This South China Sea dispute is a multilateral dispute involving China, Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei. China began to assert itself in the South China Sea in the 1980s but also entered into discussions with the other states involved in the dispute. No settlement has been achieved, but a agreement of “amity and cooperation” stable status quo but progress toward some kind of settlement is complicated by the multilateral nature of the dispute and the natural resource potential of the region.