In a novel development, where no convenient land base for its military is present, China has begun the construction of manmade islands as bases for weapons and soldiers. Already in 2014, Robert Kaplan wrote:
Take the Spratlys, with significant oil and natural gas deposits, which are claimed in full by China, Taiwan, and Vietnam, and in part by Malaysia, the Philippines, and Brunei. China has built concrete helipads and military structures on seven reefs and shoals. On Mischief Reef, which China occupied under the nose of the Philippine navy in the 1990s, China has constructed a three-story building and five octagonal concrete structures, all for military use. On Johnson Reef, China put up a structure armed with high-powered machine guns.
When a superpower like China creates an island where none had previously existed, stocks that island with troops and missiles, and then makes claims on the waters in the region and on the shipping lanes through them, then nations like Vietnam and Malaysia can rightfully speak of extortion.
The nations around the South China Sea hope to offer some resistance to the Chinese, as Robert Kaplan reports:
Taiwan occupies Itu Aba Island, on which it has constructed dozens of buildings for military use, protected by hundreds of troops and twenty coastal guns. Vietnam occupies twenty-one islands on which it has built runways, piers, barracks, storage tanks, and gun emplacements. Malaysia and the Philippines, as stated, have five and nine sites respectively, occupied by naval detachments. Anyone who speculates that with globalization, territorial boundaries and fights for territory have lost their meaning should behold the South China Sea.
While these nations are to be admired for struggling against the expanding Chinese imperialist power, they cannot stand alone against China and survive. With its large labor force and large manufacturing base, China is building missiles and battleships at a rate which these smaller nations cannot match.
The behavior of China in the South China Sea is parallel to the behavior of Athens in the Aegean Sea, as revealed in the ‘Melian Dialogue’ section of The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides.
When Chinese hegemony over the South China Sea is complete, it will control one of the most important shipping lanes in the world, and will be able to greatly influence the world’s economy, thereby affecting nearly every nation on earth.
