The waters surrounding Southeast Asia are vitally important as arteries for global and regional trade and transportation. The importance of the region’s sea lines of communications (SLOC) is underlined by the fact that 60 percent of maritime trade passes through Asia, with the South China Sea carrying an estimated one-third of global shipping. Southeast Asian waters are important for global trade, as they are for regional trade as international sea cargo throughput for ASEAN totalled 3 billion tonnes in 2017 when data was available for all ASEAN Member States…
