A storm has been brewing for decades in the South China Sea, and it has nothing to do with the weather.

Instead, it's a virtual typhoon of competing claims over tiny, uninhabited island chains that ring the South China Sea and reach even farther north. They all have one thing in common: China has claimed control of them.

During a trip to Asia this week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stepped into the middle of the latest row this one between China and the Philippines over a small archipelago of wind- and wave-swept rocks and coral called the Scarborough Shoal (or the Huangyan Islands, as China prefers to call them).

In the past month or so, China has literally roped off access to Scarborough by stretching a line across the horseshoe-shaped lagoon to prevent fishermen from the Philippines, located just 120 miles to the east, from entering.

And this week, Japan announced it had struck a deal with private owners to buy the five Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, whose sovereignty China has never recognized. Beijing was quick to blast the move as "illegal and invalid."

Protesters in Manila, Philippines, marched toward the Chinese consulate during a May rally decrying the standoff between the two nations over the Scarborough Shoal.

Protesters in Manila, Philippines, marched toward the Chinese consulate during a May rally decrying the standoff between the two nations over the Scarborough Shoal.

Robert Kaplan, chief geopolitical analyst for Stratfor and author of the upcoming book The Revenge of Geography, says China's claims are rooted in economic and national prestige.

"It's a historic belief that is very similar to that which motivated the United States in the Caribbean basin throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries," he adds.

Claims, Counterclaims And The 'Cow's Tongue'

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Little Islands Are Big Trouble In The South China Sea