关键词: 海权论, 南海, 地缘战略价值, 边缘地带论, 美国南海战略, 遏制

Abstract:

In the late 19th century and the early 20th century, the United States became the world's largest economy then and urgently needed to open up new overseas markets. To scramble for the potential "largest world market" which was considered at the time, the United States occupied the Philippines, a Spanish colony on the east coast of the South China Sea, as a stronghold into the Chinese market. This was the initial U.S. cognition to the geography of the South China Sea. For the next 30 years, the United States did not touch the South China Sea until Japan invaded Southeast Asia. Japan incorporated Southeast Asia into the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Circle" and took advantage of the geographical advantage of the South China Sea to attack the U.S. military, which made the South China Sea take on important geostrategic value for the first time. The new geopolitical changes in the South China Sea prompted the US to recognize the South China Sea. Since then, with the rise of the "rimland theory", the United States had paid more and more importance to the geostrategic value of the South China Sea and sought to serve its national interests. In the 1950s, the Asia-Pacific region had formed a socialist camp led by China and a capitalist camp led by the United States which were completely rival. Containing the expansion of communism in the Asia-Pacific had become the general policy of the U.S. hegemony strategy, which directly affected the U.S. geostrategic cognition on the South China Sea. Using the geostrategic value of the South China Sea to contain China had become the inevitable option of the U. S. policy toward China.

Key words: Sea Power Theory, geostrategic value, South China Sea, Rimland Theory, the American South China Sea strategy, containment