AKIPRESS.COM - The U.S. and China will hold their seventh Strategic and Economic Dialogue this week in Washington, reports Al Jazeera.

On the agenda will be a range of regional and global issues, including territorial disputes among Asian nations in the South China Sea.

The six nations with competing claims to the area are China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.

The territories in dispute are the Spratly Islands, the Scarborough Shoal and the Parcel Islands.

Beijing says it’s nearly done with a land reclamation project the Spratlys, something that has drawn sharp criticism from Washington.

At the heart of the dispute is a major trade route, through which most of China’s oil imports flow. Control of the area could allow Beijing to disrupt shipments to all other countries in East and Southeast Asia as well as deny access to foreign military forces, such as the United States’.

The different nations are also trying to assert rights over fishing grounds and potentially vast undersea oil and gas reserves.