In April China further formalised its territorial claims in the South China Sea, but America has pushed back in a new way
been trying to turn the South China Sea, which is bigger than the Mediterranean, into a Chinese lake for the better part of a decade. In the Spratly archipelago, which is claimed wholly or in part by Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam, it has built 13 square kilometres of artificial islands atop specks of reef and rock. The constructions bristle with missiles and bomber-sized bunkers.
Earlier this month America pushed back in a new way. Its secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, declared that China’s claims to offshore resources in the South China Sea were “completely unlawful, as is its campaign of bullying.” Much like the abrupt demand this week that China immediately close its consulate in Houston, the statement constituted a new salvo in America’s ever-expanding hostilities with China.
America has always rejected China’s expansive claims in the sea, but Mr Pompeo is far more emphatic than the administration of Barack Obama was at the time of the ruling. Not one of the specks China occupies in the Spratlys, he reiterated, counts as a proper island, which would come with a 200-nautical-mile “exclusive economic zone”. Nor does China have rights around Scarborough Shoal, where its activity, the tribunal ruled, infringed on Philippine rights.
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