The resource-rich Spratly and Paracel archipelagos may be the main sticking points in the South China Sea territorial dispute — but this week the world’s two major powers were shadowboxing over the issue thousands of kilometres away in Beijing and the Western Pacific, coinciding with the beginning of the Rim of the Pacific Exercise, a five-week multilateral naval drill from which the Chinese navy was ejected as a form of protest from Washington against Beijing’s military build-up in the South China Sea. Collin Koh, a research fellow at the RSIS in Singapore, said where it concerns South China Sea issues, the Sino-US divergences have widened.