 Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. My name is Ernie Bauer, I'm the Chair for, I'm the Cemetery Chair for Southeast Asian Studies here at CSIS. It's my honor to welcome you here to CSIS and for coming to participate in our third annual South China Sea conference. We called this conference Managing Tensions in the South China Sea because we find ourselves facing a serious set of issues. To be clear, the tensions and the heightened risk for mistakes that could evolve into conflicts on the waters of the South China Sea, these waters that connect the key countries in East Asia is higher today than when we held our first conference on this topic in 2011. Our discussions over the next two days involve some of the world's top experts on the geopolitics, economics, and technical aspects of the issues revolving around the South China Sea. If we're successful in our endeavor, in the course of the next 36 hours, we will collectively have tabled some innovative ideas for managing the tensions around these seas and provided policy makers from all countries who are with ideas who are preparing for the ASEAN Regional Forum later this month and the East Asia Summit in Brunei in October. We'll provide them with ideas about how to work more effectively to resolve disputes and prevent possible conflict through enhanced understanding of what's at stake and better mechanisms to avoid and manage mistakes, accidents, or incidents on the South China Sea. Again, I want to thank all of you for joining us today and tomorrow. And for those of you who are joining us via live streaming on the internet or following us on Twitter, please join the discussion by tweeting to at Southeast Asia DC and at CSIS and following the discussion via hashtag CSIS live. I'd like to begin our discussion today with a cap note presentation by Greg Polling. Greg is our research associate here at CSIS and directs our research in the Southeast Asia chair. Greg's work on the South China Sea has been deep, comprehensive, and I think we should start our discussion with a view of what's happening across the region. Last year CSIS unveiled our multimedia presentation, the South China Sea in high resolution, which used satellite imagery and geospatial analysis to make these complicated disputes more understandable and present them in a dynamic new way. Our upcoming report, the South China Sea in focus, takes those technologies to the next level by shrinking the contested waters down to those that are really in dispute under international law. Agreeing on the limits of the dispute is a critical step in managing it and managing it is precisely the topic of today's conference. So as an entree to the excellent panels you'll hear today, I'd like to invite you to join me in welcoming our research associate Greg Polling who authored this report to present its findings. Greg? Thank you, Ernie, and let me start by thanking everybody for coming out for our third annual conference this year. Let me quickly pull up our slideshow and we'll be ready to go. Okay, we're going to kick off the event, as Ernie said, with a preview of our newest report, the South China Sea in focus. You each should have had the opportunity to pick up the executive summary this morning. The full report is going to be publicly available in the beginning of July. The maps shown in that report, like those in the executive summary you have before you, are approximations of months of geospatial analysis and data that we've collected and created during the analysis of this project. The lines that are actually used in that analysis are accurate to within one nautical mile. And for the cartographers among you, all of those shapefiles are going to be made available when the report is published. Now, since many of you have probably already looked at the executive summary, before diving in, I'd like to begin by explaining what this report is not. It is not an attempt to show what any final resolution of the disputes in the South China Sea should look like. That would be a fool's errand, and that is entirely up to the claimants. It is also not an attempt to say what any country's final claims should look like, in that none of the countries have fully clarified their claims. That is still very much a work in progress. And finally, it does not suggest that any of the claimants should accept that all of the areas shown in your executive summary and in this report are actually the final area of dispute. In fact, by every precedent established by international courts or prior negotiations on similar disputes, the areas we're showing give too much weight to the tiny islands in question. That said, what this report does do is it shows the maximum area any country can claim is in legal dispute, and therefore it shows us without a doubt what is not in dispute. Now, as already said, this kind of clarification is a crucial step in attempting to manage these disputes. For decades, the claimants have been unable to even agree on what waters are and are not in dispute. Given that situation, any talk of a multilateral fishery agreement or multilateral joint development is almost certain to fail. I'm going to show you some concrete examples of how this work applies to issues of joint development a little later. But first, let's dive into how we came to our definition of the dispute. For the sake of comparison, let me start off with what I like to call the textbook map. This map of the South China Sea is what we usually see in news articles and analysis by non-experts. It is outdated, it's confusing, and it's very inaccurate. As a first step to creating a better map, we had to clarify the claims that each country is legally entitled to make from their