The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations

by Daniel Yergin

The third question is about the EEZ—Exclusive Economic Zone. The concept of the EEZ was established by the Convention on the Law of the Sea. The EEZ is different from territorial waters, which generally extend twelve miles from shore. The EEZ reaches out two hundred miles from shore. For most countries the EEZ entails only “economic” rights—to the fish in the waters and the oil and gas and minerals below in the seabed. The Chinese contend that the EEZ also gives it control over who passes through those waters. That directly pits the United States and China against each other. For the key question, very much at the heart of the dispute, is, as the international lawyer Robert Beckman puts it, not “freedom of navigation” in itself, but “freedom of military activities in open ocean.”