THE spectacular ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration, in The Hague, which overwhelmingly backed the Philippines against China’s claims in the South China Sea, contained a key point on marine environmental destruction and exploitation. China’s land reclamation and construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea, the Tribunal concluded, had caused “severe harm” to coral reefs and fragile ecosystems. The Tribunal also found that Chinese authorities had done nothing to stop Chinese fishermen harvesting endangered marine turtles, coral, and giant clams on a “substantial scale.” This aggressive plunder of the South China Sea is not new; in fact, it is several millennia old.

The South China Sea has linked southern China to Southeast Asia by trade since the 3rd century BCE. Pearls, skins of ray fish, turtle and tortoise shells, mother of pearl, tripang (a type of sea slug) and corals were considered precious and exotic luxuries, and were much sought out by maritime traders and fisher folk of southern China. Their harvests were so bountiful it was said that they made “fields from the sea.” They traded with people from Southeast Asia—Malays, Chams (an ethnic group from Cambodia and central Vietnam), Bugis and Javanese peoples of Indonesia, who also scoured the sea for the same high-value commodities, exchanging them for gold, silks and ceramics brought by the Chinese. The eminent historian, Professor Wang Gungwu, has called this ancient maritime trade between China and Southeast Asia the “Nanhai trade.”

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