Key Facts about Scarborough Shoal

About Scarborough Shoal:

• The Scarborough Shoal (also known in English as the Scarborough Reef) is an oceanic coral atoll that developed on top of a seamount into a triangle shape in the eastern part of the South China Sea.
• It is located some 220 kilometers west of the Philippines’ Island of Luzon.
• It is the largest atoll inthe South China Sea,msubmerged at high tide with few rocks above sea level.
• This atoll extends 18 km along its northwest-southeast axis and reaches 10 km along its northeast-southwest axis.
• The deep waters around the shoal make it a productive fishing area, rich in marine life, and the lagoon also contains many commercially valuable shellfish and sea cucumbers.
• The shoal is the source ofan ongoing and, so far, unresolved dispute between the People’s Republic of China and the Philippines, with both countries claiming that the shoal lies within their territory and saying they have exclusive rights to access its waters.
  • There are no structures built on Scarborough Shoal, but the feature is effectively controlled by China, which has maintained a constant coast guard presence at the feature since 2012.
  • China, which now refers to the shoal as Huangyan Island, makes a historical claim to the area, stating that they can trace their ownership of the area back to the Yuan Dynasty of the 1200s.
  • The Philippinesclaim the area on the basis of geography, as it is much closer to the Philippines’ main island of Luzon, which contains the capital, Manila, but lies over 500 miles from China.
  • It is considered within the Philippines’ 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone, based on the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). 

Q1: What is an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)?

Exclusive economic zone (EEZ), as defined under the UNCLOS, is an area of the ocean extending up to 200 nautical miles (370 km) immediately offshore from a country’s land coast in which that country retains exclusive rights to the exploration and exploitation of natural resources

News: China sets baselines for contested South China Sea shoal amid dispute with Philippines