two groups of islands: Paracel and Spratly. The hypothesis intends to express the possibility about Vietnam’s victory in this conflict with the help of the United States. Hence, …show more content…

The islands are uninhabited by humans and so there are no indigenous people which can claim native authority over the land and because of the size of the island, human development in terms of living cannot occur (Chemillier-Gendreau, 2000, p. 16). In order to trade between the South East Asian countries, many merchants have to cross between the islands in order to trade. Therefore, these islands usually serve as seaports to fishermen and sailors. The resources that the island provides are abundant in three main categories. According to Chemillier-Gendreau (2000), the first is the amount of petroleum deposits. The second resource is phosphate deposits which is what the islands are made up. Japan and Vietnam have both mined these phosphates at one point in time. The Japan had mined these phosphates in 1924 and 1926. In 1956, the Saigon administration appointed Mr. Le Van Cang to mine these phosphates and the Vietnamese Fertilizer Company continue to mine them until 1960. The third resource is the marine wildlife. There are numbers of fishes, turtles, pearl oysters, and many other sea life in these waters which ports have been set up around. Various countries have come and mined and acquired access to the islands’ oils, sediments, and minerals at one point or another. This explains why the islands and sea themselves are a valuable commodity which China and Vietnam both would like to occupy and