Contesting China’s Facts on New Ground

China’s aggressive actions to contest its excessive territorial claims in the South China Sea received a welcome if worrisome dose of realism this month, as new satellite images emerged of construction at Hughes Reef in the Spratly Islands.

Whether it is China’s declaration of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) last year, its aggressive naval posturing, its use of oil drilling to sustain a contested presence, or building new islands, China clearly is contesting areas they feel are theirs, and are going so far as to create facts on new ground to do so.

Read the full op-ed at War on the Rocks.