coastlines. To do that, we begin by ignoring the effect that the hundreds of islands and islets and shoals would have on the dispute. The first map I'm showing you here is Malaysia's claim from its coastline. What you see in red is the claim to which Malaysia is legally entitled. The white is the claim you saw a moment ago in the textbook map. I'm not going to bore you with details of how each of our claim maps was made. Instead, let me lay out a few guidelines and I will be happy to dig in further during Q&A. First off, the basis for what is and is not illegal claim here is solely the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. On that basis, each claimant is entitled to an exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, of 200 nautical miles. In cases where that EEZ overlaps with another claimant and the two have not already negotiated a boundary, we assume the boundary to be the halfway point. And finally, extended continental shelves are shown in these maps for those countries that have officially submitted them to the United Nations. As you can see, the difference from Malaysia's claim is not all that significant, and the difference for Brunei's is even less so, so we won't bother to bore you with a map. But first, let's have a look at the Philippine claim. As you can see, there is a significant difference here between the outdated map we all too often see, shown in white, and the actual claim that the Philippines is entitled to, shown in green. And in the Philippines defense, they are well aware that the white map is outdated. In fact, they made it officially so in 2009 with their new law and baselines. And even clearer difference is obvious when you look at Vietnam's actual claim in blue, as opposed to the way it is portrayed in white, which is both outdated and entirely exaggerated. And finally, in the most startling difference, this map shows a maritime claim that China is legally entitled to make from its coastline, keep in mind this does not take into effect islands yet. Unfortunately, the only claim we have to compare it to is the nine-dash line, which may or may not take into effect islands. So that's what we've shown here. And for the sake of clarity, we've gone ahead and connected the dots as best we can. So if we were to set aside the disputed islands and other features in the South China Sea, you can see just how much less complicated this dispute would become. In fact, the areas legally under dispute, as claims currently stand, there can always be future continental shelves, are just these two small red areas. Unfortunately for all of us, that's not the case. The final step in our analysis was to add in the islands and see how they affect the dispute. So again, a few guidelines are in order here. The law of the sea distinguishes islands, which generate their own EEZ versus rocks, which do not. But the law is very unclear on what exactly makes an island an island. The first requirement, which is clear cut, is that the feature has to be above water at high tide. Makes common sense. The second is that it must be capable of supporting human habitation or an independent economic life of its own. Unfortunately, no court has deigned to tell us what that second requirement means. So in the spirit of determining the maximum area that anyone can claim, not necessarily with a straight face, but that they could claim based upon what Uncle says, our report has said anything above water 24 hours a day counts as an island. Let's get to the slide. Here are those islands. By our admittedly very generous definition, 50 of these features in the South Tennessee could qualify legally as islands. The final step in our analysis is therefore to give each of these features a 200 nautical mile EEZ where possible. In most cases, that's clearly not the case because they overlap with those of the opposing coastlines. So again, we've drawn a halfway point between each island and the coastline facing it. The result gives us the area of the South Tennessee that can legally be claimed to be in dispute. The red area is a dispute caused by the Paracel Islands, the yellow by Scarborough Shoal and the green by the Spratlys. Now again, to head off the inevitable criticism, let me reiterate, no, these tiny rocks and islands would not actually be given equal weight with the coastlines that surround them. Any final resolution would undoubtedly put these lines much closer to the islands if they were given EEZs at all. But what this does give us is the outer boundaries of what today any country could legally say is in dispute. This is still a pretty large area, but as you can see, if you can make it out, it's considerably smaller than China's Nine Dash Line. Why does that matter and what does it tell us? First, it tells us that anything outside of this yellow blob is in any country outside of this yellow blob is undisputably entitled to exploit those resources, be they fisheries or oil and gas, without worrying about a dispute with other countries. It also tells us that any proposal for multilateral joint development outside of that area is not going to be taken seriously by the other claimants, which has been precisely the problem with most previous attempts at joint development. To illustrate, I've made a map here of the Nine Oil and Gas Blocks that the China National Offshore Oil Corporation opened for bidding last June. Vietnam objected, and our map shows that they had every reason to do so. Even if China were given possession of every single feature in the South China Sea, and every one of those features was granted a 200 nautical mile maritime claim, or in this case the largest possible, a halfway point, there is no way that even half of those blocks lie