[War] PRC: "The Spratly Prize"

[Michael Downey]

"The Spratly Prize"
President Xiao Wu
People's Republic of China
15 April 2006
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The Spratly Islands were a small collection of islands that had from
time to time created big trouble in East Asia. A rich fishing ground
and potential site for vast oil and gas deposits, it was currently
caught in a six-way territorial dispute that included China.

For the moment the dispute was a calm one. The ASEAN-sponsored
Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, also
known as the Spratrly Islands Treaty, was a non-binding agreement that
kept the nations in dispute from coming to blows.

President Wu could not deny that he, like many other Chinese leaders
before him, looked at the Spratly Islands with covetous eyes. All the
fish would feed many people, and China's growing economy was always
eager for more oil.

And that led to Wu's problem. No one knew just how much oil was
located in the chain of small islands. A US company had been
contracted to explore the Spratly oul reserves, but that deal had
broken down due to a political dispute between China and Vietnam.

The problem with any effort to calculate the potential oil reserves
was with overlapping territorial claims and the general sense of
military paranoia all the claimants to the islands had. Especially
when the PRC was involved, who had been building military structures
on their claimed islands and of all the involved nations had the
ability to actually conquer the islands by force.

Wu mused over all these things in his office while studying some new
satellite photos of the islands. War in itself was foolish, especially
when you didn't know just what your prize would be. And as it still
stood to this very day, know one knew just how much of that precious
black gold existed in the Spratly Islands.

President Wu intended to find out, and came to the conclusion he would
need the cooperation of Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, and the Philippines
to do so. Taiwan also claimed all of the islands, but Taiwan was not a
recognized nation and had no validity in the international community,
or before the UN, so he did not consider involving them.

Within an hour Wu was meeting with Foreign Minister Zhoau, and the two
of them hammered out a course of action. He would send a message to
all involved parties, minus Taiwan, with a proposal that they all
jointly allow an outside company to explore the Spratly oil reserves.
Likely an American or European corporation. The information would be
jointly shared, and the PRC would even offer to cover the entire
contract cost.
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Actions:
1) Propose to all nations, except Taiwan, involved in the Spratly
Islands dispute that a joint contact be issued to a US or European
company to explore the oil reserves of the Islands.
2) China will cover the cost of the contract if all parties agree.