QuickTake Q&A: South China Sea Ruling Won't Move China

The South China Sea hosts $5 trillion in trade a year and some of the world’s most pitched territorial disputes. China has used a massive dredging effort to expand the size of tiny spits of land in the Spratly Island chain and to strengthen its claim to more than 80 percent of the area. That has strained ties with other claimant states as well as the U.S., which has been the dominant military presence in the region for decades. China made clear its push would continue even if the Philippines won a challenge before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. The court ruled for the Philippines on July 12.

As the Philippines asked, the arbitration tribunal rejected China’s so-called historic rights assertion to a vague line -- the nine-dash line -- on a 1947 map that extends about 1,120 miles (1,800 kilometers) south of Hainan Island. That territory overlaps claims of Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei. The Philippines brought the case after China seized a triangle of reef and rocks known as Scarborough Shoal in 2012.