BBC Correspondent Bill Hayton: Who Owns the South China Sea?

Bill Hayton, BBC Correspondent, Author, The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia

Frank Wu, Professor and former Dean, University of California Hastings Law School; Chairman, Committee of 100—Moderator

The South China Sea is where China’s rising ambitions are colliding with the United States’ global role. This strategic competition is interacting in dangerous and unpredictable ways with tensions about the fate of the atolls and islands that dot the sea: the Spratly islands, the Paracels and Scarborough Shoal. Bill Hayton will explain the — sometimes bizarre — origins of the various claims and suggest how they might be resolved.

Hayton’s The South China Sea was named as one of The Economist's books of the year in 2014. He has worked for BBC News since 1998 and was the BBC's reporter in Vietnam in 2006-07. He spent 2013 embedded with Myanmar's state broadcaster working on media reform. He is also an associate fellow with the Asia Program of Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. He has given presentations about South China Sea and Southeast Asian issues for think-tanks and government institutions in the UK, United States, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam. His written work has been published in The Economist, the South China Morning Post, The Diplomat and The National Interest.