Cutting through an overload of information to get to the heart of the story.
This is The Point.
Conflict or collaboration.
What comes to mind when you think of the South China Sea?
I'm standing on a rock near Yongxing Island, the seat of China's southernmost city of Sanxia.
The water here looks calm and crystal clear,
but in your headlines, the South China Sea is wavy and choppy and murky,
clouded by disputes deliberately stirred up by countries from within the region and beyond.
Now what exactly is the true story of the South China Sea?
The South China Sea is an immense body of water that stretches
more than three million square kilometers across the maritime crossroads of Asia.
It carries around a third of the world's shipping.
A lot of strategic resources along with a substantial volume of international trade and shipping
must transit through the South China Sea and pass via Malacca Straits.
So the South China Sea is of tremendous strategic and geopolitical significance to China.
Yet this sea has been a magnet for competing claims, diplomatic tensions
and international drama, especially when the Philippines took China to a so-called arbitration in 2013,
which ruled on the issue in 2016. In a tense dispute over the South China Sea,
a landmark ruling today, an international arbitration court says China does not have territorial rights there.
But China has so far refused to attend these hearings.