South China Sea: Maritime Trade History and Modern Geopolitical Conflicts

The South China Sea is a body of water located in the Southwestern Pacific. It comprises the waters located east of the Straits of Malacca; north of the Strait of Sunda; bordered by the Malay Peninsula to the west; the Chinese mainland to the north; Taiwan and the Philippines to the east; and Borneo, Java, and Sumatra to the south.

Historically, the South China Sea has been one of the most commercially active maritime regions in the world, particularly since the tenth century CE, during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), when the Chinese demographic and economic center of gravity shifted from the plains in the north to the Yangtze River region and the present-day provinces of Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong. Thus, China became connected to the network of trade routes that crisscrossed the Indian Ocean and entered a far-reaching interoceanic system of trade exchanges that joined East Africa; the Middle East; and South, Southeast, and East Asia. The South China Sea rapidly became one of the major subsystems of this vast commercial network. By the fourteenth century, Canton (Guangzhou) had become a major port city as vessels transporting first Persian, and later Arab and Indian traders, plied the South China Sea to trade in spices, ivory, textiles, lacquerware, and tea, among other products.

Although the Central Asian inland trade routes, popularly known as the Silk Roads, saw a renaissance with the establishment of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty in China (1271-1368), maritime trade in the South China Sea remained strong and flourished even more. After the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) overthrew the Mongols, between 1405 and 1433, the imperial court commissioned Admiral Zheng He to lead a series of seven expeditions, each comprising hundreds of great “treasure ships” and support vessels, to showcase and assert Chinese military and economic might throughout the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.

After the subsequent Chinese official withdrawal and curbing of maritime trade, the region became infested by the wokou, a term often translated as “Japanese pirates,” even though there were also Chinese and Southeast Asians among their ranks. Expanding from their original targets and bases of operation along the Korean and Shandong coasts, the wokou became a serious threat to port cities and villages in coastal Fujian, Guangdong, and Hainan between 1540 and 1565. Their activity finally subsided as Ming restrictions on maritime trade started to relax in 1567.

Europeans arrived at the South China Sea when the Portuguese took Melaka in 1511, thus securing the entrance to trade routes into the Indian Ocean and beyond. In 1557, the Portuguese consolidated their presence in the region when they leased Macau, which became the main hub in a triangular trade of Chinese silks and porcelain and Japanese silver. The Spanish settlement of Manila in 1571 and the consolidation of the Manila Galleon trade route with the Americas provided a new source of silver in the region and further incentivized trade across the South China Sea. In 1619, the Dutch began competing with their Iberian counterparts from their own entrepot in Batavia (modern-day Jakarta) on Java. European ambitions on Taiwan were thwarted in 1662 when the Zheng clan expelled the Dutch settlers, later to be incorporated into the Chinese empire by the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912).

During the second half of the seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, other European players arrived in the region. Most importantly, the British took control of the island of Singapore in 1819, which replaced Melaka as the main entryway into the South China Sea trade. All European trade to China was highly regulated and limited to the port of Canton. British commercial ambitions broke this so- called “Canton system” with the outbreak of the First and Second Opium Wars (1839-42 and 1856-60), by which Britain gained control over Hong Kong and free access to trade in China (a concession later to be enjoyed by other European powers).

Japan became a major power in the South China Sea after its rapid industrialization during the Meiji Restoration, and particularly after taking over Taiwan from China following the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-5). Japan overran the entire region during the course of the Second World War. The region became a major focal point of conflict during the Cold War, as the United States supported Taiwan against the People’s Republic of China and became involved in the Vietnam War.

In the wake of the rapid growth of the Asian economies in the region between the 1960s and 1990s, and China’s rise to the second-largest economy in the 2000s, the South China Sea solidified its place as one of the most active trade regions in the modern world economy. Geopolitically, it has also become one of the most highly contested areas in the world, with overlapping claims by China, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Brunei over the Paracel and Spratly Islands, often leading to crises and contributing to considerable diplomatic tensions among these states and third parties, notably the United States.

FURTHER READING: Antony, Robert J. 2003. Like Froth Floating on the Sea: The World of Pirates and Seafarers in Late Imperial South China. Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies.

Brook, Timothy. 1999. The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China.

Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.

Brook, Timothy and Bob Tadashi Wakayabashi, eds. 2000. Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839-1952. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Hayton, Bill. 2014. The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Levathes, Louise. 1994. When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne 1405-1433. New York: Simon & Schuster.