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Eighty percent of Japanese and 39 percent of Chinese oil imports pass through the Indian Ocean en route from the Middle East. Chinese firms also have billions of dollars of investments in East Africa, concentrated primarily in the oil and gas, railways and roads, and other mining sectors.
Robert D. Kaplan, Business Insider: The South China Sea will be the battleground of the future
The South China Sea functions as the throat of the Western Pacific and Indian oceans — the mass of connective economic tissue where global sea routes coalesce.
Here is the heart of Eurasia’s navigable rimland, punctuated by the Malacca, Sunda, Lombok, and Makassar straits.
More than half of the world’s annual merchant fleet tonnage passes through these choke points, and a third of all maritime traffic worldwide.
The oil transported through the Malacca Strait from the Indian Ocean, en route to East Asia through the South China Sea, is triple the amount that passes through the Suez Canal and fifteen times the amount that transits the Panama Canal.
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WNU Editor: A good explanation on why the South China Sea is important to everyone.
Update: Vietnam has a plan to control their part of the South China Sea .... Vietnam’s Master Plan for the South China Sea (The Diplomat)