Fisher Militia and Giant Clams - 我们的海
It no longer seems to matter whether expansion is the objective, or only the means to other objectives. PRC seems to have (re-) discovered a very effective way of circumventing the status quo ante in the South China Sea. It’s possible they never forgot their history. The current expansion programme did not start yesterday and is now almost complete.
Their recent achievements do not seem to have been addressed in any detail in the OP’s subject article and I wonder if this is because it was outside the author's intent, or because there doesn’t seem to be much of an obvious, coherent or acceptable counter to the methods being used.
The self-righteous and confident, even aggressive assertiveness, the divisive coercion and the maritime ecocide all seem to be working AOK without having to resort to DF-21s or any other kind of lower-tech shooting. The rest of the world falls to their money and other forms of ne-kulturny or venal diplomacy.
I’m not sure if the annotated plan for Huangyan (below - now widely available on the internet) is a spoof or a genuine invitation for bids to do the work. First dredger inside the Scarborough lagoon will mark the critical point in time, because it will have to be forced to leave, as opposed to being prevented from arriving. Once it’s there, with most other SCS developments already achieved, that’ll be the first part of the SCS plan pretty much completed and not a lot anyone can do about it. They can then proceed unhindered with the other objectives.
I’m afraid there’s not much current European interest in the subject. The President-elect of the Philippines has some hot questions to ask the outgoing administration but he doesn’t take office til June 30. The upcoming UNCLOS ruling may be ignored or even pre-empted. I haven’t referred to the similar East China Sea situation, because that seems to involve rather different considerations.
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