<i>Personally I don't see right now how Indonesia could be the cause for WW3</i>
Spratly Islands are right there.
<b>Beijing threatens ExxonMobil over deal with Vietnam in South China Sea</b>
China issued a sharp warning to the world’s largest corporation, ExxonMobil, over an oil deal with Vietnam. Hanoi has indirectly responded that its agreement is in force and will proceed.
A Hong Kong newspaper says Beijing’s diplomats have threatened retaliation if ExxonMobil goes ahead with a preliminary agreement with the Vietnamese state oil firm PetroVietnam. The deal covers exploitation in the South China Sea off Vietnam's south and central coasts, according to the Sunday Morning Post.
Beijing claims a huge swath of the South China Sea just east of the Indochina peninsula and west of the Philippines and has acted to control sea lanes and oil rights in the area with several military skirmishes. The most serious occurred in 1976, when China invaded and captured the Paracel Islands from Vietnam. In 1988, Chinese and Vietnamese navies clashed at Johnson Reef in the Spratly Islands, sinking several Vietnamese boats and killing more than 70 sailors.
The Hong Kong newspaper quoted unidentified sources saying Exxon Mobil was confident of Vietnam's sovereign rights to the blocks it was now seeking to explore. But it is clear that ExxonMobil could not dismiss China's warnings out of hand given the rapidly increasing Chinese market for crude oil and oil products.
Last year, Chinese media targeted an agreement between Vietnam and BP near the Spratlys maintaining that those islands had been an “indisputable part of Chinese territory since ancient times.” The Spratlys, like other island groups in the region, are uninhabited rocky outcroppings and coral but are in an area that may contain large oil and gas deposits.
link
The Spratlys, a cluster of islands, submerged banks and reefs believed to be rich in oil and mineral reserves, is claimed in part or in whole by China, Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan.
Taiwan has been separated from the Chinese mainland since 1949 but the Beijing government claims the island as part of its territory.
Not a single Asean country has forged diplomatic ties with Taiwan nor recognize the island as a state in deference to the One China policy laid down by Beijing.
In March, Taiwan sparked renewed tension in the region after then President Chen Shui-bian made a visit to the Spratly islands to apparently underscore Taipei’s claim to the disputed area.
The trip, which came before the presidential polls were held in Taiwan on March 22, was aimed at drumming up support for Frank Hsieh, the ruling independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) candidate in the elections.
Ma Ying-jeou, a former mayor of Taipei and Harvard Law School graduate, though won the presidency.
Chen, who retired in May after eight years in office, took an Air Force C-130 transport aircraft to the Taiping Islet, the biggest island in the Spratlys.
Taiwan defense ministry began building a 1,150-meter-long (3,795-feet) runway in the fortified Taiping Islet in mid-2006, despite protest from Vietnam.
The Spratly islands, which has a total land area of less than five square kilometers and scattered across approximately 800,000 square kms of the South China Sea, is being entirely claimed by both China and Taiwan, while Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines claim only some parts, based on proximity to their shores.
All claimants, except Brunei, have troops based on the archipelago of more than 100 islets, reefs and atolls.
http://www.tribune.net.ph/nation/20080729nat1.html
"For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it." - Patrick Henry
The level of injustice and wrong you endure is directly determined by how much you quietly submit to. Even to the point of extinction.