within territory China could claim. Oil and Gas Blocks created by Hanoi and Manila offer us another example. On this map, red blocks are those leased by foreign oil and gas companies, white are not. As you can see, Beijing frequently objects to exploration in most of these blocks, but the vast majority lie completely in undisputed waters. So if you're an oil company and considering investment in a block in the South China Sea, or a government considering creating blocks, this type of analysis is extremely useful. The difference between a block was in the disputed area, and one outside it might just be a few miles. But those few miles come with the indisputable legal and moral high ground in the dispute. Now let me close by reiterating that we are not saying that this dispute will not change, or that this blob is actually the legal dispute. It lies with each of the claimants to legally clarify what their claims are so that we can further modify this blob. And each of them has taken some small steps to do that. The Philippines is probably out of head right now since their 2009 baseline law. They specifically said that the islands are only considered under enclosed regime. They specifically laid out their straight baselines and said they only claim easy from them, but they have not told us what continental shelf they presumably claim. By the same token, Malaysia and Vietnam have issued parts of their continental shelf, but not all. Malaysia has not issued officially straight baselines that they claim, though they've shown them on maps. And Vietnam's straight baselines are controversial to say the least. In that situation, while it's easy to point the finger at China and point out that it has not clarified its claims, it would behoove each of the other claimants to do so first. Now, I'll wrap it up there, and I hope that you'll all find the full report when it's released in early July to be interesting. For those inclined, I would again invite you to analyze and repurpose the shape files we'll make available for your own purposes, and feel free to tell me where, if anywhere, you think we've gotten it wrong. This is meant to kick off a debate and show the kind of steps that we should be taking in this dispute. Thank you. Thank you, Greg. That was a very provocative start to our discussion. I'd like to now open the floor to any questions. Please just identify yourselves and your organization that you're affiliated with when you have the question. We have mics working around the audience. Question up here in the front, gentlemen. Christine Lemiere from the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Thanks, Greg, for this. I think the project is extremely useful and will certainly provoke and help debate in the future. I had one question on, and I know how difficult this is because I put together similar maps last year, and it's an extremely frustrating experience. I had one question on the Chinese claims to the nine blocks off the Vietnamese coast. Could the Chinese not claim that actually those blocks lie within their extended continental shelf, if not their EEZ? And it's the extended continental shelf that will give them rights to seabed and subsoil resources rather than EEZ rights to resources off the sea and below the sea as well. The short answer would be no. China certainly has the right to claim a continental shelf from any of the islands that they choose to. Every island, if it's an island, gets a continental shelf. But the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea is crystal clear that every country is entitled to a minimum 200 nautical mile continental shelf as well as an EEZ. And you can only claim the additional 150 miles beyond that if there is no dispute there. So presumably if you have an island that is less than 200 nautical miles from a coastline, both the EEZ and the continental shelf must be determined using some principle of equity in that case. So China in no way could claim under the National Law of the Sea that their continental shelf from an island could extend 200 nautical miles, and the Vietnamese continental shelf could only extend 100. Well, thank you, Mr. Pauling, for your excellent presentation. My question is related to Taiwan's claim. To what extent the claim to practice islands and the UShip Line will be included in your report? Thank you. Could you just identify yourself and your affiliation, please? My name is Yan Kui Song from Academia Seneca Taiwan. In the report, we're clear that we exclude the protests from the dispute specifically because it's only a bilateral dispute between China and Taiwan, which in the context that South China Sea is unique, both are claiming the islands. Both are claiming largely the same claim around them. What we've done when you saw the Philippine claim is we've presumed a halfway point between the protests and the Philippine claim. And then whether you look at the claim for China or Taiwan, both are assumed to have that same halfway point from the protests. On the U-shaped line, we again assume because we've never been told differently that Taiwan also claims the U-shaped line under the same principles that China does. And as the report makes clear, this is in an effort to get claimants to clarify their claims. If that's wrong, then it should be publicly stated. But everything that we know up till now suggests that Taiwan is claiming the U-shaped line. And until they clarify, we have to assume they're claiming it under the same basis that China is. Other questions or comments? I think what we'll do is, Greg, thank you for the good start to the conference. We're going to take a quick break for a coffee, and we'll be back with the first panel. So thank you again, Greg, for that.